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Wednesday 10 October 2018

Day 165: Beauty

A much improved day today. Met my mum for coffee and we wandered around the city with our cameras, taking photos, chatting, enjoying the bright and glorious October sun shining down onto the trees of red and gold. Stood a long time in the amphitheatre behind the station, watching the sun getting low and the shadows lengthening, then walked down past Park Hill Flats and over the bridge and up the tram tracks blinded by the dipped-down sun blazing under the Earth. We ate bread and oils in Strada, talked of many things, compared photographs, and then walked to my mum’s bus stop together. She hops on and off buses these days because she’s got her free bus pass, and it’s less bother, and it’s better for the environment, which she cares a great deal about. She’ll often just walk, stopping in all the charity shops and antiques emporiums on the way, despite the fibromyalgia and the vasculitis and everything else.

She told me today that people keep offering her their seats on buses, which freaks her out. She always declines, because “why should she have a seat when she doesn’t need one?” (why shouldn’t she?!), except last time the young girl who offered felt embarrassed because of my mum’s refusal, so now my mum is going to start accepting the offer just so there’s no chance of the offerer losing face.

That’s her. Me old mam. Trooping on with a cataract in one eye, chronic fatigue (“I barely notice it anymore”), an autoimmune disease, cheerful and kind and ever empathetic, utterly gorgeous, only ever taking anything for herself (apart from a glass of red some nights, and her shows on iPlayer) if it’ll end up easier for someone else, smiling and concerned and wanting nothing more than the world in harmony and good books and wild flowers growing and little birds chirruping and gentle evenings trundling on.

It’s hard to feel depressed on a day spent with such a beauty.

And tomorrow: London and sister and kittens and cousins, and a teeny new baby to meet. All is good.

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