Sharing A Day Out on my 80th

Does my story have enough go in it to persevere with?

This a mock-up of my story cover. ‘A Day Out’ goes back a good few years, having been parked more than once. It is what I describe as auto-fiction. One, because it is set in and around locations and places I know well, and a fixation I have with friendships and loving relationships born of a moment. I have had a few. One great love and enduring friendships which go back decades, all of which continue.

It had been my intention this afternoon to type up a chapter I had written in The DoughMother yesterday morning about Madge, one of the story’s characters, but I haven’t. A telephone conversation with a very old close friend, who I met when he recruited me into the Wembley South Young Socialists in April 1960, was followed by taking a Rye loaf from the oven (see photo), then a another telephone call, this time from my cousin Linna in Harlow, Essex, to tell us that my cousin Kathleen had died. She was due to be 73 today. Then that our Uncle Frank had died a couple of weeks ago aged 94. He lived in Bognor Regis, on the south coast of England with his daughter and our cousin Janet, who is 71.

Here is Rye loaf I made using white Rye flour because I have an intolerance to wheat fibre. It will be stored in the crock and cut on the bread board beside it. In the background is the combi microwave I use, which has a convection oven setting (Baked for 25 minutes at 180 ºC.). One of life’s simple pleasures.

Well, time has overtaken me. I official become 80 tomorrow, but I have few 80 for the past few months. Friends from Stoke will be joining us for lunch in a Sicilian eatery five minutes walk from our home.

I will finish on something I see every day in our living room. The Sunflower made for me by Hannah, a Nottingham University student who works in The DoughMother and we get on very well. It is nice at my age still to be able to make friends across the generations. The dog pencil came from my granddaughter Natalie a long time ago, and the fluffy bus pencil came from her sister Laura, our eldest granddaughter, both in they 30s.

If need be I will post what I have of my ‘A Day Out’ story tomorrow morning and see if you would like to read more.

Love Robert🐰