44 days, 8

Big day in Romania today: for as long as I know, 8 March celebrates women, mothers, girlfriends, wives. It's mother's day and St. Valentine's day in one. Throughout my childhood, the 8th of March was a day of making cards, writing cheesy verse, picking flowers and producing fluffy, useless craft items for our mothers:

'Today's your day, sweet mother
The gift that I brought is my heart
But please believe me, mother
There's no gift more lovely than that.'

I dig out the song from deepest dormant memory and sing it to my mum, on the phone. I sing it to her, she sings it to me: we're both mothers now and, let's face it: I don't see MY kids about to burst into song. Still, Cheeta's sweet without knowing what day it is: he is his normal happy, helpful self, and we work companionably in honey-like sunshine. Then we have lunch at the market; he is distracted, pours ketchup in his glass instead of Coke, and we laugh and laugh. Until a chip goes in the wrong way and makes one laugh die down, and another go up to hysterical highs...

OK, I've made that up, the chip incident never happened; instead, we just laughed and laughed, then went back to work. We chose shower tiles and had a long lecture from Mr. Charm at the bathroom shop, about fundamentalism and HOW it spoils the Arab world. That's it! I'm not telling anyone, anymore, where you work. He banged on and on, so I started taking photographs of tiles to stop myself from climbing into a bath tub and falling asleep.