It's A Nice Day

It’s a nice day.  Sunny and warm and so you set off walking.

It is a nun who brings you back.  Which is kind of funny now, when you think of the subsequent fascination you've had for them. 

The time you photographed one, hop-skip-tripping among the rocks on Whitby beach. 

And The Sound Of Music; you can do without the film obviously, but it’s always nice to see another defeat for the Nazis.  Get in there, you beautiful nuns!

And you admire their strength.  Their resolve.  Their faith.  The feelings of safety and care and integrity they suggest.  Somehow unblemished by all the shit that’s going on around them.

You hadn't even been missed.  Three years old and for your legs, a long way from home.  But bright enough to tell a stranger where you live. 

Carrying your two favourite toy cars [one for each hand] and the nun from the convent returns you. 

Your mother standing hard by the twin tub.  Already old and dreaming of what might have been.  Always doing the washing.  Hand to her head in scary realisation.

Thanking the nun. 

Forty miles away, Ian and Myra have been busy.

It is the sixth of May, nineteen sixty five.

Martin C