Standing and watching and listening…


I do this a lot, because I write about the world I know and the people who live in it. I promise I don’t lift characters or situations wholesale, but I do notice patterns. At this time of year, I notice women of wisdom and maturity rushing to finish as much as they can before they have the grandchildren for the summer holidays. I hear them planning to meet up, much as they once did at the school gates, and some of them still do now because these women are the unsung heroines of what they call the sandwich generation, because they’re sandwiched between caring for older relatives and helping their own children with childcare. On top of that, their husbands aren’t as young as they were, so if there were such a thing as a frequent visitor reward card for hospitals, then they’d qualify for it. Not because they don’t take care of themselves, although they don’t as much as they’d like to, but because they do take care of everyone else.

Society dismisses them as Karens because they expect to get what they pay for and won’t stand for being bossed around or patronised. I see them as heroines because I’ve been and still am where they are now in a different kind of way and when you’re tired both physically and because you're fighting a battle that you can’t win both with authority and with ill health and death, what the person making the mistake sees as minor strikes you as being the last straw.

I was feeling like that on the day I rescued the gosling from the crow. I was just so incredibly angry that I screamed my fury at him on behalf of all the big, powerful animals and people who think they can walk all over the rest of us. He’s all grown up now, and views us as his pet humans and likes being scratched at the back of his head, but I made a lot of friends that day because people recognised what I was saying and my determination that just this once, death didn’t have to win. Yes, I do get asked if I’ve rescued any goslings recently, but it’s a nice sort of teasing and it leads to what posh people call micro conversations when we alert each other to what’s going on and anything particularly interesting.

That’s going to play a big part in the Lucy Williams I’m working on at the moment, and which will be published this time next year, and the less I say about how you can soup up a mobility scooter the better. Just let’s say I want one of those!!!

But yesterday, I was greeted by what I think of as the proper photographers who have much better cameras and longer lenses than I do, and who thought I’d end up with lens envy! And then I went and stood and waited and watched on the bridge over the freshwater lake in my beloved Poole Park. Sure enough, all the water birds were up at one end, and at the other, oh so still and quiet, stood this beautiful grey heron. Soon after that, there was a happy heron and one less big fishie, so the ducklings are now safer.

So maybe this week, you consider feeling the tiniest bit sorry for the children whose summer friendships will be determined by their grandparents and will experience some old-fashioned parenting techniques. I have a feeling they’re in for a surprise and a stay in a world where nonsense will not be tolerated, but the odd portion of chips or sneaky ice cream will, because they’ll have been running around all morning, so where’s the harm?

And to all grandparents who are stepping up, you’re amazing, and I hope you get to put your feet up in the evenings because I suspect you’re going to need it.