That nonsensical but intriguing sum, our joint ages, is 132 years. It was Mum who had the will and the energy while I wanted to lie down. I was suddenly tired after lunch but we had agreed that on this afternoon we would prune the plumbago and it is not in my nature to turn down a hand of competitive tiredness – and never when handicapped by thirty years.

I carry this folded piece of card in my wallet. On the front it says ”just for TODAY” (today is written in very large letters). There’s lots I don’t like about it. Its folksy prose, its snitched syntax never fail to elicit a sneer. It crosses the common bloody sense of Polonius (pontificating before the young prince) with the plaintive urgings of the Desiderata. It is so wholesome I want to spit. Nevertheless I fear it contains something important because when I abide by its precepts my life goes much better.

My first holiday alone with my mother, maybe ever, was to provide a study session in paragraph six.

That nonsensical but intriguing sum, our joint ages, is 132 years. It was Mum who had the will and the energy while I wanted to lie down. I was suddenly tired after lunch but we had agreed that on this afternoon we would prune the plumbago and it is not in my nature to turn down a hand of competitive tiredness – and never when handicapped by thirty years. I will be agreeable. However it is also in my nature to deny the point of the competition while competing, to steal the significance from the event, but this time I sighed and shut up. I will look as well as I can, dress becomingly, talk low. The bush was bushy – overgrown, browning, lignified. Mum cannot see the food on her fork so it was my job to weild the secateurs. Together we peered into the thicket, grasped branch points and made our cuts. I learnt about the gardners on Lanzarote, their terrible absence of knowledge, and I was reminded repeatedly of my own…Act courteously. Quelling an inner voice (what’s the point?) I saw I could learn something because I had a teacher beside me. I saw that as I pruned I came to feel what she felt. I learnt of the criticism the plumbago had taken on every visit from mum’s younger sister and I felt the sting because like Mum I tend to take criticism of my things as criticism of my person. After a full circumambulation we gazed at the stump and I said ”I think we may have killed it, Mum”. Mum was unrepeantant. ”It had to be done and if it is dead then so be it”.

There was more: the job was not over because Mum is old skool and in old skool you always follow through, you clear up. Mum began to break the branches so that they no longer branched, so that the twigs could be laid neatly, to be better scooped in Lanzoration armfuls. I thought what was the point of this exercise when they came by with dumper trucks, with tipping robotic appendages. I will criticise not one bit, not find fault with anything. I snapped at the branches and not at my mother and rather got into it so that three ordered piles took shape. But there were still the shards and shavings and Mum wanted us to collect these too. I wanted to scoff and argue: the wind was blowing ( it was always bloody blowing on this island) and in minutes it would do the job for us. I will not find fault with anything and not try to improve or regualte anybody…Mum went for the broom….except myself.,, I went for the dust pan. Mum parried with the broom, I countered with the pan. Together we bagged the offcuts.

Mum called my work done. ”I’ll sweep away what’s left” she announced. (How can she? She can’t see what’s left). ”Darling, pop on the kettle and let’s have a cup of tea”. And suddnely the tears came. I saw the small figure (she is shrinking) broom in hand, in floppy hat, wrap around snowboarders glasses, blue Marigold gloves. I knew in that instant that I was loved and that I had all that I desired from her. I knew happiness and it made me cry. I was surprised by joy.

The pot of tea had announced the joint exercise was over. This redoubtable Englishwoman had shown the Lanzarotions how to garden ( but they were not listening) and a fifty year old man (who actually was) what happens when two people willingly share an undertaking. Something invisible to the eye arcs and connects them. In this momement we loved each other very much and we both felt it. For years this had not happened and now it is happening quite a lot. In a short while – we are 132 – it will not happen at all.

So this is is how it works. I do something for someone else with someone else, something against my selfish grain, something that is effortful at the point of acceptance. I park my insistent tendency to discount, to denigrate, to disparage (my partner, the undertaking, the outcome). I swallow hard and abide by the folksy prose of paragraph six and through its old-timer, mid-West lilt I find a great surprise. I find a recipe of how to love. And to be loved.