[Me and my mum, off to a Royal Garden Party in about 1999]
It’s Christmas Eve and I’m spending it in Casole d’Elsa, a small town not too from Florence and remembering a December thirty years ago when I brought my mum to Florence for Christmas as she’d always wanted to visit but her limited mobility – she needed a wheelchair for all but the shortest trip – had made it harder for her to get around.
It occurs to me only now that she was the age I am now – 57 – but in my memories of the time she is older and more infirm. Her choices in life had been so severely limited that it is perhaps unsurprising I see her that way – by her late fifties she had few opportunities open to her.
So we went to Florence for a week on a package holiday, staying in a small hotel near Santa Maria Novella and enjoying the city, the culture and the people. We managed to get up the stairs to the Uffizi, and I wheeled her along the Arno and across the Ponte Vecchio.