Jackie

I fell into the Oxfam shop at opening time to buy a cotton dress that looked cool as a cucumber; we'd had to knock hard on the door, the day's volunteer and I, to get the attention of the vaguely pottering chap inside.
Then I hopped on the tube and headed south.
I hadn't seen Jackie for almost 17 years, although I'd had family news about what she was doing, sometimes wildly exaggerated, as happens in extended families.
She has just published a book about her life with her mum in South East London, Pilgrim State; I hadn't known anything much about this life because when Jackie and I first met, she must have been about 13 and I was a couple of years younger. When you are little, your relatives appear to be arranged around you in a pattern that exists just for you; when they go away after visiting you, it's almost as though someone has removed their batteries and put them in a cupboard until next time. It takes a long while to grow out of this illusion, and it is fascinating eventually to get to know and understand them as real people with real life trajectories.
Jackie is one of three of my foster-cousins (see! I'm possessing them already!); my remarkable Auntie Clare fostered them as well as raising her own three children in a big house in Blackheath. We are all part of a rambling family that seems to sprout another flower wherever you look.
We had a lot to catch up on and we sat in the sun and ate raspberries and drank tea, discovering that we have much in common, especially by both becoming accidental authors at this time in our lives.
I will write more about her book when I have read it, this summer.
Later, I travelled to Custom House to visit a student from the University of the East, who has created drama and music clubs in a big primary school as part of her work experience. It was fiendishly hot and humid by then, and I stayed long enough to see that she is confident and authoritative and the children like her, before heading home and deflating in the heat like a punctured ball.