It had not registered that the large Indian rung, once an expensive purchase, had become so stained and battered.  Shifting it stank of her incontinence, even after a carpet clean.  In her new sheltered housing flat I’d deliberately chosen a plain deep purple carpet because in my head I’d painted a pretty picture – I would lay this huge thick woollen layer on top its new warm purple base, but the rug backed up like an angry bear, creating thick tripping folds against the newly carpeted floor.

My plan had not worked. I need to sort it now before my mother hazard a moved.  The carpet or the badly fitting rug, had to go. Reluctantly she chose, but demanded I boxed the large rug and sent it to my middle brother in America.  He was horrified.  Only a few weeks earlier his family had received some decrepit children’s books and a plastic doll. Shed was spending ridiculous amounts on postage. In the end I stuck the bear rug in her small garden storage unit and left it there to rot.

Words that fit neatly into rooms would be nice, but then what does nice mean anyway, and rooms for words make little sense. In this my virtual world, I felt relieved to have move here. I’m home. On my page. I’m nesting. I’ve built a den of words. Here I can stack them quietly and squirrel them away from my friends. That’s what I want, but not really. I’d like you to follow me in and see that of me that’s playing it safe, well feeling safe here. But I’m scared too, virtual has no rugs, bears or walls. You can ghost. Enter. Move through without being heard.

I continued to go to pains to please her, sourcing bookcases.  Her books alongside her ample amounts of furniture, now packed the room.  It was not easy.  The books had lived for the last nine years in boxes, in her old London basement. Their rediscovery delighted us both, it brought back her sense of pride and history.  I found myself lost in classics, poetry and prose, as we displayed them neatly and visited, reviewed her creative life of words.

I’ve built a room, inside a room, it’s like tuning the sofa upside down and then creating walls with cushions and bringing down all the blankets to make a door and a bear rug floor. We used to do that in the sitting room, my brothers, my sister and I. Now that I think about it, I vaguely recall my children building dens too. Well the eldest used find secret spots in corners. That was when I first took him out of nappies. He hated the potty, so he hid, stuck his bottom in the air and fill his pants with poo. Motherhood’s somewhere drifting through – we begin incontinent and often end their too.

So you’re still here. Visiting my virtual rooms. Words are like life wondering beyond the walls. Do come back. Sept in. I feel safely tucked away here, do you?