Scrabble in the Afternoon

FROM THE AUTHOR OF A VAN OF ONE'S OWN When Biddy Wells's elderly mother is suddenly struck down with a mysterious illness, Biddy moves her into the spare bedroom, little knowing how long the period of convalescence will last. Through the months that follow, the two women have to re-inhabit the close domestic proximity that they'd abandoned decades before and learn how to co-exist within a tangled web of emotional need, resentment and dependence. Eventually, Biddy manages to find a supported flat that's ideal for her mother. She settles quickly and, abandoning her morbidly stoic outlook on life, falls passionately in love with another resident. Biddy can only watch from the sideline as her mother embarks on an unlikely romance. Told with humour, wry insight, and refreshing honesty, Scrabble in the Afternoon examines the complicated, frustrating and ultimately rewarding story of how a daughter can come to terms with caring wholeheartedly for a mother. It also shows how a mother and daughter relationship can change and develop as life continues to offer fresh challenges and joys. "A refreshing and tender account of the obligations that entwine mother and daughter, and how these sometimes conflict with a life lived authentically, for both. Wells beautifully charts an evolving relationship, somewhere between loving care, dependence and surrender." - ABI ANDREWS, author of The Word for Woman Is Wilderness "Biddy's book is warm and funny as well as brave and perceptive." - KATE PAWSEY, writing for wellbeing facilitator and founder of Writing Time -- Publisher: Parthian Books
Following on from the best-selling A Van of One’s Own, Scrabble in the Afternoon is Biddy Wells’s second memoir – this time about, and dedicated to, her mother. At the beginning of a recent, unspecified year, when Wells and her partner, David, were planning a three-month trip to Portugal, Wells’s mother had to be rushed to hospital following a suspected mini stroke. And so the world turned upside down. ‘My life had changed overnight. One day I had been free of responsibility, about to go off travelling; the next I’d had to cancel everything […] and take in my mum so that I could give her round-the-clock care. This was a world I had heard about but never really entered…’ It is an event that perhaps many people, especially women, dread – that, having seen their children safely flee the nest, their own new-found freedom and independence will be lost to the need to care for a parent. A Van of One’s Own chronicled Wells’s journey to that freedom and independence. Scrabble in the Afternoon tells the story of their temporary loss. The relationship between Wells and her mother has never been an easy one. Wells was the third child, and her mother used to tell her that, by the time she came along, she’d had enough of being a mother. This is just one of the many hurts. But Wells steers clear of bitterness, and graciously accepts the role of carer. ‘For now, I had to sacrifice myself and my hard-won life to look after a woman who had not looked after me as I would have liked her to.’ And it is, in fact, a redemptive, healing journey for them both. From the beginning, Wells kept a journal as a therapeutic exercise (‘…to get it off my chest. Writing kept me sane.’), and the book reflects this as Wells contemplates her relationship with her mother, and with herself, past and present. Whatever the hurts, there is a strong bond between mother and daughter (‘a lifelong, possibly karmic entwinement’), and together they navigate the difficult and unwanted situation of living together. After a year, which Wells describes as her ‘year under house arrest’, her mother is well enough to live alone again, though now in a sheltered flat close by, where Wells can visit her frequently and continue to provide care and company. During their year of living together, mother and daughter found a new balance in their relationship. But when Wells’s mother falls under the spell of a man living in another of the sheltered flats, the dynamic shifts once again, putting everything they have gained at risk. Like A Van of One’s Own, Scrabble in the Afternoon is an open, honest memoir about a journey of self-discovery and healing triggered by a crisis. This time, though, the focus is on the mother/daughter relationship and all the complex forces and emotions that relationship involves. Once again, Wells holds steady to reach a new place of understanding and empathy, carrying the reader with her along the way. -- Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com