Welcome Back, Shirley

I took my mother for a push round the garden yesterday. Normally she's oblivious to her surroundings but on this outing she noticed a window ledge that wanted washing down, a shrub that needed pruning back and a self-seeded tree that wanted destroying. I disagreed (mostly in silence) on every point.  In one way this reappearance of the old Shirley was rather heartening, on the other I found myself getting pricklier and pricklier.

My mother and I have- or had when she was in her prime- opposing views and tastes in almost every sphere...

Sunday Shopping

We whizz up to the shop for some milk.

The nearest shop is an M & S attached to a petrol station- and it calls itself a Services. It's expensive but we don't have time to drive any further because we've got an agency carer seeing to my mother and she'll have a next job to get to and she's running late already.

The Services is busy on a Sunday morning. I guess it's a lot of people's corner shop. They have three tills going. I'd have bought a watercress salad- and sod the expense- only they were all sold out. Three young men stand and eat pastries at the single table by the coffee dispensary. A man in the queue ahead of me has moths and beetles (not Beatles as I explain to Ailz later) tattooed all over his forearm.