16 posts tagged “mum”

My late mother loved owls. And here's one she painted on a tile. We just found it while sorting though some of her old stuff.

It's quite lovely.

So, last Thursday I went to Suffolk. I haven't felt like writing about it until now, because I was visiting my parents' grave on the first anniversary of my Mum's death. 

It has been a tough year. We cleared Mum's house and sold it within three months, but I'm still dealing with some of the stuff that came from it. But, more importantly, I'm slowly adapting to living without the reassurance of my parents being there. OK, I'm a grown man in my 30s, but somehow the thought that, if everything went wrong, I could retreat to my parents', regroup and start again gave me a sense of a safety net. 

That net is gone.

The year of mourning is gone. Time to face the rest of my life. 

To Halesworth, and the annual cream teas in aid of the local Community Nursing Care Fund. In the past, this has been a big family occasion, but this time, for various reasons, it was just me and Mum.

The appeal of the event is pretty obvious: fresh-picked strawberries and rich local cream; cheap plants grown locally; a tombola and raffle. All clearly appealing things. But the real draw, and the real mystery to me, is bric-a-brac.

They were waiting, you see. They were lurking outside, gathered furtively at the gate while the unloading and setting up and organising was going on. They knew what time it started. And they knew where they wanted to go.

At the stroke of 3pm, they were in. Past the strawberries they went, and past the tombola. They didn't divert to the plants or the raffle. No. They were the bric-a-brac hordes, and nothing would stop them. A bounty of china Christmas trees, bed warmers, stringless guitars and old plates awaited, and they would plunder.

Us? We had tea and scones. Mmmm.

Another recovery scan - and this one has proved to be rather more tricky to get the colour right. Dad, Mark and Mum are standing in what I think is the courtyard of Castle Campbell in Dollar, where I grew up.

I've no idea who the random kid on the left is. However, he adds a slightly creepy touch to the image and, with the square composition and the large empty space above (not to mention the slightly odd colours), this looks a bit like an LP cover.

Which is cool.

Here's another one from the same set:

Today's bit of 1970s TV nostalgia: Terry & June.

I used to love this when I was a kid, before I became a teenager and realised just how painfully uncool it was.

Looking at it now, I can see why I liked it so much.

Terry & June look disturbingly like my Mum & Dad did back then...