These post are free but I’d love it if you wanted to Buy Me A Coffee or similar
I woke after a long a peaceful sleep to a silent flat. The bickering voices that had lulled me to sleep were sleeping. The sound of a long rush of liquid told me someone was in the toilet and reminded my bladder that was the reason I'd woken. Once the feet had padded back across the corridor I went to the bathroom, peed then washed and dressed. Not that I had to be up yet but it was force of habit that any time I woke after six thirty I washed, cleaned my teeth and dressed. Although this morning there was no little dog to take for a walk. He was back home two hundred or more miles away.
Everything has been packed so instead of a cup of tea I take my water bottle from the fridge and drink that as I gaze out on the waking Cardiff streets journaling my thoughts on the past few days and the weekend to come.
Their large black cat comes in to say “good morning” or more than likely what he says is “where's my food?” or maybe “where is normal?”
We listen as my daughter and her boyfriend stir; him bursting into life and cleaning, she much slower but more focused.
Without words she orders an Uber and we go downstairs to wait for it. The driver checks the destination and off we set to an industrial park close to where her first Cardiff flat was, the one I helped her move into after the boy she was living with in London chose his mum's financial security over the love of my daughter. I moved her from London to Cardiff and his mum moved him back to New York.
I engage in my usual chattering as I sign the paperwork for the van that will convey my daughter this time to Glasgow, a much more organised and settled transition, and with a more mature man.
I'd seen a long wheel-based Transit when we'd entered but when we came out my response was “bloody hell, that's bigger than I was expecting” as a Luton box van stood waiting for us, all shiny white and a small dent on the front near side recorded on the paperwork.
Once back outside their flat I no longer need to people please or go that extra mile so I leave them heaving boxes from their third floor flat into the van while I go and get myself a coffee and some breakfast and sit by the dock and watch the various waterbirds go about their day.
It takes them a couple of hours to fill the van. They only have enough stuff to fill the bottom of the van so it can still speed along if I want it to. Daughter and I and their cat get in the van leaving boyfriend to finish cleaning and catch a plane in the early hours of Sunday morning to join us in Glasgow.
A road trip is always a good time to have those deep and intimate conversations with travelling companions and this is no exception. We cover all topics from relationships to politics, family members to religion. All the while the cab is getting hotter and hotter as the basic air-con tries to cope with outside temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade.
The cat is not happy in his carrier and would rather come and sit on my lap or lounge across the dashboard. Both of which are banned activities. So after we've stopped and had some lunch the cat decides to make his feelings felt and screams loudly for about twenty minutes until the realisation sinks in that he is stuck in his box till we reach our destination.
The amount being stored at our house is minimal though I was grateful to go via my home so I can sleep in my own bed and have Chinese takeaway with my husband, as well as daughter. My dog is pleased to catch up with me too, though very disappointed when, after a quick walk Sunday morning, I leave him home again.
More deep conversation as I battled with wild rain and cross winds and a temperature decreasing the further north we went. At least the cat is cooler and so much quieter, more resigned to what is going on.
Thank goodness that traffic wardens don't work on Sunday lunchtimes because the spaces outside their new flat had been taken by the time we arrived and so I have to rest the van in the bus stop whist they unpacked in the pouring rain. I stay inside the cab, boundaries firm on only being the driver not Mister shifter too. I did feel for them as they got wetter and wetter but am repaid by having to sit a further twenty minutes alone in the van as daughter decided appeasing boyfriend is the better move, sure in the knowledge that her mum will be the more forgiving.
Before I know it I am on a train back home again. Glasgow, daughter, her boyfriend and their cat, left far behind. I had been fed with a ready meal lasagne before I left but knew that I would be of more use out the way than watching them unpack.
I wonder what the other passengers think of this woman shivering in light summer clothes smiling quietly to herself. If they I had asked I would have shouted, “I am sixty four years old and have just driven a Luton box van about 500 miles. I am amazing!” And would do it all over again not just for my child but for the fun of it.
These posts are free but you are welcome to Buy Me A Coffee or similar
A cracking tale. Got to love a road trip!!
You are indeed amazing! And a very good mother, too!