She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is over the moon because our son has befriended the son of the rich couple in the Big House.
This is an appalling brand of snobbery, of which I am not guilty: affluent or poverty stricken - anyone can buy me a drink.
"Tell me what their bathroom is like," Julie gushed as our 15-year-old returned from a visit to the sprawling mansion.
"It's massive, Mom," said Joe. "There are wooden beams everywhere and the bath is so big I thought it was a swimming pool."
What do they do when they lose the soap? Don an aqualung?
I just huffed, secretly stung by the inability to provide such luxury for my own family.
Even worse, Joe has openly admitted he's ashamed his new, rich friend will one day see our own cramped bathroom.
"Why?" I demanded.
"Well," he answered uneasily, "for a start, the radiator is all corroded from the times you missed the toilet and urinated against it."
"Is there a bathroom radiator in the land that isn't being eaten away by urine?" I demanded theatrically.
The rhetorical question met with a stoney silence.
"Anyway," I spluttered, "it's a design fault. The toilet is too close to the radiator."
"The radiator is in the hall," Julie butted in, a pained expression on her face. "You're 'missing' by three feet seven inches - we've measured it."
"Never," I warned Number One Son, "be ashamed of who you are and what you are. I may not be as rich as his dad, but there are things I can do which he can't - and there are things he probably wishes he could do as well as me. You're a Lockley and you should be proud of it."
"I know," muttered Joe, humbled by the realisation he may have hurt his father's feelings, "I'm just worried, that's all."
Worried about what?
"Worried that urinating at right angles might be genetic."