The plastic bag sat in the parcel tray of my mailbox, the raining pouring down just millimetres away. Once inside and dried off the package was opened revealing my copy of Geoff Le Pard’s much anticipated memoir ‘Apprenticed to My Mother’.
I flicked the book open, reading title, sub-title, flick again, copyright, published by…. flick, Introduction, I begin reading this. I read on. Chapter one, chapter two, three, four. The chapters are short, pithy, poignant, honest, vulnerable, loving. Tears welled in my eyes but I am completely unable to stop reading, until I am interrupted first by the door bell and then the pets needs to be fed. I tend to the interruptions quickly and return to reading until the gathering gloom of this wintery day’s mid-afternoon makes it too dark to see.
I attend to my life, but am keen to finish my day early and,as the rain continues to batter the ground, to take myself off to my cosy bed, book in hand and settle in for a couple or three uninterrupted hours.
Over the past year or two Geoff had posted little bits and pieces of this story on his blog and I felt quite familiar with much of what I was reading. But still, the unfolding story ontinued to capture my attention. Here is the mutual love story of two people. She builds him up, she cares for his every need, ensures he feels like the man he aspires to be. He writes her love poems. They clash, they work it out, they raise two boys. She ensures her boys will go out into the world more able to care for themselves than her husband ever could.
As Geoff tells us in the introduction, the book is necessarily also about his father. It is about his parents relationship, but also about his relationship with them – separately and together. It’s not detailed, it’s snippets that we pick up as the final years of his mother are told through their interactions.
It’s a peek into a way of life, a family that functions and revolves around the mother. A real person, a woman who loves, who cares, who rules with a fist of iron, A woman who, having put herself second all her married life, on becoming a widow firmly and sweetly gets life the way she wants it after all.
It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s tender and kind and heart-wrenchingly honest at times.
I laughed, smiled, and blinked away tears as I made my way through this memoir.
As someone who grew up outside of a functioning family it was a healing balm and quite honestly I loved it, I hope you might too.
*Here’s a link to the Amazon kindle copy
**Here’s a link to Geoff’s blog
The colours are pretty accurate in the above photo – aren’t they fabulous! The yarn is wonderful it’s Corriedale Wool purchased from 
The colours are a little washed out in the second photo, but you can see the texture and the pattern. The edging needs to be blocked to finish the thing properly, but that won’t happen until the weather warms up a little.
Her name grew organically as I read your various comments and proposals and suggestions in the previous post. Karen said she needed to be a Miss and I agreed; Val said Petunia and Norah mentioned the same name, but was more connected to the ‘P’ for Pauline and et tu (you too) which she had jumped to from ‘etui’ I liked the idea, but in the end decided to stay with ‘etui’. So you can pronounce it Pet-you-ee or Petwee as you please. Her last name grew from Geoff’s suggestion of ‘Leadbottom’ which made me laugh, but you will see soon why I changed it a little. (Sometimes it’s obvious even to me that I have way too many hours to wonder around in LaLaLand!)
Here I can find pen, pencil, awl, ruler, thimble, measuring tape, needles of various sizes and sharpnesses, two pairs of scissors, quick-unpick, long vision specs and cleaning cloth, a variety of stitch markers, a reel of thread, a row counter and a small magnifying glass.
Her head scarf holds pins and unseen is a large amount of blocking pins hidden in her hair. She wears my reading specs, always ready to do a bit of stitching, hooking or sewing repairs.
He pretty much ensured every component of the blanket was pressed, whether I desired it to be or not.
It ought to be finished but I got sidetracked.
Finally, here’s Siddy in his posh winter gear to say “Hello!” or “Grrrrruff!” to you all, just in case you need that kind of puppy cheerfulness in your life…..
I went back to playing with alcohol inks and ended up adding acrylics over one of them to see what happened 
Nothing went awry, so, emboldened, I kept playing – now I tried to see what would happen if I added blending solution to a brush and swept it across the inky coloured sky
Well that was interesting! Obviously a very light touch and brush-on-paper-always technique is required. More work is currently being undertaken 🙂
And then I sketched her onto 300gsm watercolour paper making sure she was the right size and that the pen I used wouldn’t bleed with alcohol inks.
I then coloured her and cut her out. And finally tried her out on the background
There’s a lot of work still to be done – but can you see where this is going?
The
This is how I crochet in the evenings – I quite often let You Tube play a random selection of videos while I’m working, they often choose to show me animals and Siddy always sits up and takes notice, much to the consternation of Orlando and myself who must consequently adjust our positions to accommodate any excitement or anxiety shown on behalf of the filmed animals……
It’s turning cold here now. Night falls early and morning arrives later. The heating is on and morning walks take longer to get ready for. Boots, coat, scarf, gloves, hat. Puppy. And off we go! No longer prepared to sit in the front garden and await our return, Orlando watches from the kitchen window. Lucky kitty!!
Next this one came, I’m thinking ‘Chocolate and Lemon Cream’ …….. Mmmmmmm! The deep brown fluted beads look black here – but that is just my terrible photography. It really looks good enough to eat – but please don’t Siddy!
Staying with the food related beading programme (Huh?) Did you have those orange flavoured chocolate balls when you were a kid? We called them Jaffas and the boys loved to roll them down the sloped floor at the weekend kids movie show when the serial opened with a replay that revealed the heart-stopping event ending last weeks episode was completely untrue and the hero hadn’t gone over the cliff on his horse, wagon or train. He had jumped clear at the last moment. I got fooled week after week! And of course we don’t call those sweets ‘Jaffas’ any more. Now they are Choc-Oranges – So this one is the ‘Choc-Orange’
I also made a pink catcher, but as you can’t eat that one, I’ll just pop it quietly into the shop. Next lot will probably all be shades of blue just to make me really happy.
I think this is the last time I’ll be able to show all the rows all at once – it’s starting to get quite big. Still, with the weather showing definite signs that winter is approaching fast it is nice to have this across my knee as I hook away.
