‘Something I like to do with all my tables is ask what brings you here today?’ said the young waiter as he sat us down and began to talk. If I’d known he would still be talking nearly two hours later I think I would have got up and walked out.

We were in a lovely riverside restaurant in Warwickshire for my mother’s birthday. But we were going to have to run the gauntlet of being served by a smiley young man who was under the impression that everything was about him.

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He was pale, long-haired, very tall and thin and bendy, as if a gust of wind would blow him over.

He didn’t look like he had the strength to serve our lunch, never mind fight a war. That’s something I ask myself whenever I meet a man in his twenties. How would he fight a war? And then I remember, we don’t fight any more, and I think, well, it’s a good job really, isn’t it?

My father eats next to nothing but doesn’t remember that he does and orders as though he’s Henry VIII

My father eats next to nothing but doesn’t remember that he does and orders as though he’s Henry VIII

I was already in a difficult enough spot, trying to chaperone my mother and father, both of whom have dementia, without having also to cope with someone who wanted me to tell him how fantastic he was every five seconds.

He showed us to our table by the window without pulling it out and watched as I pulled........

© The Spectator