We get stuck in the middle of the story. It is partly because I lose track, I know that bit is my fault, but also it’s partly hers because I know that she will go off on tangents. A word, a place – parrots, maybe, or Philadelphia – and she whoops with delight, claps her hands and starts telling an old story that she does not remember she has told everyone several times before. I do remember that and I have to hold on to where I was in my own story while she’s telling hers so that we can get back to it once she is done, but I sometimes forget where I was trying to get to, what was the point of all this, the end of the story.

While we’re driving home I tell her I think we’re lucky our children still invite us to visit every month and see the grandkids, given how much we repeat ourselves and she looks across at me, genuinely shocked. Of course they invite us, she says, as though I’d never said this before. What else would they do?

Geoff Sawers (he, him) has new work published recently in Blackbox Manifold, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, Route 7 Review and Sage Cigarettes; criticism in Culture Matters and the Times Literary Supplement. You can find his paintings on Instagram at geoff.sawers