FAMILIES

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Today was my sister's birthday celebration lunch - needles to say cooked by her. Her eldest daughter is a sleepwalking wreck thanks to Katy Joy developing teeth! Her youngest had to sweep down from Oxford and was helping.

All was well at first, gifts exchanged , hugs, Pimms: the usual ritual of the Sunday roast. I don't quite know what started it - I think it was me, asking if they had found an old feather bed of my sister's; for those of you au fait with these things, the new bed is lumpy. Pretty but like sleeping on bouncy rocks!

For some reason - not sure why I asked if I could possible have my three pictures back. My sister had confiscated them when I was reposessed citing my complete lack of care, value and sense of family. I said this rather felt like a punishment. She replied that it was exactly that. Even now I could have stopped what was to come but Cognitive Behaviour Therapied up to neck I continued to try and explain how important these three pictures were.

It went so downhill from there. We talked about my mother - my sister telling me how much she had hated living in Cornwall, how unhappy I had made her going there. I countered with how she had told me she had never been so happy. She said she said she had received no inheritance, I said what about the chair  that I was sitting in (Frank Baines' chair), what about Desmond's portrait of my mother? Her red leather box and all the things that she had taken when she had got married.

Ah, but I was untrustworthy, unreliable. These were family pieces and must be kept. I tried one last time - Mum gave the three pictures to me, they are mine. The reply was that they were in the loft and would stay there!

I am not ashamed to say I ran. My niece came after me with the car and brought me home - to my council, sheltered living flat with mock flock wallpaper and a gaudy red swirled carpet. Where the only pictures hanging are one of me by Desla and a Sam Toff reprint of a lonely lady and her dog seemingly lost in a wood, wandering.

The truth - I have nothing,  this blog gives me a voice that would otherwise be unheard. Links to past and present that remind me it was not always thus. But for all my talk of mountains and the Maidan, I am just an empty shell of old memories and to quote my beloved Emily,"Real life is over there - upon that shelf". And it is too far and too hard to reach.

So now you know - useless, unreliable, dishonest (to an extent, I have never stolen) and really rather boring when you take the old Koi Hai stories away.

I am so sorry this isn't more fun - will try harder next time.

Thank you my darling friends. You have given me the golden thread of life to cling onto of late and I will never forget.

xxx