my adored inheritance

My dearly beloved Nan. Oh she is good to me. For as long as I can summon to memory my Gran and I have been two peas in a pod, a duo to be reckoned with. Jan is endlessly teased, hugged and adored by myself. She is a woman I one day yearn to slightly imitate.
She’s acquainted with the entire world and their second cousins twice removed; it is ridiculously impossible to attend anywhere with the woman and not see a soul she knows. IMPOSSIBLE. It was a blessing in disguise when just a few years ago she was temporarily wheel chair bound, we went shopping together. She’d spark a conversation with a lovely elderly couple I’d by no means met before in my life, yet they knew all there was to know about me, and all I had to do was persuade the warm plastic handle of said wheelchair ever so tenderly… pushing myself to freedom from dire and repetitive conversation.
Endless amusement is sourced from her new hearing deficiency. Her joy at being a Nan is transparent to all. A soft woman if ever there was one; petite and the only blue eyed member either side of my gene pool she appears as your ordinary, knitting and baking Grandma. This is all part of the masquerade. Oh don’t get me wrong, she dishes out hugs and kisses as much as any caring and slightly touchy feely relative, but appearance’s may be deceiving. A feisty little one to say the least. To her mounting dissatisfaction I laugh off her attempts at discipline; at the ripe old age of 19 I now only malformed into a timid mess by the raff of my Granddad.
It’s hopeless to endeavour to empress in words how much affection I possess for my Nan. I welled up in the land of Thai whenever my Grandparents crept into my thoughts; I missed not one aspect of home other than real cheese, alongside the love and attention of those two special people.
One of these days I hope to sit alongside my Nan with a cuppa and her splendid cheese on toast (she adds pesto and tomatoes; it’s scrumptious) and simply let her talk, talk about her life and her aspirations, her regrets, her memoirs. It is crystal clear she loves my Granddad, a man she met and married at a young age, endlessly. An enduring vision in modern times.



And this is her dress. A beautiful cotton sundress my dear Nan first adorned about 45 years ago, a uniform I don far too much myself. It fits like a handmade glove, blue is my favourite colour and no matter where I wear it I’m incessantly complimented. Whilst floating about my world in this outfit I can’t help but recall memories I’ve created myself of my Nan and Granddad swaying along a dance floor intertwined in each other. Or the woman herself in the minuscule square kitchen slaving away at a stew for my mother and uncle.
Those that shrug of the implication’s of material objects, well I know not if they are lucky or unfortunate. I am a horder; alike Jan herself I cling to keepsakes to help me remember my forgotten chronicles. If anything was to happen to that dress, I couldn’t forgive myself. Each to there own, but I simply love the feeling of continuing a legacy. A legacy of love, loss and just simple life. A legacy that is conducted through the ages in the form of a cotton sundress.

and i dreamed your dream for you and your dream is real.

“The innocent and beautiful have no enemy but time” WB Yeats

Naivety. Some time ago I possessed this in the truck load, yet this has faltered with age. I would not be as brass as to claim wisdom has taken it’s place, simply reality. Oh that time old statement: ‘Learn from your mistakes.’ Whether by choice, or simply instinctively, one can not fail to do so. I miss my innocence, my rose tinted glasses, my unwavering trust. Nevertheless, I will also not claim that they have disappeared entirely. I continually endeavour to see the best in people, ignorance is bliss therefore I’ve chosen to discount the worst and cling to the superlative. Furthermore this is not a old habit that I’m finding hard to kill off. Rather a novel hobby, one I feel will make the world (or at least my world) a finer place. After all, if we all accepted one another’s less alluring traits it would be far easier to achieve world peace. A rash conclusion, yet optimism is a habit I have yet to shake.

The younger Hursey is a luminary. Here lies but a segment of my final project of my fresher year. Styled, photographed and over edited by your’s truly, I must say my divine sister doesn’t half scrub up well.