“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
Bernard M. Baruch
Taken from this month’s edition of The Trumpit.
“What are you doing dressed like that?” asked my Mum the other day as I arrived to steal some more of her not so secret Fruit Pastille stash. I was on the way to the gym, a place she has never encountered in her life and never will. “Are you getting fit for your birthday? Your legs could do with a bit of colour!” she said, looking me up and down as if this were my first PE lesson.
“That was April Mum!” I replied re the belated birthday wishes offering the consolation that next April would be fine, in fact many more Aprils too.
She rocked back in her chair, surrounded by numerous books and enough chocolate to start an obesity crisis. I asked her how her dodgy knee was; never one to complain, she cannot see the point of the NHS fitting her with a new knee “just to bury it!”
That’s my Mum for you, a lifelong contributor to life, rarely seeking much in return, so typical of her generation. How today’s have-it-all-now on the never-never-later and do-sod-all-for-it could learn something.
“How’s that magazine of yours doing? You been sued yet?” she asked, a twinkle in her eye as bright as the gas fire raging as the sun shone brightly outside, my Mum still to acknowledge global warming. I told her about Bill and his sad passing with my unexpected rise to management at Trumpit Towers.
She told me Dorothy, wife of our cricket club President Brian, loves our little magazine and cannot believe it is now free. Knowing Brian, the old sod would be ecstatic at saving 25p. Happy in the knowledge we have at least one reader, I asked her to tell Dorothy we accept donations, especially those Mick and I can trade at The Scruffy, especially from Brian.
It is the first summer I can remember my Mum has not been ever present in the cricket club kitchen serving up the teas each Saturday, as reliable as the summer rains. If only we could get players with the same commitment. As Treasurer, I have had to “privatise” her, unable as she is to stand for the duration of an innings any more, much like me too, as far as out in the middle goes.
That said, some of our innings can be quite short these days and, having heard we had been bowled out for 22 the other week, she was lacking in sympathy. I could see she wondered how we could be so crap after playing for so long. There was no way my Mum would be offering pointless platitudes such as “it’s just a game”.
She still wants to be there, but she’s been looking after my Dad as he recuperates, albeit she is not the most patient of “nurses”. I have had to counsel her over the downsides of ending her days in Armley Prison hiding the big hammer just in case.
Most days I find her in her favourite armchair, resting in between domestic tasks. She’d been watching the BBC’s Gentleman Jack, filmed largely at Shibden Hall, Halifax with a bit in Bradford too.
I smiled at my Mum’s take on this racy and raucous tale as she told me about visiting the estate many decades ago. Once more the vagaries of the mind came to call as she could recall so much about this visit despite the passing of time.
As I got up to leave, she asked me where I was going, hauling her chair back into position like a beaver building a new river den. I chanced a few more pastilles and left her rocking to the rhythm of life, doubtless to blame my Dad for the pastille shortage.
Good job I hid the hammer.
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