Say it isn't so

Tonight, we've been eating Moroccan.  I love Moroccan food.  Give me a lamb tagine and I'll pretty much do whatever you ask of me.

Anyway, you'll note that I'm only sharing evenings with the family so far - I've done a good job of not taking time off work for the Paris part of their trip.  Let's face it, there's only so many times a boy can go up the Eiffel Tower and pretend to be excited.

The menu at the Moroccan was a bit of a challenge for the ladies.  They were intrigued by the 'pigeon pastilla'. 

"I'm going to have that", said my normally-unadventurous-in-the-food-department Mother.

"But it's Pigeon", said I, the helpful son.

'They say that.  But it'll be chicken".

"It won't.  It'll be pigeon".

"I bet you 10 euros that it's chicken".  This was her way of closing the argument.

Lo and behold, said dish appears and it's very obviously not chicken.  It very obviously is pigeon.

"Well, I can't eat that," said Mother.  "It's pigeon."

"Durr," said I.

And so she left it.  Untouched.  Apart from the minor 'post mortem' that she'd performed on it to test the origin of the species.

The waiter wasn't impressed.  But he seemed to warm to my Mother as she started to show him, through the power of mime and birdsong impressions that she thought it'd be chicken and in fact it was pigeon.

As she sat there, cockadoodledoo-ing, pecking at imaginary grain on the table and coo-ing like a common or garden street pigeon, I once again questioned my birth certificate.

Surely we can't be related.

Surely this can't be my Mother.

Surely someone was supposed to have rescued me by now.