mum - day 5
mum - day 5
I wake up not completely hungover but foggy headed, envious in the knowledge you never feel like this since you’ve stopped drinking. I down a glass of water and compile a breakfast of a coffee (still haven’t got oat milk so steal a dash of Emma’s, I know she won’t mind), a bowl of muesli with raspberries and yoghurt, and a slice of toast with peanut butter. I’m ravenous this morning. I pay a council tax bill for Hackney Council that they have been chasing me for payment for months as I eat. You would say I’ve been burying my head in the sand about this. I feel noticeably lighter after it has been paid off.
Dad texts me to say he dropped you at the airport, but I haven’t heard from you. You are going to Ireland to clear out the cottage with your sisters where my grandma, your mum lived. I know this will be a strange experience for you, I also know you’ll be stoic in the process and I wish I could be there too.
The bracing air is rejuvenating, and the cold clears my head as I walk into town. It almost feels like breathing in one of those Olbas oil inhalers. I have an appointment at 11 and afterwards I decide to buy myself a salad from Sprigg for lunch, allowed because it’s Friday and I haven’t had one of these all year. The man is friendly and tells me he has just been to Dublin. We have talk about how the city is just as expensive as Glasgow, I disagree but entertain the conversation. I tell him I have family in Ireland and my mum is there as of today, in fact. I carry the salad back to the studio and begin to work, but I can feel my foggy head return. I decide to call it a day. I head home and buy some hobnobs from the Spar and speak to Hannah on the phone who is the car on the way to London. I tell her about your plans to go to Costa Rica after you have been in Ireland and when we hang up I think about the ways in which we always synchronise our transitions in life – you going away on your travels on the same day I’m moving house this year, or four years ago when you started a new job in the same week I moved to a new city.
I go to the gym, which I really didn’t want to do but know it would lift my mood and energy levels. When I come home, I steam then fry gyoza, finally sprinkling soy sauce and spring onions on top. Accompanying this is the remains of my turmeric ginger noodle soup, which was noticeably less flavoursome than the first-time round. For me, dinner is rushed and consumed at the breakfast counter as I reply to text messages on my phone in between reading pages of my book. For you, it will be something more warming, shared with your sisters either sat in my aunt’s plush kitchen or by the aga in the cottage. I think of what you have access to eat this weekend: Golden Crisp Dairy Milk, McCambridge soda bread, Clonakilty sausages, rhubarb and ginger jam, a hot chicken roll from a service station, even. I know you’ll probably substitute Barry’s tea for Green tea. I text you when you I get home later that evening, asking how you are getting on and telling you to tell everyone I send my love x
Bio: Rosie (she/her) is a curator, researcher and editor from Newcastle upon Tyne currently based in Glasgow where she is doing an MLitt Curatorial Practice at GSA. Her work looks to facilitate contexts for exchange and collectivity, and is situated within practical and theoretical approaches towards care, labour, support, relations and intimacy.
Thanks! Kate + Sinae