Theresa’s Writing

Typing is proving a very successful exercise in thawing out my fingers after a particularly chilly swim. The lido is ( in theory) warming up, but today although the sun is out, the wind was really cold and it was challenging to walk across the bleak and unforgiving concrete to get in. However, once in…

It has been a glorious summer for swimming all round, and even now as I sit looking at the drizzle outside my kitchen window, the weather isn’t exactly wintery, though this morning when I took my clothes off at the lido for my daily swim it felt a little like being slapped around the legs…

Astonishing as it seems, I am now a grandmother ( or ‘Oma’ as they say in Germany). A little Berlin baby boy born on Halloween, thus ensuring years of brilliant spooky birthday parties and pumpkin shaped cakes. It’s hard to describe how much I already love him, this squidgy wriggly munchkin whose arrival has made…

So here I am back in the field, almost a year older but sadly not any wiser, and certainly less fit. Arthritis that has grumbled away in the back ground for the past few years now shouts and jabs into my hips making walking painful and hopscotch impossible. And then in order to perpetuate my…

  Magazines and newspapers neatly piled in date order envelopes sliced open with a knife from Spain. Sharpened pencils at the ready in regimented lines like the toy soldiers you played with as a boy. A little lacquer bowl with shells and buttons and a stone from the garden not this garden, the old one…

  Today I chose your coffin in a stuffy room with beige curtains and walls the colour of peach sorbet a bunch of paper flowers on the polished table and a box of tissues already open to avoid awkward fumbling As he went through the options I thought of your body lying somewhere out back…

  My puberty has plopped Slipped and fall down carefully Grilled sexual harassment Please wait to be entered Happy pork! No killer littering My fanny toilet roll The tray I have finished is to a trash can No climbing and no scribbling Wet dream! For restroom go back towards your backside Dining room closed. Sorry…

After six weeks of H being in the care home with  S staying on his own in their flat, we admitted defeat and took her back home. The final straw was when a fellow dementia patient wandered into her bedroom in the nursing home and hit her, causing her to fall over and cut her…

  They were there. Thick pungent dreads wrapped around their heads, stuffed into huge crocheted hats like hermit crabs, soft whispered rhythmic voices muffled against the steamy windows on the number 12 bus when it’s raining, and water gathers in tiny sparkling droplets on the glass. Did I recognise that hotel with the ice sculpture…

  Hazel Flabbergasted 80 something. Am I? The police took my pillows I don’t know We  sleep in the carpark every night, over there by the supermarket Those aren’t mine You are a buggery buggery bastard Shut up She smells You are very pleased with yourself aren’t you Sheila is here You are a bloody…