Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day in the UK on Sunday 30 March and the shops have been full of greetings cards and gifts for the last few weeks. This year it is also the same day that the clocks go forward one hour and we enter British Summer Time.

Instead of buying a card I designed this one for both my mum and my mother-in-law. I decided to recycle an image I made last year as a response to my visit to the Paul Klee exhibition at Tate Modern because I thought it expressed just the right amount of sentiment being both cheerful and unfussy.

Designing my own card reminds me of the time when as a child I used to look forward to the Mothering Day service at church. I didn't much like church services as a rule finding them boring, long winded and the seating uncomfortable – Sunday school was much more fun. But on this one occasion in the year I was prepared to make an exception.

We used to attend St Mary's church in Goats Lane in Basingstoke and someone at the church took the trouble to nurture flowers in the grave yard. On Mothering Sunday they would cut small bunches of primroses and put them in a basket and then us children would be invited up to the altar during the service to collect a bunch to give to our mums' who were sitting waiting in the pew. This would have been back in the 1960s but I still have very fond memories of this annual event.