Only thing on my mind is football.

But when a gap occurs, like today, when I pushed mum up and down Southend High Street, I think of other things.

Other things such as...

Cakes. All manner of. Made for and eaten by loved ones. Bread Pudding, rock cakes and, up and coming, an orange curd Swiss Roll.

Friends. Loved for their looks and everything else.

The Future. For its brightness. Its possibilities. These darker days are like living with the curtains continuously drawn.

Spring Cleaning in June. Bin bags now full. Yesterday's desperately needed stuff now heading back to whence it came. Hoover booming out its sweeping melody. New fat naked duvet waiting to be unrolled. I love getting in bed with new stuff.

My 'new' shoes. Think...Judy Garland. Yellow Brick Road. Only mine aren't red, they're coffee coloured.

Today has been fraught at times with mum getting upset in M&S over cakes and then a little later cursing a black t-shirted choir doing their bit for charity. Their singing was fine, I soaked it up, was chorally and uplifting. Glad I stumbled on, You made my hot chocolate even sweeter!

Mum's morning was not good and despite Mr H and I's super-human efforts she remained under a cloud, only time the cloud got blown was when she was in Smiths buying crime books.



Now I must fly... I need to make burgers and coleslaw.
Yummy nosh.
Excellent therapy.



P.S. I got a handmade birthday card from my Auntie Ivy. I like Ivy, she's ok, lives with her latest husband in South London, has hundreds of off- spring, kids, grand kids, great grand kids and knowing Ivy, probably great great grand kids. Ivy's been around the block and is quite old. She lived in Clapham Junction when I was a child and had a pine table and kind of hastened the death of her second husband by feeding him nothing but eggs from battery reared chickens. Don't think Free range was available then.