Last Monday a few of us set off for a workshop on emotions in Prato, Italy. I was viewed with suspicion by a colleague, aware of past exploits (for a taster, click here), as she had her hand luggage thoroughly searched at Gatwick. This look intensified after she rinsed the gold ring, that she had worn for over 30 years, down the sink in the toilets near the boarding gate.
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“Mum?”
“YEEEESSSS?”
“Mum?
…
“Mum?”
“STOP SAYING MUM ALL THE TIME. Whaddayawant LB????”
“Mum…Do you like Irish lorries, Mum?”
“No.”
“OK, Mum.”
The final birthday trip, before LB restricted the jaunt to ‘just you and me, Mum’, was a trip to the Tower of London. We set off, early Saturday morning, caught the coach to Marble Arch and jumped on the bus to the Tower of London. The bus was an old Routemaster with a conductor geezer standing at the back steps. Perfect. Continue reading
Once in West Africa, there was a comforting shift to green lushness, the odd elephant and unlimited advocados. It was invigorating and the sleeping bags in the back of the truck disappeared as we sat up, enjoying the journey again. We stopped at Lome, the capital of Togo with the largest fetish/voodoo market in the world and spent an afternoon, browsing bones and skulls – many still decomposing – blood, wood, carvings, figurines, ringing bells, smells and strangeness. Continue reading
LB came back from his dad’s house very chirpy indeedy. He’d watched the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film and was very, very taken with the mermaids in it. Turns out he hadn’t come across mermaids before. Having such specialist interests from a very early age (buses, lorries, Eddie Stobart and the London Met) meant that he boycotted all the usual books/films that mermaids would crop up in. At nearly 17, mermaids were a revelation.
He’s now become very focused on finding out if they exist, or not. Since yesterday morning, we’ve repeatedly said they are a myth. Richy has googled images of manatee’s to talk about where the myth may have come from, but he ain’t convinced.
Today he came back from school with a handwritten note to put in a bottle and drop in the River Thames. The note says;
To the mermaids, do you exist or don’t you? From LB
I’ll keep you posted.
I’ve been a right old weepy wreck since the A-level results and confirmation that Rosie’s off to university this weekend. I dunno. What a schmaltz-hound. Richy and the other kids have been very patient and supportive as I’ve blubbed walking around the supermarket, passing old favourites like bourbon biscuits, hot chocolate and tuna, seeing a box set of Desperate Housewives in HMV, walking past her old primary school at chucking out time.
Tom was telling us at breakfast about how, in a science class, there was a description of a blubbery, hairy animal and someone shouted “That’s yer mum Tom”.
“Oh,” said Richy, “that’s not very nice”.
“It’s a yer mum joke”, said Rosie and Owen in unison, chuckling into their pancakes.
Richy and I sat there with blank faces.
Tom’s tooth fell out yesterday.
“I’d better put it under my pillow”, he said. “But I hope there isn’t any more tooth fairy rubbishness…”
“Wha? What do you mean Tomo?”
“You know. There was that time she didn’t come. Then about two nights later she came, left a pound and the tooth. And then there was the time she took the tooth and didn’t leave a pound…”
“And there’s the tooth she left in the bathroom on the travel plug for about three months…” chipped in Richy Rich.
“Oh,” I said, “I hadn’t noticed that”.
From Tamanrasset we travelled South towards Mali. Relentlessly. It seems bizarre now, looking back, but the trip was tedious and boring. Mike-A was obsessively focused on getting the truck to the end point (Nairobi) and used every daylight hour on the road. A few of us got into the habit of getting up for breakfast around 6.30am (stale baguettes, jam or peanut butter), then clambering back into sleeping bags in the back of the truck to snooze till lunchtime (stale baguettes…). Passing slowly through miles and miles of Sahel with little changing scenery, hardly interacting with anyone off the truck, was an odd experience. Detached and unsettling.
Good Debbie and I met up in London today. For the first time in about five years, 23 years after the overland trip. It took a while to actually meet, as she waited outside the English National Opera while I was outside the National Opera House, but eventually we met up.
It was a lovely, lovely early Autumn day. Covent Garden was bustling with people making the most of a sneaky bit of sunshine. We wandered about, chatted, noshed on Mexican food in Wahaca, chatted and laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed. A lot of chat was remembering the truck adventures.
