The Artisan Market...

There is an Artisan Market on the third Saturday of every month in our town of Wilmslow in Cheshire.  We normally go every month, if for no other reason than to buy a particular bottle of Chilli Piri Piri sauce from a stall on there that is fantastic.  We thought we would go yesterday to get out really, and have a walk around.

Everywhere I go is full of memories of Hannah.  The memories are welcome but it is really, really tough.  Today on the market, we were walking along and I saw the Sticky Toffee Pudding stall.  When Hannah was here, Phil and I bumped into her with her friends at the Artisan Market.  She was a brilliant teenager; she loved us and was proud of us, introducing us to her friends that we didn’t know very well from school.  We gave her some money and she walked off laughing as usual with her friends.

When we got home later that day, Hannah came home and had bought us the Sticky Toffee Pudding. Hannah was terrible with money, as soon as she got it, she just had to spend it, she didn’t just spend it on herself though, she would spend it on us, Ben, her friends etc, and this drove me mad.  I wanted to teach her the value of money and how to save for things she wanted.  She really wanted a Jack Wills Gilet and I wanted her to try and save for it. And for this reason, instead of being grateful and touched that she had spent money on us, I nagged her!

How I wish I could go back in time and tell her that I loved the fact she bought us the Sticky Toffee Pudding.  How I was so proud of how thoughtful, kind and loving she was.  I want to shout out as loud as I can how much I love her, I want to scream and scream and scream.

I was glad that the memory came back to me but really, really sad that I have to look backwards to see happy times, I cannot imagine any truly happy times like they used to be going forwards because there will always be a hole in our lives where Hannah should have been next to us, sharing them.