A Short Refusal.

We have just had a few days of Spring-like weather which was very nice indeed. It didn’t last of course. Today it is raining again. I cannot see to the end of the back field because it is also misty. Damp and misty and wouldn’t you know it I am going on my first trip in the little campervan. Not leaving ‘til Monday so maybe the weather will decide it is Springtime again by then?
I was hoping to visit the croft in Scotland where I spent some time as a boy with my mum and stepdad. I wrote and asked first if the owners would mind me calling by for a brief visit and a stroll around the place. The answer came back quickly enough. It was, basically ‘no you can’t visit’.
This response did hurt. I wasn’t expecting a refusal. Why it really hurt though was the way the refusal was given. It was simply scrawled on the bottom of the letter I wrote them. No explanation was given.
The writer’s initials instead of a signature made me think. M.M. My stepdad Jimmy had a daughter. Her first name was Margaret and she married a man whose surname began with M. Then it dawned on me. Jimmy’s daughter was still living there. A very elderly woman by now of course, I could tell that just by the writing. She did not like my mum at all. She did not like that my mum got left money in Jimmy’s will. There was a legal battle over who got the house. I hadn’t even given that any thought at all. I just assumed that over the years the house had been sold and there would be new owners. But she didn’t have any reason to dislike me, after all I was only a child. I decided in the end that perhaps because she is a very elderly lady a visit would be too much for her, maybe open unhappy memories? She must be nearing a hundred years old if my reckoning is correct? So, that visit won’t be happening. There you are, that’s my mum still causing grief long after she has gone.

Looking at the last paragraph of my letter again perhaps I subconsciously knew it would not happen?