Hobbling around headstones

Just how flaky can a sausage roll get? One question that you don’t ask yourself a lot, I’m sure, but a question that occurred to Ka and myself as our wee nephew, Joshua hobbled around our living room. It was Easter Sunday and we had visitors. Angela, Steven, Morgan and Joshua, who is now just about a year and a half old, all trooped in for tea and coffees.
Joshua had not been in our flat since he was a little baby, so it was with great excitement that he looked around his new, unfamiliar surroundings as he was plonked down in the middle of the living room. Although the excitement may have had something to do with the fact that there was a coffee table covered in small plates of food and cakes before him. Joshua’s eyes and mouth opened in awe as if he’d never seen a sandwich before. He looked torn. What to have first? The sandwiches, vegetarian sausage rolls or pineapple cake? There was also a small plate of chocolate Mini Egg cakes which kept drawing his eyes, although, as he reached out towards the plate, you could see in his face the expectant look of his parents’ refusal due to the treacherous mini egg itself.
After a cheese sandwich, during which he obediently sat at the table, he went for a sausage roll. Then another. And then another. Munching away at the sausage rolls as he fell over, bumped down on to the floor, bounced off feet and hit off couches, circling the living room investigating this new territory, getting to know it’s geography and at the same time practising his ever improving walking skills.
The sweat grew on Ka’s forehead as she watched the crumbs and pastry fall over the living room rug and carpet. Angela began tidying up the crumbs after Joshua as he wandered round but Ka assured her it would be fine. Don’t worry, we told her, we’ll get it all later. We laughed, I, genuinely chuckling, Ka’s, a little more forced.
After Ka had eventually pulled the hoover out and scared Joshua into the bedroom (he lives in a house of smooth, wooden decking), we all headed out together to the cemetery to visit Lucy’s grave.
With some excitement, but great care, Morgan placed a small Winnie the Pooh plant pot at her wee cousin’s remembrance place. Lucy now lies near the top of a hill in the cemetery, looking out over the fields between the edge of EK and the beginnings of Busby and Carmunnock, and just across the road from my Gran and Granpa Reid’s resting place within the cemetery. A nice spot when it’s a warm, sunny day, perhaps not so nice, when it’s wet and stormy.
Thankfully Easter Sunday was dry and mostly sunny as Morgan decided where to put her plant pot. She had planted the small shoot in the pot with her Gran McGarva last week, especially for this reason and, as it was Easter, had also brought her wee cousin another gift in the form of a painted boiled egg. With her Mum’s help Morgan opened a cardboard egg box of six eggs, all painted in wild colours of the rainbow, carefully chose one and took it out, placing it in a small vase in the form of a pair of Ladybird patterned wellies, at the side of Lucy’s headstone.
All the while Joshua was staggering around the hill, at one point almost falling into a freshly dug rectangular hole at the head of Lucy’s neighbour’s grave, a hole presumably meant for a new headstone foundation but which almost had a very different kind of occupant.
Ka also commented on his waving. He seemed to be chatting away, waving, looking away further up the hill, around to back the way we came and also waving and conversing with Lucy’s headstone better than I ever had.
As Steven continued to keep a close eye on our little nephew, who may or may not have been seeing dead people, Morgan then went for the other eggs, informing us we had to roll them. Since Lucy is handily placed at the top of a hill we did seem to be in an ideal location.
As Joshua inadvertently ran around the slope of grass, Morgan rolled away, getting a little frustrated as her eggs refused to crack. The egg Morgan was rolling only decided to crack once Ka took a turn, almost smacking a nearby mourners’ car. Thankfully the two mourners, who were a little further into the cemetery, had not noticed, though they were visibly upset on returning to their vehicle. Joshua soon put a stop to that though. As the mourners arrived back at their car Joshua greeted them and immediately started chatting away. Before he could get an answer to the indecipherable question he had posed them, he fell over in mid hobble. Perhaps he had been asking which one of his new pals they were visiting?