After a silly trip to the University of the East (I got the wrong day for the meeting!) I hared home to do what I'd cancelled in order to go to the phantom meeting- taking Offsprog 1 to Brighton to move in to her student digs. It's a typical Brighton student house- white cardboard with damp problems- and I gulped at the memory of trying to unstick my envelopes before I used them (that wet air had licked them and sticked them before I got there) and pulling on soggy clothes in the morning.
Oh well.
We struggled up the gloomy stairs with collapsing boxes and clanking bags of pans trying to imagine the place to life.
I cried all the way back from Leeds when I took her there last year, but I do understand the teenagers' need to Move On and have a life of their own. The cats think I have disposed of her in some sinister way and they are giving me accusing looks. Offsprog 2 will have to get used to missing her all over again. There will be no freshly-baked cakes in the kitchen and no burst flour bags and sticky sugar bags decorating the worktops.
She has left so much stuff behind that I will have to make another trip next week.
I'm just waiting for Tony trumpet and Paul Sax- we are rehearsing here tonight which will put the frighteners on poor Judith next door I'm afraid. She makes un-noise; she's a manufacturer of silence: silent looks (perhaps she's a secret cat) silent gardening punctuated by the faintest of rustles, and silent arrival and departure in her silent car.
How does she do it?
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