On 30 September 2021 I wrote:
Wild strawberry season might be over but this one is still bearing fruit.
The edges of Mum’s garden are abundant with wild strawberries.. I love how enthusiastically they spring up and how generously they provide such delicious wee fruit.
Photo 2 may look like a Jar Of Not Very Much. But look closely. Although it’s an old mustard jar (Colman’s English) those are not mustard seeds in the bottom.
They are pearls. Seed pearls. And each one was found in a mussel picked on the Solway coast, mostly at Carrick.
As children we were often out foraging, getting food for free as Mum called it (after the Richard Mabey book). Those wee islands in the third photo are mussel beds, or they were in the 1970s. And at low tide you can walk to them, even if you’re a short-legged wee girl. So we ate a lot of mussels when there was an R in the month.
The Solway coast is opposite Windscale (as it was back then) and mum was vaguely worried about the mussels being radioactive. So she invited our science teacher round for supper, on the condition he brought his Geiger counter.
He duly arrived and set up his ‘probe’. He sat it in the sofa, next to my bum to get a background reading… and off it went bleeping and clicking and flashing.
Then he stuck it in the bucket with the freshly foraged mussels. And everything slowed down.
Conclusion: my bum was more radioactive than the sea near a nuclear power station. Hurrah! I think.
Back to that jar. Whenever we found a pearl in a mussel we would save it in the jar. We were going to make the most beautiful opulent seed pearl brooch. Or a tiara. A whole crown! With sceptre and orb to match, why not?
So that jar I found tucked away at the back of the cupboard? That’s a Jar Of Hope. And it will never be empty.
We’re still in the process of clearing Mum’s house, in advance of us moving there. I re-found this Jar of Hope the other day. It won’t surprise you to know that it was put firmly in the Keep pile.
***
Thank you for reading this.
If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.
Shewolfinthevalley 
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