I told her to change her clothes as she was wearing pink socks, turquoise trousers, a green shirt and a sad-looking aqua green cardy that has seen better days. She wears this outfit all the time, because it's "comfy" and "no-one is going to see me" but in fact her neighbours (in sheltered housing) see her dressed like this most of the time. While she was getting changed I took the car down the road where there is a bevy of men (and a woman) from Bulgaria with their own car-cleaning business. I wanted the inside of the car cleaned. It hasn't been cleaned inside, properly, since it was new in 2009. Yes, of course, I had taken the vacuum cleaner to it once or twice, but it hadn't been properly cleaned. For Christmas I had promised my car an "In and Out" £12 treat. I thought this remarkably cheap, but then you would expect everything to be cheaper in Addlestone. It is a sad road of curry houses and strange old shops, but you can get some useful things there. For example, you can buy a sports trophy there, and you can get it engraved. You can buy books that have got lost in the post and been auctioned off. You can buy dog food and modelling glue. The fish and chip shop is very good. And in the shop that was my target you can buy wool and knitting needles, tapestry wools and canvases, fabric and dress patterns. It's true that there is a hole in the ceiling and the water is coming in, but that part of the shop is screened a little by a carefully-placed step-ladder with a polythene sheet wrapped around it. I bought a 6 inch embroidery hoop and a reel of black button thread. I was really pleased to get my hands on some button thread (extra strong thread), and I told the old lady who keeps the shop so, but these days she doesn't converse much.
I went back to the car-cleaning business and the chief Bulgarian told me that he could clean my car far, far better if I went for the £18 option - if I did this they would clean all the doors, plastic dashboard and the seats for me. So I went for that. I was feeling extravagant, but also I liked the look of my wild Bulgarian with his gypsy energy and his long hair and ear-rings. So they spent another 10 minutes on my car and then I went back to my mother.
We drove to the Savill Gardens, where I have a season ticket for the car park, and I took her out for lunch. Most of the dishes on the menu were foreign and she doesn't do foreign. She doesn't do pasta, she doesn't do curry. Luckily they were doing fish pie, with nice chunks of salmon in it, and we agreed she would try that. Hooray, she loved it! I did enjoy seeing her eat something that you can call real food. I was planning to do fish pie for dinner, so I chose something else for lunch - quiche with cheese pastry, and some rocket leaves. It was all annoyingly expensive and the restaurant was too cold for an old lady. We kept our coats on.
After lunch I coaxed her out into the garden and I have to say, she loved it. She can really see the beauty of a garden, though I don't know how as she has cataracts. The stems of the dogwood moved her very much, as did the trunks of the white trees. There were bees out on the unseasonal flowers. Crazy for January.
 |
| Hellebores |
So then I took her to the shop where the novelties caused her quite a bit of excitement and she asked me what things were - e.g. a model of a bicycle "What is that for?" and I explained it was an ornament. She played all the musical boxes, trying to recognise the tunes. She finally bought a greetings card but is very puzzled by her new purse - mainly because it didn't have much money in it!
I knew she would be complaining soon, that her back was hurting, so we must go off to a supermarket and get her shopping, but she didn't like me hurrying away from the artwork, and went into a bit of a sulk I now realise that this is because she had drunk a full glass of wine whereas she usually shares it with me. So she sat in the car and started to tell me all the things that are wrong with me - that I lack joy, that I am no fun, etc, and I refused to be annoyed with her (but I was annoyed with her secretly, because this was the way she so often found fault with me when I was a child, and when I was growing up). We went to a Sainsbury's and we bought her the milk and bacon and sliced white but also some cakes as mainly, she eats cakes.
Took her home and carried her shopping up, and I also sorted out her pills into a container, and gave her ones for that evening, and made sure she took them and then I went home to make fish pie for a good -bye supper for the lovely F, whose friend A has been staying for the last few nights. It was their last night before they go back to uni so we had Cava to wish them a happy term. But afterwards we had the most terrible choice of film - Amy - a documentary about Amy Winehouse. What a gruelling watch. Amy who had had bulimia for years, and nobody had done anything about it, because basically, her family was quite ignorant about the dangers. She had so much spirit and so much intelligence - how terrible that she was so badly guarded as a girl, and so unready to be cast adrift as an adult! But in the end, after seeing her friends and her family and her manager and her bodyguard - all of whom she relied on - you concluded that the most intelligent person she knew was her doctor, who seemed to be a very cold fish. The doctor told her that the consumption of alcohol had damaged her badly, and drinking too much again could give her a heart attack. Amy did that to herself, even though she'd been warned.
I saw her perform once. She was terrific. But before the song, she stared at us - the audience - I could see how she felt - She was scared. I liked Amy and I never laughed at all the horrible, jeering jokes people made about her addictions. The paparazzi should be ashamed of their part in making her life a misery. But do vultures feel shame?
No comments:
Post a Comment