My mother has Alzheimer's disease. It is a terrible thing, a living death in some ways. It is hard for the people around her and difficult in an unimaginable way for her. I worry about losing my memory and sometimes when I juggle too many things I forget what I have said to someone and what I was about to do. I know this is symptomatic of all of us super-busy working Mums but I still worry that it is the beginning of something sinister.
I have often kept diaries from time to time. I have started again as our family is doing so much and the children are changing so fast. I don't want to lose those precious times. Easier now is to combine the writing with something visual as my world is more visual than auditory as it was in my musical life. The entries might lead to something textile or not...who knows yet. All I know is that it it can be a good way to sit and appreciate the day gone by.
Talking of days gone by; this picture was reprinted in the local paper this week. It was taken in 1940 a couple of miles from here on a day when my father was off school poorly. He was in his house when he heard a terrible noise and looked out to see the payload doors of a German Bomber open and a large bomb coming out. It dropped creating a huge crater here and sent clay flying through the air, damaging 200 houses and an apple tree in his father's allotment.
I can't imagine having experienced war like that.
Today we went up The Long Mynd, a seven mile long hill, in Shropshire. The 360 degree view across Wales, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Staffordshire is stunning but so was this little micro view of tiny fairy-like mushrooms growing in some old, hardened sheep dung. I wanted to bring it home but the screwed up noses of disgust of my family said a firm "no". Philestines!
