Personal Blogs

Tishy and I went to my mother and fathers' today. Gardening was the plan.

We arrived, were ushered into the back-room, where sitting on the floor was something that, at first-glance looked like a product of my dad's mind. But when I got up close and had a good look at the thing, was clearly something that came out of my mum's mind.

It was an odd thing: some half-painted, badly-distressed, wood cut into recto-linear chunks and fitted together as a rectanglular jigsaw where nothing matched and there were no symmetries.

My dad had clearly had a hand in it somewhere—the chunks had the severely defined edges that you only get from someone who knows how to deal with wood. One of the cuts went against the grain and was still sharp.

I hunkered down to have a good look. There were places where decisions about the final outcome had yet to be made, but I saw where it was heading. There was a heap of proto-kindling lying on the floor next to the thing.

"Where did you get the wood?", I asked.

I should explain that. I'm not madly daft about wood, but I grew up with my dad as a parent, a parent who is positively mental about the stuff. I know enough about wood.

And I was bloody sure that what I was looking at wasn't something that he'd keep. It was re-pink-painted pine, and not a good pine either.

"We went to a salvage yard". We listened to her story about that.

Then we did the gardening and had a nice bottle of M & S Rosie. Tish and my Dad share something that my mum and I don't understand, so while they were off doing that we chatted.

Mum and I share something too, so as we talked  I started messing around with the work. Without moving anything that was already there, I introduced symmetries.

Mum is just out of four weeks of radio, I can see that she's knackered, I've been worried that she'd lose the will to live.

Taking a crappy old bit of wood and attempting to make art out of it assures me that her mind is in the right place.

I know that as she waved us off she was going to undo my changes as soon as we were out of sight.