A walk to Stanage Edge

What makes a day stand out? It's seeing something you thought you'd never see. It's finding a liberation in an hour, from days and days of being in the harness of humdrum 'ordinary' life..

Meeting Ivan. This uncle, zany, I'd heard about him for years. Finally, the day is on us, I'm dreading it and putting on a brave face - and curious too. There is a beautiful pink rose bush in the front garden, the house high on a hill in Sheffield. Inside, it's a-clutter with one man's stuff, not aired, cleaned or moved enough in a long time. A shelf for the tins for a rainy day - what's the other shelf of tins for? The walls covered in photos, prints of familiar places, like Hungary and Australia.

He's like those uncles of my mothers, that I used to have to visit when we stayed with Omi - a particular Continental sense of humour, wordplay that all know is clever, even though we don't always laugh out loud. Sentimental, referential to other times. So we get on GREAT, I play the mother role with absolute conviction, can just be as I am. Leathermanman says, wash everything, don't touch anything! But we get tea and fruit out, look through photos and his old cameras. The Bean is a PERFECT namesake, shows great interest in the old cameras, wants to know about this strange man, as much as the uncle wants to know about him. The Pumpkin gets hungry, we open one of the Rainy Days tins and eat soup, heated, direct from the tin. I can't write about the bathroom, but I'm touched and entertained, all at once. And I imagine laughing with my mother-in-law about it in future.

A walk to Stanage Edge in the Peak District. Like other walks with my elderly relatives in Germany, all set off, groups form for 'walk and talk'. The Pumpkin and the uncle have exactly the same pace, The Bean and I run, run in the wind over the stones on the edge of the Edge. Liberation. Leathermanman imagines himself bouldering, we are all liberated in this Australia-like expanse, our gazes stretching to a horizon, the view filled with grasses and heather, fields, stone walls, not buildings, not crowding close around us. In the photo you can't see, but LMM and his uncle have EXACTLY the same shape head!

Then we take Ivan back to Eyam Youth Hostel. He took the first photos of it, when they first started promoting themselves long ago - and is DELIGHTED to be out for a night. We fold children into their bunks and drink a bottle of wine outside in endless late summer light. There's much hilarity and tales of lives lived before we all met up today. Lovely.