AS I have said before, the very fact that I live and breathe is a constant embarrassment to my teenage sons. When I am out in public with them, it never ceases to amaze me how behaviour that I have always thought perfectly normal ranges from cringe-worthy to shamefully humiliating when seen through the eyes of a teenage boy.

Poor 17-year-old Roscoe had to endure my mortifying conduct when I stopped in town to buy Easter eggs. For a start, I parked on the outskirts, as I always do, in order to enjoy a brisk walk and clock up some steps on my Fitbit activity tracker wristband. It only takes about 15 minutes each way and, as a bonus, I’m not constantly worrying that my parking ticket is about to run out.

“This is so embarrassing. You’re so mean. Why can’t you just pay for parking like everyone else?” he moaned, walking a few steps behind me in case anyone might have thought we were together.

Given that he’d been forced to endure a whole 15 minutes of “pointless walking”, I treated him to a hot chocolate hoping it might improve his mood before dragging him around the supermarket. On the way back to the car, I noticed that the same Thorntons chocolate rabbit that was on “special offer” in Sainsbury’s for £4 cost £1.99 in a discount shop next door.

“I’ve just bought six of those for £24,” I said, digging out the receipt from my bag. “That’s outrageous. I’m going to get my money back.”

You would have thought I’d announced I was going to strip off and do naked handstands down the high street. “I do not believe you,” barked Roscoe, to whom throwing away £12 for no good reason is clearly neither here nor there: “It’s not worth all this effort. Do you have no shame?”

I irritated him further when, laden with £1.99 chocolate rabbits, I took a small detour to another discount store to buy some Snickers eggs that I’d noticed were double the price elsewhere. To top it all, I saw a penny in the street: “See a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck. See a penny, let it lie, all the good luck will pass you by,” I recited as I pocketed it.

It’s a rhyme that made an impression on me in childhood. Even now I daren’t walk past a penny without picking it up in case bad luck befalls me. For Roscoe, this was the final straw: “My God, you’d think you were some sort of poverty-stricken beggar. You won’t pay for parking, you take stuff back to supermarkets when you see it cheaper elsewhere, scour the whole town for bargains and now you’re picking pennies up off the pavement. You’re a total embarrassment.”

I’d agreed to take him to Nando’s for lunch: “I queued up to get you the hot chocolate earlier,” I reminded him as I sat down with all the shopping bags. “Could you just queue up and order this time please?” I asked.

“No, you have to queue up,” he said. “You’re the one who’s paying.”

Quite.

A LESSON in how to break bad news: my sister-in-law arrived home in a distressed state and told my brother she was really worried. “What about?” he asked. “I’m so concerned that I might have damaged those big wrought iron gates on the village church,” she said. “How did you do that?” he asked. “I scraped the car against them,” she replied.

FRIENDS were enjoying a well-deserved weekend away after being invited to join a glamorous private hospitality box at the Grand National. As they sipped champagne and nibbled on canapes on the terrace, they got a call from their 17-year-old son, who had been left home alone, which brought them back to down to earth with a bang: “Mum, I need help, the dog has just come into the kitchen covered in poo, he looks like he’s been rolling around in it. What do I do?”

ANOTHER friend was telling us how she had to wear a cuff for 24 hours to monitor her blood pressure day and night. When the doctor looked at her results, he told her that there was a clear pattern emerging: “I can see from this that you get up at 7am, as there’s a big spike in your blood pressure then.” She had to disagree: “I get up at 6am,” she told him. “It’s my husband who gets up at seven.”