Lost & found

What can I say about my aunt? She was old fashioned and judgemental, twenty two years older than my mother and a widow. But she was a very amusing creature. She is dead now though, no longer with us. That brings me to the funny thing about life: we don't really appreciate a person until we no longer have the option of being with them. It's like everything happens in hindsight, or at least that is my experience.

Aunty Norma met Uncle Ted in the days when ladies went to tea dances. There was no alcohol involved and according to my aunt it was all good clean fun. "We didn't dance with the gentlemen who went out in the interval," she told me, "we knew they were smoking." At this point in my life I was a fully fledged smoker of pot, and my aunt was aware of my little habit.

It's mid morning at the breakfast table after staying over at my aunt's the previous night, and she is requesting to see my little piece of pot. "I've seen it all over the news. I'm curious, what does it look like?" I'm finding this a little uncomfortable as my aunt was a curious character, she could be unpredictable. I am wondering where this is heading. Handing over the pot, a little apprehensively, my aunt proceeds to examine it, turning it around and smelling it. And suddenly "Take it away, oh my! What will Mary say?" She thrusts it in my face. What did Mary have to do with any of this? Mary lived opposite and wasn't even in the room! I knew this wasn't a good idea. She continued with "I can just imagine what the neighbours would say! Did you hear about Norma? She was arrested by the police, something to do with the drugs cartel". Honestly, I think that would probably be crack cocaine, not pot, Aunty Norma.

Saturday afternoon has finally arrived and we are off to the shopping centre. My aunty has recovered from her ordeal with the drugs cartel and we are heading for Marks and Spencer to buy our cream cakes, which we always ate with our cup of tea when we got home. As we are walking in front of the downstairs row of the shopping centre, my aunt spots a busker. She speeds off towards him after seeing a local bobby showing an interest. I was just about to follow her when I notice a black book on the ground, I scoop it up rather quickly in order to catch up with my aunt. "Aunty Norma, look what I have found on the floor." As usual my voice fall on deaf ears as by now my aunt is in full swing, giving the local bobby a 'piece of her mind', as she likes to call it. "I can't believe my widow's pension is paying for the local constabulary to move on the buskers, have you no baddies you could be catching?"

Finally we are in Marks and Spencer buying our favourite cakes. My aunt loved Marks and Spencer, to her they were a store of principal. "Where is that Marks and Spencer's dressing gown I bought you for Christmas?" She is staring at me like I have just done a moonlight flit with her life savings. I remain silent. With my aunt this was often the best way, as any disagreement wasn't going to end well. At the counter I offer to pay for the cakes as a peace offering. She declines. "No! My widow's pension can afford a couple of cream cakes!". Sitting opposite on the seating provided, waiting patiently for my aunt to pay, I witness another exchange of words between her and the cashier.

"I gave you a twenty pound note!" My aunt expressed strenuously.

"I'm sorry madam but you gave me a ten pound note. I will call the manager and ask her to sort it out."

My aunt was not impressed with this idea. "If you need the manager to give the customers their rightful change, it is no wonder you are sat there."

Everyone had stopped to observe the spectacle of my aunt squabbling over a note, full of righteousness. The manager appears, listening to the disagreement between my aunt and the cashier. "I'm sorry madam but you will have to wait until we have cashed up at the end of the shift. And if we are up by ten pounds, we will give you a call." My aunt is infuriated by this comment. "Oh will you now? And what's to stop her sticking it down her sock? She can't be trusted! Is she going to improve by the end of the shift?"

Later on that evening after we had eaten our dinner and sat down with our cream cakes and cup of tea, I once again broach the subject of the book I had found on the floor, with nothing else to take her attention away and nobody for her to scold. She wants to see it, then asks "Have you looked inside to see if there is an address?"

"No, I haven't had chance yet."

"Oh, it's a wonder you didn't look immediately on finding it. I would have been far to curious to leave it until now". Sometimes I wonder if my aunt had ever realised how distracting she could be and how her behaviour stunned one into catatonia.

Monday morning, it's time for me to head back home after a very eventful few days with my aunt. My little bag is packed and I am heading out to get in the car when the postman hands me a leaflet. Aunty Norma appears from nowhere, "What's that? let me see!" She swiftly removes the leaflet from me before I get a chance to read it. The next minute, all hell breaks lose. My aunt rushes down the steps towards the postman and thrusts the leaflet into his chest. "How dare you put this filthy thing through my door, I am a respectable widow! God made things in certain shapes and sizes to go in certain places and if they want to shove them elsewhere, it is no wonder we have aids!". The look on the postman's face... I didn't know whether to laugh or cry!

I'm home at last in the peace and quiet, ready to accept the challenge we discovered in the little black book. There was no name or address, or much else in it to our surprise. All that remained was a competition giving away a prize of twenty thousand dollars for a story and the details of how to enter. Was it genuine? Could someone who had been told most of their life that 'Grammar and punctuation is important' but still hadn't quite managed to grasp the concept possibly be in with a chance?

One thing was for sure: I was certainly going to try. God loves a trier, so they say. I had read all the books. Three Feet Short of Gold, Ladder to Success. I sure could do with the money...but if I actually won? Wow. Nobody could tell me ever again that I was good at performing, but that written work was 'best left to the professionals'.

I would put it towards a home, since I had never had one. You see, my aunt was the only member of my family who hadn't moved abroad. My mother had left when I was sixteen. The social services had negotiated with the council that if they housed me, they would cover any arrears until my eighteen birthday and they agreed. I hadn't lived with my mother since I was twelve anyway. This wonderful woman had called the police to remove me from her home, I was making far too much noise in the night by trying to breath with asthma. She was sick to death of being woken in the night and having to call the ambulance for me in a perpetual cycle.

The ambulance would transport me to Alder Hey Hospital and I would be greeted by Sister Ferandos. How I wished she was my mother, but no, my mother was a very spoilt solicitor, who was conceived by chance when her mother was going through a menopause. Her siblings were ten and twenty when Linda, my mother, came along. According to my aunt, my gran never said 'no' to Linda and had built a rod for her own back. She had horse riding lessons, tap dancing lessons and attended a private school in the heart of Crosby Village. In contrast, my Aunt Norma and Aunt Joan had both gone to the local comprehensive schools.

No... I mustn't dwell. The past is in the past. All of this happened more than two decades ago, and one must move on in the pursuit of better things, which I have. My mother remains in Australia with her horse and two chihuahuas, which she manages with just fine. Years had passed by hearing nothing from her, until one day I find her on Facebook. I try to scratch a relationship, thinking that maybe she does love me, and that it was other circumstances that made her leave. How can your own mother not love you? Is it at all possible? Unfortunately, it is possible. She refuses to return to the UK to be my mother for the first time ever. She isn't even interested in meeting her grandchild who is now nineteen years old, studying literature at university. In our last conversation, I asked her to speak with my daughter on the phone. We waited for the call...

After twenty minutes or so we came to the conclusion she had no intentions of phoning. I sent her another message telling her not to worry about it, as we were going to bed anyway. According to her, she couldn't get through on the number I had given her. It wasn't through her lack of trying, she had tried the number three times but couldn't quite get to grips with the British dialling code. "Oh, ok, should I phone you?" my voice held out a little hope that there was a genuine reason this time for her dismissal of me. Another half hour passed by and she returned apologising for only just seeing my message, as she had been busy talking to one of the neighbours over the fence.

It's the fifth of February today, my birthday. As per usual there is no birthday card from my mother. In fact, there isn't much of anything apart from a white business-like envelope. The official ones used to be brown and now they are white. The highlight of my birthday this year was picking up cat shit from the back garden with a spade. The day continues mundanely as I sit down with a brew and open my letter, to see how much money I owe for bills this time.

Only it isn't a bill. I have won the first prize in a writing competition, found by chance in a little black book that was dropped by an anonymous member of the public. I sit speechless. Twenty thousand dollars and the recognition that I am a winner, not a loser. If aunty Norma were still alive to celebrate my win, there's no doubt that we would be eating cream cakes with our tea. Even with my winning prize, she would still insist on paying for them with her pension.