Pop-up memories

I chose this shop window not because of the bear’s head, strange though it is, but because of the pop up cards. My mother liked cards like this, and would drive to the Castle Stalker gift shop to get them when she lived in Duror, near Appin. Everything still reminds me of her. I come across her handwriting every day, which is odd, because she was not a great letter writer. It is less than six months since she died, on 28 February this year.

I worked in the cupboard again. Temperature was not as stifling today. The big news is that, after five years without a dentist (until May this year) I finally saw the hygienist! The dentist is NHS (or partly) but the hygienist is private. She greeted me like royalty and said that now was ‘my time’ (for torture?) I half expected her to offer me a glass of champagne for take off!

The scale and polish was torture. I imagined mortar being torn off a brick wall. I was the wall, immobilised. I understood how some of my clients with Learning Disabilities need to be knocked out before they undergo such work. It was horrid, and I didn’t even emerge with supermodel-style teeth at the end! But they do feel clean,

I had to return to the office afterwards for an hour. I bought some frozen kebabs (chicken and veg) on the way home and we had kebabs, salad, olives, followed by Greek yoghurt and raspberries. After that I started looking for bouzouki music and Cretan Rebetika on Spotify. I did live in Northern Greece ( Veria) for a year in the 1980s, so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane. Must be all this sunshine! Goodness knows, Northern Greece is not at all sunny in winter, it has a climate similar to the Balkans.

Now I’m doing my washing (sedate jazz playing in the background) and and thinking about going camping tomorrow, on the banks of the Severn (the forest side).