Alright my lover?

This week I have been down in Plymouth with the sole purpose of moving my aged mother up to a flat in Hoylake on the Wirral. My mother is 86 years old, and by the look of some photographs we found, was a bit of a looker all those years ago. No wonder she caught my father's eye.

We moved down to Plymouth as a family in 1959 from Isleworth in West London. My dad worked for National Benzole, a petrol company, in those days and was posted to Devon and Cornwall a year or so earlier. He supervised the completion of our house which was part of  a Costain development  in Plymstock and my mum and I moved down when it was ready.

I went to school in Plymstock from 1959 until 1964 when I moved to a grammer school in Beacon Park, Plymouth. The area was notarised by the folk singer, Cyril Tawney, in his ballad of the same name, and there I stayed until 1971 when I upped sticks and moved back to London to go to college.

My mum and dad stayed in Plymouth. My dad retired in 1975 and my mum set up and ran a pre-school playgroup in a local church hall, with one of her closest friends. There are many Plymouthians who went through that facility at a time when play groups were relatively new and certainly not as regulated as they are now.

When my dad died in 1980, my mum stayed in the family home for a few years, before deciding to try to settle back in her family town of Wisbech. Sadly her family never really embraced her and after a few years she abandoned the exercise and returned to Devon. An inappropriate house purchase in Oreston soon found her back in Plymstock, living less than 100yards from the original family home.

Yesterday she said goodbye to Plymstock and that house, her home for twenty years,  for the last time. We spent the week filling a skip with 'stuff' that people of all ages collect over time, and which has little or no value, either sentimental or monetary. We then labeled the furniture which was to be collected and distributed to the poor and needy, as mum's new flat is fully furnished and brand new. We then sat back and waited for the removal people.

As I write this, they are moving my mum into her new home, having earlier delivered all the unwanted car bootie from her house to Oxton. We will probably need two or three sales to clear it all.

The new home is about 20  minutes away from us, no longer a 5 hour journey if emergencies call. It has an in-house warden and is populated by about 25 other like minded souls looking for companionship, security and a bit of sea air.

So ends her 50 year relationship with Plymstock. Many of her good friends did not last as long, and those that are still there popped in to say goodbye, knowing they would never see her again, but would stay in touch by phone or letter, a trait still very common with the older generation.

She did not seem sad to go, and being blessed still with a sharp mind , she sees the move as a new adventure to be embraced as enthusiastically as that train journey on Brunel's mighty GWR  all those years ago.

Will I miss Plymouth?  No not really, its not been my home for almost 40 years, Although I made many of my strongest and longest lasting friendships there, those friends no longer live there.  I expect I will find myself down there again, not least when I have to reunite my mum and dad for the final time, but for now it's up the Argyle and  continue to try to master the golf course which is Wallasey.

Proper job.