I am in a North London library. Mum is sitting on a sofa in the children's area. I think she's nodding off. We've just had lunch together in a cafe. She's 81, though, for some reason, I keep thinking she's 82. Her eyesight is poor as she suffers from age-related macular degeneration and she is becoming increasingly unable to look after herself. I come and see her when I can but the job of looking after her falls mainly to my sister who lives near to her.
I noticed this morning having spent yesterday evening and last night in my old family home that something strange had happened to time and space and that I felt as if I had been there forever and that my life in Brighton felt like a million miles away.
I'd better not keep her waiting too long but it's nice and warm in here, much warmer than at her house where there seems to be something wrong with the heating.
It's political. Me being here. Her sitting over there. Me trying to take care of her but failing mostly. The job is much larger than I can manage, short of giving up my life and living with her. Maybe that's what I ought to do? You only have one mum after all. But I know I can't – or rather won't.
I miss her. She used to be such a lively spirit. So vivacious. Now she sits mainly motionless and seems rather tuned out a lot of the time, cocooned in her dulled senses. But she's still there.
I feel sad but keep cheerful because that's the least I can do.
What this has got to do with Hirschhorn I really don't know. Except that if he is really trying to reach for the human in us all, as Julian Stallabrass said during his talk about him, then that is what I am trying to do too.
In her. And in myself.
