The Long Day Wanes

Anthony Burgess’ Malayan Trilogy made a big impression on me when I read it as a young man. I can’t remember if it was his line or mine, as a response to reading his books, but I remember the phrase ‘the pink slipping day’. I have googled it and found nothing and so claim it as my own!

This is taken in Largs as the sun sets, at the end of a day in which life in its last waning was very much in evidence. We took Mum up to see her life-long friend, Helen, in her care home in Paisley who cannot, now, recognise her at all . . . not something that we had expected. Helen is one of Mum’s two last surviving peers - the other also in a lost world. Mum tried so hard to make the connection, but the ‘aware’ friendship slipped away between her fingers even as she grasped those of Helen, left with something that she could not quite grasp . . . a slipping away.

We walked down memory lane in many parts of Paisley, a fun wheelchair gig taking us around Thornly Park Avenue where we had a story about most houses, people we knew who lived in them in our earlier lives or bought them later, and even one where my dad was put off offering for because of damp problems. ‘We should have been braver…damp can always be solved’, said Mum.

I should add that Mum and Dad were from very humble origins but their joint endeavours had put them in touch of acquiring such property and had certainly made them (Mum!) determined to put their children forward to pass grammar school entrance exams that opened the world to them.

The main blip is my title blip, extras for my record of the day.