‘Welcome to the new edition of this Guest Blog. I am a full-time working mum of 2 boys and a published novelist of ‘The Ninth Cross’ by my pen name J. Karst. I get involved in trying that little bit I can in saving the environment for the future generations.’

            Days gone by so quickly that I didn’t realise that it’s been two weeks since my last blog. My memory isn’t as good as what it used to be, and my task list grows bigger each day. I am currently renovating two wooden boxes and helping my friend to clear her mums’ possessions on top of the daily recycling and my day job.

            Sorting through items to sell we spoke about our parents after we unwrapped another book packed in three different plastic bags. I had to share the time when my father decided to calculate the probability of the lottery numbers and asked his family members to help him with the calculation. The fact that his IQ is on a different level to the rest of us, we might as well have been asked to speak Chinese. In the end our frustrated father had to abandon the idea as nobody was able to work with him on such mathematical equation.

Giggling, my friend told me that her mum was a reason for a motorway closure. When she turned up to her mum to help with moving, the removal men filled her car as commanded by her mother to take care of the boxes of paperwork. Secretly one removal man mentioned to her that she better be careful and does multiple journeys and off-loads some boxes. Only half-way down the motorway when the car stopped in the middle lane, the explanation came. The AA called a rescue track to pick them up as the chassis was broken.  ‘It wasn’t designed to move tonnes of slate madam’ he said to my puzzled friend who only then was told by her mother that she was transporting her private stone collection.

            After some giggles I told her about my auntie who shouted during the wedding meal across to the table of my fresh brother-in-law ‘Our side is your side and that includes the cook who has false teeth and was twice divorced!’ Though as wedding go, my friend trumped it. Her cousin’s mother who was a historian got into a heavy discussion at the wedding table about Auschwitz, Nazi, and Stalin. She sat at a table which had a German couple, her Polish work-colleague and multiple Jewish family members.

            I then remembered of my previous work colleague who struggled with her father’s slow Alzheimer progression. She took charge of their paperwork to her father’s dislike. One day she realised all the tidied paperwork disappeared. It all became clear many weeks later when at their family barbeque she was served a punch with small bits of paper floating in between the fruit. Her father filed the paperwork in the freezer and when they needed ice for the punch her father chiselled away the frozen block of paperwork…  

J.Karst

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