Halfway up the Stairs

Our accommodation in Bolton was very comfy and clean – gotta love clean. And yesterday we had a classic post-show experience without the show. We bumped into the woman who runs the place and we were saying how lovely it was when she told us that she used to run it with her husband and that he had died, three weeks ago. For those who might accuse me of looking for death, destruction and misery wherever I go, I swear she was the first to mention the D word as we were halfway up the stairs, walking away from her.

Her shock and pain were all over her, palpable, as Martin and I stood above her, listening to her story. An amazing, moving, mundane story of incomprehensible loss. She had started as a cleaner in the b&b and her husband had started managing it and, by the time of his death, they were running it together. And now he had gone and left her to get on with all that AND to look after the children, all five of them. There was nothing we could say, of course, but we could listen. It was so touching and we were so privileged to hear about all this, that we didn't even give her a flyer, almost unprecedented.

Later I went to chat to her, literally on the level. She told me about what kind of a man he had been, the work they did, how he had died, who had found him. We had a cry, we had a hug. What more could I offer? I told her what a great job we thought she was doing with the place, she really wanted to carry on the business as he had run it, as he would have wanted. Her son had served us at breakfast, and we now understood his nervous, halting interaction: not only was he new to it – and a teenager - but... his father had just died. The woman kept saying she is a hard-as-nails Bolton lass, but that she finds herself bursting into tears, driving, when a song comes on. Virtually any song. It's strange, that, about music: when you're in love every silly love song makes sense, when you're grieving every silly song can make the bucket of tears you have become overflow. Or maybe that's just me and the hard-as-nails lass from Bolton.