This is why I'm here.

So, there you have it: the reason why I am now back in this country.  I’ve just come back from taking my daughter to visit my Mum on the occasion of Mum’s 89^th birthday.  For all the irritation about, the unfamiliarity of and, the condition of the country, this was just a wonderful three days of me and her visiting them.

The joy of spending, as the daughter so eloquently put it, “quality time” with her was without price.  Train journeys marked by scenery watching, hula-hoop eating, completing maths homework and playing computer games; all tied up with the nice bow that is being hugged and squeezed and snuggled into.  For the last part of the journey we sat with our faces over a computer screen and her dictating the script for the film she wants to make this holiday for me to type.  She is wonderful.

At the end of both days we stayed there, we sat, with Mum, and played board games.  Three generations together over the table, drinking tea, eating chocolate, playing together.  The only sound other than our conversation was the ticking of the clock – one of two Mum has, one left one hour faster than the other, which confused me no end and was explained away so simply with, “I just know to add an hour on, for this one.”  Anyway, the tick of the clock provided the backdrop to the evening – it seemed like a sitting in a metaphor – to paraphrase the wonderful Hugh Laurie’s Thomas Lang.

Listening to the squeal of delight when daughter won, the exaggerated protestations from myself and Mum at the duplicity that must have been occurring for her to win so many games in a row, the shared genuine frustrations when the game wasn’t going the way we wanted it to; these were all treasures – taonga.  I’ve parcelled them up and hold them safe and secure.  They were different from past times, this time.  On those occasions the visits have been too swift in their passing and the plane journey back to the other side of the world sat deadweight at the back of each and every moment around the table.  That wasn’t the case, this week.

The birthday was splendid.  I ate my weight in trifle, as you are meant to do in instances such as this, and Mum worried whether there would be enough food for the family who were coming over to celebrate with her – again, as you are meant to do in these instances.  There was laughter and the general joshing around getting 89 candles on the cake; singing Happy Birthday and the shouts of “Bumps!” – as is traditional…

Me and the daughter have transformed the British fascination with division of bins into recyclable and variants thereof, non-recyclable and perishable rubbish, and the Cwmbrân population’s discarding of shopping trolleys into a conflict between these two vast armies of inanimate objects.  It’s become a continuing story whenever we walked from the house to town centre.  It was no different this week.  For once, the bins had it…there were only four trolleys to be seen…the one at the bottom of the Chems*, though, was sadly left fallen…a true hero in the conflict, a Medal of Honor candidate and no mistake.  Again, the verve and pleasure she gets from the shared surrealism of the idea makes me smile.

Watching the last vestiges of childhood existing in her swells my heart.  The simple way she’ll discard her coat to sit on the floor and rifle through the rows of pens on the shelves of the stationers, keen on finding the right type of pen for the new journal she is buying.  I could have been stood there watching still.

This is why I am here.

*I can’t resist – The Chems, is named thus because it’s a chemical dump.  The path has always fringed a sports field, in my memory. The snow turns orange when it settles on the ground.  The cricket heavy-roller used to sink into the ground trying to get it out to the middle.  Litter decorates the pathway, still. Cans, bottles, packets, bits and pieces of fast food detritus. We decided the bins were not winning here.