FELIZ DIA DE MADRE!

  Today is Mothers' Day in Tenerife, which I can't help thinking is quite appropriate only a few days after Labour Day.

In honour of the occasion I have copied onto my POEMS page (on the right) a poem I wrote when my own children were small, more years ago than I care to remember.

This photograph was the only studio portrait my own mother ever had taken, probably for the benefit of her parents before she left Australia with my father and me to live in England.






Two boys and another girl later, she was still smiling.

Here we all are in 1961 - I'm the moody teenager on the left!

Now Mum has twelve grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. I took this photo on Mothers' Day in England in March this year - doesn't she look great?

HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY (again) MUM XX

FELIZ DIA DE MADRE

This was the sight today outside the local church after morning Mass for Dia de las Madres.
Along the seafront, on the beach, and in every cafe I saw more family groups, with mothers the centre of attention on Spanish Mothers' Day.

The florist was open and doing a roaring trade in huge showy bouquets, young men were buying bottles of wine and chocolates, and I saw a grey-haired man sitting with his even greyer-haired mother on a bench under a tree.

From our terrace at two-thirty there is an all-pervading smell of barbecues, and the sound of music behind the clatter of dishes and chatter of voices, as families convene for a lengthy lunch.

The mothers probably run round after their families for the other 364 days of the year - they might even have prepared most of today's food - but having them all gathered together must be lovely.

Feliz Dia de Madre a todos!