Money and primroses in The View from the Terrace

Isn't it awful the way we can sometimes focus on people's negative qualities and forget to see their good points. I was talking to a friend who had just had a row with her rather anal husband about letting the children make a mess, not keeping up with the washing and being careless with money. She is a great mum and her children get to spend happy days having good fun with her but, no she isn't good with money and she can be untidy.

It reminded me of my own parents. My mum was hopeless with money. Dad handled everything, the bank account was in his name and he gave her so much housekeeping money each week for domestic purposes. She didn't understand tax returns; she was a little scatty but it didn't matter because he coped with those things.

I have wonderful childhood memories of my mum. She taught me about music, took me to ballet lessons; we played tennis together and went on cycle rides to a local beauty spot where we picked primroses beside a lake.

I did different things with Dad, he taught me to play chess and how to properly prune the roses that Mum had impusively bought at the garden centre. My parents had different qualities and it worked, because they worked together rather than judging each other.

After Dad died when I was 15 a lot of what he had dealt with fell to me. I did the tax returns for Mum and later looked after the car, and the roses of course. Sometimes she did irritate me when she couldn't understand money matters, sometimes I got a bit mad at her trying to explain why it might be better to pay in instalments if the interst was lower than she could earn on her savings account. She never did get it.

Mum is long gone now and sometimes I wish I could have one more hour with her to tell her what a great mum she was and how sorry I am that I got irritated when she couldn't understand things, and that I still remember picking the primroses.