Twins

My mum's always been up for a laugh, so when we went to Pontin's Wall Park Holiday Camp in Brixham, Devon for our annual family holiday, my best friend Carol and I had no worries about asking her to pretend we were her twin daughters.

I don't know why we wanted to be twins because we looked nothing like each other - I suppose it's just one of those things teenagers do - but Mum was fine with it, thinking it surely couldn't be too difficult. After all, she was used to Carol calling her Mum already.

There was one thing she hadn't reckoned with, though.

One afternoon whilst sitting outside the chalet relaxing with a magazine, the woman in the opposite chalet asked her where the twins were.

"Oh, they'll be off boy-hunting probably," Mum had replied, and was probably right. At fourteen, that was pretty much what holidays were for.

"So what was it like giving birth to twins then?"

"Excuse me?" Mum wasn't sure she'd heard right. Did this total stranger really want her to describe the birth of twins? Yes, she did.

Poor Mum was somewhat flustered when we got back to the chalet. "That nosy old cow opposite has been asking me the ins and outs of giving birth to twins. How long it took, how painful it was, how long it was between babies coming out, what it was like breast feeding two and gawd only knows what else!"

Obviously, we thought that was hilarious, and as it happened, Mum had done a pretty good job of bluffing her way through it, but she did say that next time we wanted to pretend to be twins, could we please leave her out of it.


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