Flowing script letter S design

The lift in Kestrel House has been out since Tuesday, so I have been taking the stairs to the eleventh floor with my flask under one arm and your father's old sketchbook under the other, and I keep thinking about Mr Pell's S. You remember him, the signwriter who gave me my first brushes on Mill Lane. He never let me start a letter in the middle. He'd say, start at the top with the big loop, let the brush go round like a dog settling on a rug, then bring it down hard and fast, and only then the little tail at the bottom where you can breathe.

I painted an S on Sweeney's bakery window the spring you were born, gold leaf with black edging, and it was the best thing I ever did. Mrs Sweeney cried when she saw it. Last month they pulled the shopfront down for flats, and a lad from the council sent me a photo of the old glass in a skip, the S still clear enough to read, catching the sun. I told him to keep it.

So I've started again. Mr Pell's brushes are in the drawer, and I've been practising on the backs of the rent letters because the paper's free and the light from the stairwell is good. The first few were lopsided, too tight at the bottom, like a fist. This morning the loop came round clean for the first time in years.

Come home at Christmas and I'll show you. Bring your own brushes. Mind the eleventh step, it's loose.

Love, Mum