In Which Good Things Happen – Eventually

I promised to post a photo of this piece of stitchery when it was completed. The last stitch went in yesterday, and I have stretched and starched the piece, ready for framing. Considering that it was only intended as test piece for learning plaited braid stitch, I am very pleased with the result. The last few weeks, it has been growing terribly slowly. I was beginning to think it would never be complete. And then suddenly I was on the last leaf, the last length of thread, and it was done. Now I’m looking forward to starting another embroidery project; I’ve already got three or four ideas in mind to choose from.

My mother is out of hospital and back home with my father. She’s very pleased to be back. She was due to be released on Tuesday afternoon last week, and I went down to Bucknell to be there to help my father with her. But she spent the entire afternoon and evening sitting in the ward waiting for the ambulance. At half past eight, it was clear she’d need to be kept in overnight. I had to leave on the nine-twenty train as I was working the next day. Mum finally came back home the next evening, at six pm. Needless to say, she was very frustrated by this long wait. The staff on the ward were very frustrated and apologetic – they were lovely with her. The hospital transport service kept delaying her pick-up time – it was two, it was four, it was six, it was eight…  I think that there’s room for improvement in that service.

The launch of the Impressions exhibition at Shrewsbury Museum was a great success. We had an hour of readings by most of the writers involved, and the booklet of poems and prose looked very tidy and presentable. The exhibition is now running until late June, having been extended by a few more weeks. It was all done in a mad rush – and on a shoestring because all of the museum’s money is earmarked for the new building. “We’re not supposed to be having exhibitions at the moment” said Adrian Perks, a museum assistant and the driving force behind the writer’s group. So our exhibition was sort-of sneaked in quietly. We seemed to be heading for a total hodge-podge of unrelated exhibits at first, along with an equally scrappy and disorganised booklet of writing; but it all came together at the last moment, and we had nothing to be ashamed of.

Advertisement