When a picture brightens a boring and sad day...

I was having a really boring day today doing the necessary evil of making a start on our wee business’s year-end accounts. The year-end stuff’s not all that much different from the quarterly stuff that has to be done when I’m submitting our VAT return: sitting surrounded by piles of messy paperwork; pumping numbers into the computer and hoping that SAGE will sort it all out; hunting for misplaced receipts; trying to make sense of the odd withdrawal and deposit that don’t correlate to any of the invoices or receipts in any of the many piles; cursing when I can’t get the books to balance; making promises to myself that from now on I’ll definitely be more organised with the paperwork on a day-to-day basis; cheering out loud when I hit ‘reconcile’ for the umpteenth time and the two columns match at last; feeling miserable when I’m brave enough to come out from behind my hands to see how much VAT we owe; and, finally, saying ‘Ocht well, at least that’s it finished for another quarter! Hooray!’ and enjoying a big glass of wine or a cold beer to celebrate! It’s been more-or-less the same routine for over twenty five years and, as much as I don’t enjoy ‘doing the books’, I’m hoping that we’ll still have a wee business to do the books for for some time to come! The way things are at the moment in the construction industry, we consider ourselves extremely lucky to still have books to cook!, em, I mean audit...

The day, however, was broken up with a wee visit to my Mum’s. I always try to see Mum on the 25^th of October as this is the day that Dad died, 19 years ago. Some folk don’t mark this kind of anniversary in any way, and I think it’s such a personal thing that there’s no right or wrong way to do it, but me and Mum like to try and squeeze in an extra cuddle on the 25^th. Nothing more than that’s necessary really. Just a wee hug, or a wee chat on the phone if one of us is away somewhere and I can’t go see her. Spending a bit of time with mum had already brightened my day, but I had another real ‘feel good’ moment when I came home.

I’d had my ipod on shuffle during the drive back from Mums and I couldn’t help smiling when the Rolling Stones version of ‘Wild Horses’ started blaring out. It’s only just over a week since I was singing my wee solo verse of ‘Wild Horses’ at the Bertie and wishing that my Dad was there to see me doing my thing! And then it dawned on me that I had a painting up in the loft that Dad had bought for me many years ago. I can’t begin to express how good it made me feel to go up into the loft, eventually find the painting, wipe the dust off and have a good long look at it. I think it was taken down off the wall, along with a load of other pictures, when we last decorated (many moons ago...) and it just got overlooked when the old, and some new, pictures were hung back up. I’ll be finding a new place for it in our house – once it’s had a proper clean – and it’ll be back on view where it belongs!

Here’s the picture:

And here’s me doing my thing with all my choir buddies:

A picture of a horse from my Dad and singing my first solo on a song called 'Wild Horses'! What a happy coincidence! And that's what made me feel really good on an otherwise pretty boring, and pretty sad, day. Yup, Feeling Good!: