My boyfriend's mother has been on a video call at our table for every meal we've eaten since we moved in together thirteen months ago. Not most meals, every single one. The phone goes up at about half seven and she stays for the whole thing.

It started because she'd just had a hip replacement and was on her own, and he wanted to keep an eye on her while he ate, which was completely fair at the time. That was February last year. The hip healed months ago and she does a pilates class on Wednesdays now, so she is objectively fine.

At home he props the phone against the salt grinder so she can see both of us. She has views on how we're sitting. She once told him his shoulders looked tense and asked whether I'd been stressing him out.

What I hadn't quite reckoned with is that it isn't only at home. We went out tonight, to a place round the corner that we both like, and he had the phone propped against the napkin holder before we'd even ordered. Other tables could hear her. A waitress had to reach around it to put my plate down.

Then she said "oh, is that a restaurant one again," and then said to him, not to me, "you're not eating properly, are you."

Afterwards I said as evenly as I could manage that I'd like to eat one meal a week without his mum there, and he said "she's not there, she's on a screen."

THIRTEEN MONTHS. Four hundred odd meals and she has been at every single one of them.

The bill would provide a $3,000 direct payment to every person in households making $150,000 or less during its first year, which equals $12,000 for a family of four.

By @ sairusalias224