There are two stories I’d like to share about my wonderful mother.

The first may be familiar (in part) to anyone who’s read her biography, Making Tea from Snow and remembers the (in)famous Mother’s Day card (at p57 of the book) which I made for her when I was 10.  The verse inside read:

”There are many mothers that the world has nursed, And if your(sic) not the best of them your(sic) certainly not the worst!” 

Well, in my own defence I will say that I had to make it rhyme!

Anyway what may not come across from the biographer’s account in the book is that Mum loved that card.  She knew perfectly that of course I thought she was the best mother in the world and she thought the card was hilarious.  I found it amongst her personal effects in an envelope marked “MOTHERS DAY CARD - KEEP”

The other story is of when as a teenager I went up to London with my friend Moira to see a Lou Reed concert.  The supporting act went on forever and Lou Reed didn’t come on stage until it was almost the time we needed to leave.  We persuaded ourselves that we could stay just a little longer and still get the last train home.  Picture our dismay on arriving at Victoria station to find how wrong we were!  

We had to catch the “milk train” in the early hours of the morning which was not even going as far as Canterbury.  So it was that at about 3:00 am I rang Mum to explain that we were at Gillingham and, er, could she come and get us?  When I posted on Facebook to break the news of Mum’s death it was this incident that Mo particularly remembered and as I don’t think I can improve on her words I’ll just reproduce them here:

”....And turning out to pick us up at Gillingham Station at 3 in the morning because we missed the last train home from a Lou Reed concert And turned up  in her dressing gown laughing her a*s off too What a hero!”

What a hero indeed!