This week Liz Dawes reveals the details about her sort-of-naked highly embarrassing first meeting with her ex’s new girlfriend….

Summon, if you will, a throw-away comment I made in my last column; the one about a slightly awkward encounter with my ex-husband’s new girlfriend.  Many readers were nosey enough to enquire about the details (cheek, but knowing you lot I’m hardly surprised), so in the spirit of last week’s declaration that we at Fighting Fifty are here to brighten your day, I shall reveal all (again).

My daughter has reached an age where she is scarily proficient at using technology which, on the whole, is good.  Her thing-du-jour is FaceTime, an invention with which, like Skype, I have a love/hate relationship.  On one hand, it’s handy for meetings you can’t attend, or people you haven’t seen in ages; on the other, you have to SEE yourself on camera – I strongly resemble the love-child of Brian Blessed and one of the crones from Macbeth, and that’s on a full make-up day.

My main issue, however, is that my daughter FaceTimes me on weekends when she is with her father, and ALWAYS no later than 7am.  Obviously, the penny hasn’t dropped that Mamma is having a well-deserved lie-in (odd, since I remind her of it with monotonous regularity, but that’s kids for you).

So, bright and early one Saturday morning, I woke, bleary-eyed and snuffling, to the predictable bleep of my phone.  There was Daughter, grinning madly on the screen, yelling “MOOORNING MAMMA!” at a not inconsiderable volume.  I responded to the aural onslaught as best I could by wishing her a good morning and asking about her plans for the day.  She twittered on for a while (I snoozed a bit) before I noticed the screen bouncing up and down: clearly, she was walking around with the phone.

Alarm bells ringing, I started to pay attention and just about heard her explain that they were all up for pancakes, before going for a long walk.  My fuzzy head and crumpled face managed to deduce, although with insufficient time to deal with the consequences, that “all” referred to my daughter, my son, their father, and his new girlfriend.

Nothing wrong with that, one might think – but one would be wrong.  No sooner had I processed this than I heard: “Here I am downstairs!” then excruciatingly: “Hey! Say hello to dad’s new girlfriend!”

I did seriously consider hiding my smeared face and bed-head hair under the covers, pretending later that I was asleep and unaware of proceedings, but a terrible combination of exhaustion and horror prevented me from moving. Instead I squinted a bit (lenses weren’t in yet) and attempted to smile.  I suspect New Girlfriend smiled back, although I can’t promise, since aforementioned lens-absence meant I couldn’t see a damn thing.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, Daughter shouted: “Look properly Mamma! You’re ALWAYS asking what she looks like so now you can see!”

I was genuinely puzzled by this, since, in all truthfulness, I’ve never asked that question, but no amount of spluttering would likely persuade my audience that I was not just a naked and bedraggled ex-wife, but a naked, bedraggled stalking ex-wife.  Eventually, duvet hiked up around chin, I managed to gather my dignity and murmur a polite, if garbled, greeting.

Daughter’s intent remains a mystery, but hey.  No harm done.  Except that now of course I’m wondering what she does look like, just so I don’t accidentally ignore her in the street.  Honest.

Now…what was her surname again?