“I had a good time reading this book. Having two skin cancer surgeries over the last two weeks, I think it actually got me through them. There is a lot of sitting in the waiting room to see if they got it all, and sometimes (like last time) they have to do it all over again if they didn’t. The doctor was surprised I didn’t mind at all and it is because I was unable to put this book down. I made it clear to him, however, that I leave when the book ends!”

This is the beginning of Carol’s review of The Blue Handbag on Goodreads.

I couldn’t imagine when I wrote about Leonard and Pickles that they’d be accompanying Carol through her surgery.

Sometimes I wonder what life is all about. We think we know what we want, discover we don’t, live our messy lives, make mistakes, want more money, more attention, more more more.

Then I read Carol’s review. Or I watch a blackbird scuttling across the lawn. Or I eat a three course meal cooked for me by my friend Esther.

THAT’S what life is all about.

*

Autumn

It is cold. I sit in the centre of a circle of nuns. They are lying
under the grass, their heads or feet pointing towards me.

Each sister is marked with a stump of stone. A silver plaque
shows her name, how long she had, when she was taken by God.

Off to the left are trees, and to my right four fat pheasants
are wandering around the convent gardens. Further away

the hills are under mist. I think a fire is gently crackling
somewhere hidden in the trees until I turn and really listen.

It is the orangey leaves – they are glancing off each other
as they fall, snapping, pattering and landing with a whisper.

There are four more stones a little way from the others.
Here, holes were dug for Annie, Irene, Frances and Joan,

all of them children. Sister Elizabeth had ninety-six
chances to hear this burning. Annie had ninety less.