Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Just a little nosegay of flowers for this T shirt. The smallest person has quite a few navy blue leggings, so this T shirt should work well with them when she wants a bit of colour to enliven the classic navy her mother (and granny) love so much.

For the last sixteen years the packing up of family possessions and moving them around England to new homes has occupied large – and less enjoyable – chunks of my life. I sometimes dream of packing cases and then wake up with a jolt in the small hours of the night and find further sleep elusive as I magnify even the smallest complexities of the logistics of family members’ possessions. Daughter No 2 left Iraq just before lockdown and then headed for Cambodia, having changed both job and country. Her possessions were packaged up and sent here where they occupied a goodly amount of our once organised but now randomly cluttered garage. My five month stay in London brought more packing up as I rationalised Daughter No 3’s possessions into clear plastic boxes to be stored – well I wasn’t sure where! Aagh.  (Daughter No 3 has gone to live with Daughter No 2 in Cambodia and is now in the process of taking on a small hand made textile business bought for her by Daughter No 2). Worrying about where this latest consignment of possessions could go, I sent off a rather snappy email to Daughter No 2 and then spent the following months regretting my tone.

T shirt with hand embroidered nosegay of flowers (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

A recent work trip to the Lebanon and Turkey meant Daughter No 2 was nearer England than Cambodia and in the spirit of answering her mother with action rather than words she diverted to London where, in between doing her job at a distance, she  spent the last week dealing with the technicalities of the great headache that had caused her mother lack of sleep.  By 9am on Friday morning, we had storage boxes lined up in the hallway of Daughter No 1’s Islington house awaiting her brother (my son) whom she had persuaded to take time off work in order to drive a hired van with both us and boxes to Cheltenham where a great re-ordering of storage was to take place. The Son (he has no number as he is my only son) was pleasantly surprised to see how organised we were, so we set off in a particularly affable mood more redolent of going on holiday than setting out a task none of us had any desire to do. And so – miraculously – the day continued.

Detail: T shirt with hand embroidered nosegay of flowers (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Fortunately Friday morning was not a busy time at the storage unit where Daughter No 2 had rented a decently sized though not enormous space. Knowing it was already full, we’d previously decided that a large sofa had to go. Of course, the sofa was stashed away at the very back but in no time at all a ragged line of our possessions trailed in a series of small piles,  pyramids and teetering heaps along almost the full length of the corridor. The sofa was taken down to the forecourt and, just as Daughter No 2 had arranged, there was the man scheduled to pick it up and take it away. Perfect. (I should have known that someone who organises the removal of lethal landmines for a living would sail through the task of removing an innocent item of household furniture devoid of incendiary possibilities).  Daughter No 3’s boxes from London slotted in beautifully – towers of 5 at a time – and gobbled up surprisingly little space. Daughter No 1’s boxes of baby clothes were removed for me to sort through for a friend who had just taken on guardianship of a six month old.

T shirt with hand embroidered nosegay of flowers (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

On next to the garage by our house in Cheltenham. Here Daughter No 2 was to repack her cardboard boxes from Iraq. Soon, the garage forecourt looked like a Bedouin encampment as rugs, quilts and sundry exotic textiles lay strewn around while Daughter No 2 turned things over, choosing what she would package up and send off to Cambodia. For a time I had that foreboding you feel when you start to stuff a sleeping bag back into its seemingly too small case, but by this time the world travelling daughter and her team were  efficiency incarnate.  She rifled through the largest boxes at speed while I packed up bags of fabric and clothes that were to go off to Cambodia. Meanwhile Muscle loaded the van while my husband folded down and cut up the empty cardboard boxes ready for regular council collecting services this Thursday.  By the time the sun had set Daughter No 3 and son were packed up and off back to the store for their last delivery. I collapsed on the sofa delighted to be home a good 5 hours before my usual Friday homecoming and even more delighted that I need no longer have dreams involving packing boxes – nor feel the need to blog about them.

A real sugared almond of a T shirt – both in overall colour and embroidery threads – it’s almost a surprise how much little girls like to receive one of these – either for their birthday or for the season which I still feel should not yet be mentioned (even though it has been much on my mind as every spare minute I’ve had in the last 5 months has been devoted to embroidering presents to be given away on the relevant day.)

Sugar almond pink T shirt with Chinese butterflies

I feel I’m in the home strait now with my time in London down to perhaps another month. Daughter No 1 is doing her thing at the COP 26 conference right now and trying not to further damage her Achilles tendon in the process. When she returns home we shall attempt to strap her to a comfy chair or sofa and force her to devote herself completely to recovery.  I shall offer to be around for some of that time to ensure she’s not rushing up and down stairs for those elusive somethings which, for her, would take a mammoth effort of stair climbing to reach but which those of us more able bodied could do in a jiffy (well jiffy-ish!)  Enforcing rest may not be easy but I think intimations of mortality the injury has brought have made reassessing and reprogramming a reality – albeit in the short term.

Detail of sugar almond pink T shirt with Chinese butterflies

I have come to enjoy my train journeys to and from London. There’s something especially warm and cuddly about arriving at Paddington for the 19.28 to Worcester (Cheltenham is two stops from the end of the line) on a Friday night. As it’s the first train of the evening people with certain rail cards and cheaper tickets can take, it tends to be full of people off for pleasure – country weekends with friends or family and, in the warmer months, little knots of friends off for weddings in the depths of somewhere they’ve never been before (and might never get to judging by their desire to start drinking the wine on offer from the trolley that goes up and down the carriages). As I never sit in the quiet carriage, these can be rather noisy and interesting journeys, with much to consider about the human condition as people chat with their friends, dissect the foibles of other friends, places of work and family members soon to be encountered for the first time. My son-in-law usually leaves me a copy of The Spectator and I find this – with the odd diversion from my fellow travellers – is the perfect length for my 2 hour journey.

Detail of sugar almond pink T shirt with Chinese butterflies

A fast train to Swindon, we whizz by my old station of Goring and Streetley in little more than half an hour, the station sign illegible and once familiar landmarks just a haze of might be. After Swindon, now an hour into my journey, the train goes much slower, tucks its electric arms back into itself and becomes something of a rural stopping train. Now the weekenders start tumbling off the train into the arms of friends and relatives very obviously pleased the train is on time as they seem dressed for the car rather than outdoors on an October evening the weekend the clocks go back. Kemble’s pretty stone station always brings to mind TV’s Kembleford  in the Father Brown adaptations, even though filming takes place miles away at the other end of the Cotswolds and the stone is the wrong colour. Although Stroud as a town is not so pretty, the train station has a certain charm enhanced by its backdrop of a large four square former mill building now residential and illuminated as  well as any city landmark. It’s also a  particularly jolly meeting place as the station car park opens directly on to the platform and you can have fun trying to match up travelling companions with those stomping their feet and hugging their clothes to them before bundling family and guests into a car and set off homewards.

Detail of sugar almond pink T shirt with Chinese butterflies

By the time I get to Gloucester, I’m ready for home, now just seven minutes down the line. Slight frustration as seven minutes extends to 17 minutes for we now have a 10 minute wait while the driver changes ends of the train (quite literally you see him pass by the window walking down the platform from one end to the other end). Now we leave Gloucester the way we came in, clicking on to the Cheltenham line as the points change. Really ready to be home, I tend to get up and collect my suitcase far too early and spend the rest of the journey looking out into a blackness relieved only by the lights of the M5 which, surprisingly for such a short journey, we cross not once but twice! Weary from doing nothing for 2 hours I’m relieved to see my husband is there to meet me for by this time on a Friday night heaving my suitcase up steps or even up a rather steep ramp looms like an Herculean task.. Fortunately taxis are plentiful and within five minutes we are home, warm and happy and ready to begin our weekend life.

Sugar almond pink T shirt with Chinese butterflies

The doctor delivering my booster jab early Friday morning suggested if I’d had a reaction after my first AstraZeneca jab I was likely to have one after this dose of Pfizer. She was right and twelve hours later I had all the symptoms of  flu. This flattened me for about 36 hours and thankfully  I recovered just in time to make this week’s trip to London – particularly important this week as my son-in-law is on his own once Paige who helps with the children leaves in the evening. What a good job I didn’t persuade the vaccination centre to jab me last Monday. Fate moves in mysterious ways and all that.