Mother’s Day 2010: ‘Yoohoo, Mr Blogsbody … you enjoy!’
ADDRESSED to Blogsbody News Desk, Lower House of Windsor, Cressroads, SO24 9HU – after the Welsh Post Office reminds: ‘Printiwch y Cod Post’, without which no postie can be guaranteed to deliver safely the otherwise disguised details for the town hack’s city-built terrace on the wrong side of Alresford’s Watercress Line tracks, the envelope for a choice of Shannon Martin’s Girl Designer Mother’s Day messages inspired by ‘dear, sweet Billy and his mother Shirley’ in Seattle, Washington, USA, warned in capital letters that it was ‘not to be opened before the Ides of March’.
A warning spelled out loud and clear in the fair hand of Blogsbody’s only daughter Keogh, aged 29, who, did she but know it, was about to experience the surprise indignity of her waters breaking eight weeks early while lecturing a male member of her team in what-not-to-do at work in the high-rise offices of a bank overlooking the Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff Bay; and, this Mothering Sunday, remains admitted to the Ante Natal Unit of the city’s nearby, ultra-modern Royal Glamorgan Hospital, where the ex-manager of Tichborne’s mediaeval, thatched Arms can only lie in wait for her spasmodic, undetermined contractions to amount to a pinch of her premature baby coming to inhale the fresh air, after it crosses the Severn Bridge from England to the Rhonda Valley of South Wales.
Back across the bridge it had proved a case of too cavalier a Poppa Mike, more besides in the mind of the mother of his daughter and two sons by his third set of nuptials within ten times as many of his birthdays though age-52, that was to see the former Fleet Street hack turned corporate public affairs man raise single-handed an Irving trio of offspring. Beginning as the youngest, Sam Mykel, nudged and attempted his chronological age of reason. Seven, if not quite a day, and to remain embedded to his home throughout these past 18 years. Ever more want to ape his father’s eccentric, if not disturbing ways. And with hands-on Sam all too rarely wanting to oblige the likes of his elder sister’s 15-day-old request to leave unopened the likes of a buff envelope perched atop a four-drawer filing cabinet but otherwise concealing from view his father’s surprise Mother’s Day card.
Hidden from sight and unread
Until, that was, a Michael Bassington handcrafted London timepiece, snapped up for £4 at a St David’s charity shop in town on the last occasion Blogsbody walked into Pontypridd from his daughter and partner Richard’s converted miner’s cottage down the steep Graig hill past the Morning Star – a high-ceiling pub with guest rooms as well as ales, where the discovery of Egyptian-born Landlord Saad, ex-Met after Cairo police officer emigrated to pulling pints of bitter Welsh Brains, proved reason enough for Cressroads’ itinerant hack to adopt the boozer as his indubitable choice of half-way house away from home – clocked one minute past Saturday midnight into the opening moments of Mother’s Day and time for him to reach for the glass handle of a letter-opener displaying all of the jeweled parts of an alternative timepiece reminding Bloggy of his one in a dozen long-ago birthdays celebrated in Toronto, Canada.
Coloured sepia, a card of an American youngster trying the driver’s door of a vintage Chevrolet, wears a look for Keogh to arrow him in red ballpoint and suggest L-Nibs? Next for her to amend Mark Twain writing in memory of his mother, and otherwise wisecrack: ‘MY FATHER HAD A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE WITH ME BUT I THINK HE ENJOYED IT.”
On the sepia and white inside back cover of the Yoohoo card, created by Sharon in partnership with Madison Park Greetings for a U.S. retail price of $2.50, a greeting implores ENJOY! HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY - DAD! inserts Keogh, before she writes: ‘Only fair you’re recognized on both ‘parent’ days. You’ve done more than twice the job.’ Then caricatures her smiley face and signs off: ‘Lots of love, Twinkle xxx’
