I rode the bus today – if it’s good enough for the new Pope, it’s good enough for me. And where to go? I started out from Durham bus station and had my choice. The ends of the earth where new Popes live? Or closer to home? Perhaps a pit village? High Pittington? Esh Winning? Crook? But the pits are long gone, and maybe not Crook. This had to be a journey into faith after all and Popes and crooks don’t mix, although Jesus was crucified between thieves so what do I know?
I plumped for Newcastle upon Tyne because that bus came and I wanted to leave the bus station pretty much as soon as I arrived. The station doesn’t inspire, still the Pope might, so I fought my way through the thick pork smell of chilli dogs to buy a newspaper full of Pope-y news to read on the way. I rather like the idea of diversifying from newspapers into chillidogs – it shows an original mind, and the newsagent certainly beats the shut-up shop along from it. A cheery notice on that door warns “Doorstep Callers Beware! You are not welcome here. I do not buy at the door.” No-one had been doing much buying apparently. The landlord had left his own notice stuck to the grubby glass announcing he had “re-entered the premises and as a consequence of such re-entry the lease has been forfeited and the premises secured.” Still it works, because it really does make you want to get on a bus.
I have travelled on plenty of buses in my time of course though not in the last few years. My mother said that at four years old, criss-crossing Leeds, slicing it up between home and school, wearing a straw boater and buttercup yellow cotton, I’d talk to anyone. I have this vision of dawn travellers sinking into their shiney, slidey seats in silent horror at my Shirley Temple entrance for fear I’d sit next to them and lispingly, ruthlessly, relentlessly chat. One afternoon, I’d asked her whether I could sit next to an old lady sitting across from us whom I thought looked lonely. “You didn’t care about leaving me,” she said accusingly (the eternal cry of the mother). “You talked to her for the entire journey and when it was our stop, I took your hand to stand up and the lady said to you ‘Your mummy and daddy must be so proud of you’ and you said ’I don’t have a daddy. I’ve just got a mummy,” and that poor woman almost sank through the floor with embarrassment. I had to tell her he’d died when you were a baby – that made it worse.”
But those bus-and-glory days are long gone so why did I feel I had to ride this bus this morning? Because I wanted to know why a cardinal did not ride in a leather-seated, tinted-windowed limo though the streets of Buenos Aires, but chose instead to travel among the faithful and less-than-faithful, bumping and swaying, the wheels on the bus going round and round. What did Jorge Mario Bergoglio get from those bus-rides around the city? Stories? Comfort? Warmth? An understanding what it is to work hard, to be tired, to be lonely, to have to stand when you want to sit, to know you are going home or going far away? Maybe too, I wanted to get on the bus, any bus, because we are on our own journeys and right now at least so far as faith goes, I don’t know where I am heading. Maybe, I thought, if I catch a bus like a Pope, I’ll arrive at a destination called Faith.
The queue of pensioners and shoppers, the unemployed and students shuffled forward out of Durham bus station and onto the X21 bound for Newcastle’s Eldon Square. I asked the price of a ticket. Single or return? Return – it is always good to have a chance to come back to where you started and at £5.30 (“Valid for one return journey on the day of issue only”) it seemed like a bargain, though doubtless Pope Francis would advise the money would be better spent on the poor.
Without thinking, I plumped down in the last seat downstairs and an elderly man with knobbly cheekbones and an oversized black wool coat got on after me, then hung disconsolate from a pole. Worried for his wellbeing come any sort of corner or abrupt halt, I eased myself around him and his coat to clamber up the steep stairs: the upstairs was full, every window seat with someone in it and everyone with an empty seat next to them waiting to be filled. I sat next to Joyce. I didn’t know it was her because she started out a stranger. The thing is, when you travel by bus, you don’t have to travel next to a stranger.
Joyce lost her husband Graham eight months ago, nearly nine. She believes he visits. One night as she lay in bed she felt his cold hand on her shoulder, his cold body against hers and leaped from bed. “ ‘I’m not scared, I told him. It was just I said to him “Ooh you’re cold,” and then remembered he was dead.”
Graham used to be a rep. He was 79 when he died of oesophageal cancer. He left a letter she found in a drawer telling her that if it was possible he’d come back to her as an angel. Joyce believes in angels – they both did. She carries a little one in her purse; ceramic ones hang from her lamps; and a cast-iron male angel holding a female angel stands by the garden bench where she and Graham used to sit together. White feathers have appeared in the living room, a book with his photo has fallen over twice, and robins are everywhere, their heads cocked, eyes bright, perching on her garden angels, telling her he is with her. “We used to talk to each other all the time”, she said. “I still talk to him all the time in the house. “ I asked whether she talks to him outside the house. That too. Discretely. She demonstrated, turning to the window, her elbow leaning on it. “Well, look at that,” she said, her hand against her mouth, not something you would hear, not something you’d worry about, just an elderly little body murmuring, reminding herself of something or other - not a widow talking to a shade.
We carry the dead with us. In her purse, Joyce carries a prayer card for her dad, half of a 10 bob note from her mother in a plastic wallet (who knows the whys and wherefores of the other half – not Joyce) , and she carries too her husband’s pictures – him as a young soldier, as a devoted husband holding her as if she is most precious. We sucked on Joyce’s Trebor mints and I thought how we travel with the dead – that the vacant seats are not so very vacant it turns out, occupied as they are by lost loves, by those who have slipped from this world but remain lodged in our memories and in our hearts.
Joyce and I rejoiced when the bus hits the A1 for a stretch, acknowledged the Angel of the North with his outstretched arms, sighed passing a washeteria someplace we didn’t know we’d be. “They go a different way every time,” said Joyce, looking out the window, all adventuresome.
I liked Joyce. She has joined a walking club. Took a bus the other day and walked six miles. “You have to make the effort,” she told me, “anyway he makes me.” There was no particular reason for this particular trip. “I’ll only be in town the hour.” She took the bus today because she thought she’d make the effort. “Just for the bus ride out,” she said. The family scattered Graham’s ashes in South Shields overlooking the sea, by a bench where they’d eat fish and chips. She’d almost caught a different bus to see if the handful of daffodils bulbs she’d planted there were out, though now she’s glad she didn’t.
“And now let us begin this journey…” Pope Francis told the world last night, “this journey of the Church of Rome which presides in charity over all the Churches, a journey of brotherhood of love, of mutual trust.” I took a journey with Joyce today, and Joyce I decide is the reason cardinals take buses – to know of loss and constancy, to know there is love and death and despite death there is still love, and because there are travellers who believe in angels.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Friday, March 15, 2013
Saturday, February 09, 2013
Lost and Found
My aunt is slipping away from us. Old as she is, frail as she is, even so - I don’t want her going anywhere. I want her here where I can see her, not a memory, not someone I love but cannot put my arms around. Yet, I know we are losing her.
Loss is terrible. You lose so many things in this life. A sock. A black umbrella. A bag you put down and forget to pick up. You lose those you love and cannot imagine life without. You lose faith - sometimes in God, sometimes in men, sometimes in men of God. A man in a hurry who believes the law applies to others and not to him, can lose a reputation as former Cabinet minister Chris Huhne is discovering. He can even lose his freedom. Over the last few years, bankers, priests, policemen, and journalists have lost the trust of the public. You can lose your job, your money and your home. You can lose your head, your heart and the best years of your life. You can lose yourself and wake up too late or not at all. You can lose your life in combat when it has barely begun or when you are ancient and tired of it all but one thing is certain - lose it you will.
I have lost some of those things. A golden brooch with a raw pearl heart, in the shape of a bee, and given by a lover. I lost the lover too now I come to think of it. More than one - how careless I was in my youth. I have lost the odd friend – their loss too I’d like to think. Lost a bag on a train, a bet on a horse, a baby. Lost all perspective on the odd occasion.
And yet, we carry on despite our heavy losses. Moreover, often we try to find that which we have lost, and there, right there, is our glory. Once in a blue moon, you find a king and dig up his bones. And when a child is lost, we don’t shrug, we try our damndest to find her – week after rainy month combing riverbanks and stark hillsides, checking out sightings in hot and far-off places. Sometimes if we are fortunate, we find the lost child, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we find glory, happiness, peace and love, or go on a journey and find ourselves, or something we weren’t even looking for. We find out we didn’t need “it” anyway, and we find just what we need. We lose everything and we find we can go on.
Loss is terrible. You lose so many things in this life. A sock. A black umbrella. A bag you put down and forget to pick up. You lose those you love and cannot imagine life without. You lose faith - sometimes in God, sometimes in men, sometimes in men of God. A man in a hurry who believes the law applies to others and not to him, can lose a reputation as former Cabinet minister Chris Huhne is discovering. He can even lose his freedom. Over the last few years, bankers, priests, policemen, and journalists have lost the trust of the public. You can lose your job, your money and your home. You can lose your head, your heart and the best years of your life. You can lose yourself and wake up too late or not at all. You can lose your life in combat when it has barely begun or when you are ancient and tired of it all but one thing is certain - lose it you will.
I have lost some of those things. A golden brooch with a raw pearl heart, in the shape of a bee, and given by a lover. I lost the lover too now I come to think of it. More than one - how careless I was in my youth. I have lost the odd friend – their loss too I’d like to think. Lost a bag on a train, a bet on a horse, a baby. Lost all perspective on the odd occasion.
And yet, we carry on despite our heavy losses. Moreover, often we try to find that which we have lost, and there, right there, is our glory. Once in a blue moon, you find a king and dig up his bones. And when a child is lost, we don’t shrug, we try our damndest to find her – week after rainy month combing riverbanks and stark hillsides, checking out sightings in hot and far-off places. Sometimes if we are fortunate, we find the lost child, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we find glory, happiness, peace and love, or go on a journey and find ourselves, or something we weren’t even looking for. We find out we didn’t need “it” anyway, and we find just what we need. We lose everything and we find we can go on.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The Modern Father
I watched a couple of venerable journos pontificate over the papers about Tory leader, David Cameron's interview on ITV during which - stop press - he became "emotional" discussing the death of his son, six-year-old Ivan. It's been slightly over a year since Ivan died. Not long. No time at all really. The pain within touching distance.Cameron told the interviewer "the loss is very tough and it takes a very long time to even start to get over it. It's a sort of journey between understanding what you're missing, what you've lost and being grateful for what you had. It just takes a very long time."
There were raised eyebrows among the country's world-weary. Oh so world-weary. Could it be that Cameron was seeking to electorally profit from the death of his son? "How distasteful", they muttered among themselves. After all, they'd seen it all before.
In February during another ITV interview, this time with Piers Morgan, Gordon Brown spoke of the death of daughter Jennifer, born prematurely weighing just 2lb 4oz, dying in 2002 at just 10 days.
“She would be 9 this year and you know, you think all the time of the first steps, and the first words and the first time you go to school and it’s just not been there… this is the happiest time of your life and then suddenly it becomes the most grief stricken time of your life. It was such a pendulum swing. I couldn’t listen to music, I really wasn’t much interested in anything for a while because you had to come to terms with something that, you know... you’d expect it would work out so completely differently.”
One commentator came to the verdict "He might have steered the country on to the rocks but last night we were invited to vote for him because, I'm sorry to say, he and his wife suffered the intense sorrow of losing their first child. That sounds harsh but this excruciating TV appearance left one no alternative conclusion."
Another opined: "Was it a cynical U-turn by a man who once decried personalised politics and Blairish exploitation of family? Yes shouted an army of cynical pundits and bloggers."
My child (stillborn at term) would be 10 if I hadn't lost him. Lost him like a sock or glove or pair of spectacles for reading. Just like that. But worse. And what these pundits don't understand is Brown and Cameron don't have a choice to talk or not to talk, to weep or not to weep, because the life and death of their children runs right through them. Tragedy defines them more than any manifesto ever could. Whatever power each man holds or chases, he would abandon it all, without hesitation, for just one more day with his lost child. He would sell his own soul for his lovely political wife never to have had her heart broken up into ugly pieces that no policy or strategic thinking - however clever and well-meaning - could ever mend. These party leaders may day-dream of glory, but at night they dream of sons and daughters they can no longer hold. They are not wrong to talk about it, they are right. Unspoken griefs twist and turn and do not grow smaller for darkness and a lack of air. They speak their children's names and they tell of their sorrows because to do otherwise would be to deny those children, it would be to say those children came and went, and that coming and that going did not matter in the scheme of things. Honesty in politicians - isn't that a good thing?
There were raised eyebrows among the country's world-weary. Oh so world-weary. Could it be that Cameron was seeking to electorally profit from the death of his son? "How distasteful", they muttered among themselves. After all, they'd seen it all before.
In February during another ITV interview, this time with Piers Morgan, Gordon Brown spoke of the death of daughter Jennifer, born prematurely weighing just 2lb 4oz, dying in 2002 at just 10 days.
“She would be 9 this year and you know, you think all the time of the first steps, and the first words and the first time you go to school and it’s just not been there… this is the happiest time of your life and then suddenly it becomes the most grief stricken time of your life. It was such a pendulum swing. I couldn’t listen to music, I really wasn’t much interested in anything for a while because you had to come to terms with something that, you know... you’d expect it would work out so completely differently.”
One commentator came to the verdict "He might have steered the country on to the rocks but last night we were invited to vote for him because, I'm sorry to say, he and his wife suffered the intense sorrow of losing their first child. That sounds harsh but this excruciating TV appearance left one no alternative conclusion."
Another opined: "Was it a cynical U-turn by a man who once decried personalised politics and Blairish exploitation of family? Yes shouted an army of cynical pundits and bloggers."
My child (stillborn at term) would be 10 if I hadn't lost him. Lost him like a sock or glove or pair of spectacles for reading. Just like that. But worse. And what these pundits don't understand is Brown and Cameron don't have a choice to talk or not to talk, to weep or not to weep, because the life and death of their children runs right through them. Tragedy defines them more than any manifesto ever could. Whatever power each man holds or chases, he would abandon it all, without hesitation, for just one more day with his lost child. He would sell his own soul for his lovely political wife never to have had her heart broken up into ugly pieces that no policy or strategic thinking - however clever and well-meaning - could ever mend. These party leaders may day-dream of glory, but at night they dream of sons and daughters they can no longer hold. They are not wrong to talk about it, they are right. Unspoken griefs twist and turn and do not grow smaller for darkness and a lack of air. They speak their children's names and they tell of their sorrows because to do otherwise would be to deny those children, it would be to say those children came and went, and that coming and that going did not matter in the scheme of things. Honesty in politicians - isn't that a good thing?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Whaling
Fresh from the beach where I went to have another look at the whale. "Fresh" may not be exactly the right word. "Eeeeeurgh" may be more the word I'm looking for. Let's say it's not what a visiting caravaner would put on his "Must See" itinerary just under red squirrels.
There's something about a whale. What is it? That they're a mammal? That they float deep and quietsome in the dark? That they make really bad music? There's a connection which makes seeing one of them out of its element - not to mention very dead - distressing. To reach the whale, you walk past a quarantine notice complete with skull which never bodes well does it? Yesterday morning, you might have almost hoped that it was moving as the sea lifted its tail with the churn of the waves. Today, the tide has brought the whale off the rocks and inshore, flipping its sad and massive body which is mottled with blood. The sea-water pooled in the sands around is bright red, and the smell retch-inducing - not helped by the fact officials have sawn off its lower jaw and extracted its upper teeth. They've done this because souvenir hunters were caught by coastguards in the early hours. The reports say they were souvenir hunters - perhaps they were just really unlucky tooth fairies. "What job have you got?" "That cutie-pie with the curly blonde hair asleep over there on the pink Princess pillow. What's yours?" "I've got that 25 tonne rotting whale carcass on the Northumberland coast. Swapsies?"
There's something about a whale. What is it? That they're a mammal? That they float deep and quietsome in the dark? That they make really bad music? There's a connection which makes seeing one of them out of its element - not to mention very dead - distressing. To reach the whale, you walk past a quarantine notice complete with skull which never bodes well does it? Yesterday morning, you might have almost hoped that it was moving as the sea lifted its tail with the churn of the waves. Today, the tide has brought the whale off the rocks and inshore, flipping its sad and massive body which is mottled with blood. The sea-water pooled in the sands around is bright red, and the smell retch-inducing - not helped by the fact officials have sawn off its lower jaw and extracted its upper teeth. They've done this because souvenir hunters were caught by coastguards in the early hours. The reports say they were souvenir hunters - perhaps they were just really unlucky tooth fairies. "What job have you got?" "That cutie-pie with the curly blonde hair asleep over there on the pink Princess pillow. What's yours?" "I've got that 25 tonne rotting whale carcass on the Northumberland coast. Swapsies?"
Friday, May 11, 2007
Totally unfunny
I am fed up. I am so fed up I do not think I can even be funny about how fed up I am. It is not funny when a mother of three seriously contemplates running away to London for a day's purposeless shopping, and not coming home, at least for tonight. I decided I couldn't. It would confuse the children. It would confuse me. I might not want to come home at all.
I say "home". Obviously, it is not a "home". My "home" is occupied by smiley, dusty men with big boots who have revealed they are four weeks behind schedule. We cannot move back in to the cottage when we thought we could. It is not their fault. Two weeks went on slating a roof which was not in the orginal spec; another two weeks , replastering all the walls when it was hoped they would just need repair. Both roof and walls look better; I feel worse. I want my house back.
I do not think the funeral helped. Death, I have to say, is a bit of a downer. Not just for the dead. Funerals give you the chance to catch up with those you love and never see; meet those you like and will never see again. I met a deal of kindness there. Other people's kindness fills up an empty part of me. Someone who walked me across a field with a bull in it. A bull can fill a field. Very fast. He made me braver. One of life's natural carers who made us tea and fed us ham. A girl in a lakeside hotel, who brought me a teapot, cup and plate of digestives as I perched, gloomy, in the hotel foyer with a laptop. Dancing between customers in the bar, busy as busy; yet, she took a moment to glance through an open door and see me. She could have looked away, poured a smiling, eager face another foaming drink. She didn't. Another. An old friend of my father's who said to me: "You're a lovely looking girl." I am 42; I suspect he had cataracts. I am 42; I take a complement where I can get one. I liked all these people.More besides. But still, I got "peopled out".
There are times, when I feel my life has no "pause" button. Something you could press for a few moments of silent time, thinking time; the time to ask: "Where am I now?" I grope around. No button. The clock ticks on. You tick on. Even this morning, I crawled back to bed after the school run. At least I tried. There were two adults downstairs but my four-year-old came up to me three times within half an hour; hectoring, demanding, loving.
I am fighting back panic, that swept-away feeling of: "What am I supposed to do here?" Yesterday, the boys had a spaghetti sword fight. Inch-long pieces of (uncooked) spaghetti, shattered over the kitchen floor. At bedtime, the six-year-old water bombed the four-year-old's bed. What am I going to do when the baby is old enough to join in concert with her brothers' mayhem? We are outnumbered. We will be washed quite away. In 20 years time, I am sure I will laugh at their antics. If I am not dead, I will play "remember when's" with them. I will say: "Remember. When you flooded the bathroom. Twice in four days." Today though. Today, I want to weep. I feel guilty. If I was not writing, that is to say, working. Working at home. Still. Working. If I was more focussed on the children, they would stop moving seamlessly from one outrage to the next. If I was more willing to make papier mache piggy banks and take them on forays to the playground, they would transform themselves. They would be Granny's dream boys.
I am constantly "the bad guy". I take treasures away; rant; drone on, endless and relentless. They must "listen...do as you are told". They carry on. Regardless. I am reconstituting the star chart (rewards and praise for good behaviour.) I do not want to draw up any star chart; I want to run away. I am just not sure London is far enough.
I say "home". Obviously, it is not a "home". My "home" is occupied by smiley, dusty men with big boots who have revealed they are four weeks behind schedule. We cannot move back in to the cottage when we thought we could. It is not their fault. Two weeks went on slating a roof which was not in the orginal spec; another two weeks , replastering all the walls when it was hoped they would just need repair. Both roof and walls look better; I feel worse. I want my house back.
I do not think the funeral helped. Death, I have to say, is a bit of a downer. Not just for the dead. Funerals give you the chance to catch up with those you love and never see; meet those you like and will never see again. I met a deal of kindness there. Other people's kindness fills up an empty part of me. Someone who walked me across a field with a bull in it. A bull can fill a field. Very fast. He made me braver. One of life's natural carers who made us tea and fed us ham. A girl in a lakeside hotel, who brought me a teapot, cup and plate of digestives as I perched, gloomy, in the hotel foyer with a laptop. Dancing between customers in the bar, busy as busy; yet, she took a moment to glance through an open door and see me. She could have looked away, poured a smiling, eager face another foaming drink. She didn't. Another. An old friend of my father's who said to me: "You're a lovely looking girl." I am 42; I suspect he had cataracts. I am 42; I take a complement where I can get one. I liked all these people.More besides. But still, I got "peopled out".
There are times, when I feel my life has no "pause" button. Something you could press for a few moments of silent time, thinking time; the time to ask: "Where am I now?" I grope around. No button. The clock ticks on. You tick on. Even this morning, I crawled back to bed after the school run. At least I tried. There were two adults downstairs but my four-year-old came up to me three times within half an hour; hectoring, demanding, loving.
I am fighting back panic, that swept-away feeling of: "What am I supposed to do here?" Yesterday, the boys had a spaghetti sword fight. Inch-long pieces of (uncooked) spaghetti, shattered over the kitchen floor. At bedtime, the six-year-old water bombed the four-year-old's bed. What am I going to do when the baby is old enough to join in concert with her brothers' mayhem? We are outnumbered. We will be washed quite away. In 20 years time, I am sure I will laugh at their antics. If I am not dead, I will play "remember when's" with them. I will say: "Remember. When you flooded the bathroom. Twice in four days." Today though. Today, I want to weep. I feel guilty. If I was not writing, that is to say, working. Working at home. Still. Working. If I was more focussed on the children, they would stop moving seamlessly from one outrage to the next. If I was more willing to make papier mache piggy banks and take them on forays to the playground, they would transform themselves. They would be Granny's dream boys.
I am constantly "the bad guy". I take treasures away; rant; drone on, endless and relentless. They must "listen...do as you are told". They carry on. Regardless. I am reconstituting the star chart (rewards and praise for good behaviour.) I do not want to draw up any star chart; I want to run away. I am just not sure London is far enough.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Bye then
Yesterday was our ninth wedding anniversary. We have two anniversaries - the anniversary we started going out and our wedding anniversary. My husband bought me pink paeonies to match the kitchen table and promised me dinner out tonight. We did not make it to dinner; instead, he took me to a show and lunch.
The show was Tony Blair's last huzzah at Trimdon Labour Club. It is a long time since we went to a show. (I do not count the school nativity play). Unfortunately, my husband had forgotten you have to buy tickets. We looked for a tout. But I think the number of yellow-jacketed police put them off. We ended up standing in the crowd with the school children and the Trimdon locals who have mobile phones which can take photographs and the same foresight as my husband. We waited like Stage Door Johnnies to see the star and his wife. If you do not count several hundred journalists and camera crew, there weren't that many of us outside. It was ever so slightly pointless. My husband kept saying: "It's history." He wanted to see the only other man in the world who feels the same way as he does about Iraq. I exaggerate there are three of them.
The Labour Club is a matter of yards away from a stone built church on the village green. As Blair was saying his "goodbye and thanks for having me's", "Nan" was being carried in to church in a coffin for her own "goodbye and thanks for having me". Everywhere I go, there's a coffin lately. At least, this one was not open. The one in Ireland was open. An open coffin can be quite scary if you are not expecting it. In Trimdon, hearses, flowers and mourners sat next to armoured plated cars, satellites and more mourners. I am not sure if the grieving relatives knew what was going on as they drew up to find the world's media and half of Durham's constabulary parked up on the green.
A handful of anti-war protesters shouted their outrage; two of them in orange boiler suits with bags over their heads. I think they would have been better shouting: "Hurray, hurray" if they wanted to win hearts and souls. Instead, they had a loud claxon and shouted things like: "Come out. the building is surrounded by police." That was quite witty. They also shouted: "Shame" which is an utterly pointless thing to shout at any politician. Their banner said they were "Sedgefield against war". Maybe they were. The locals I heard talking to them said things like: "You're a bloody embarrassment, you are." If they are local, I do not think they have a big following.
It was a bit like the Oscars. The Oscars if just Billy Crystal turned up . Everyone got very excited when the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson appeared. Make that Billy Crystal and Ellen DeGeneres. Blair made a quick exit. He blew a kiss. Not to me. My husband was watching. Cherie waved at all of us. I waved back. She waved again. Not to me.
I thought about "Nan". I wondered if she would have gone along, if she was able. Whether she would have minded about Blair. If you get dead, and then you get buried. You want your funeral to be the biggest show in town, don't you? In any event, I have told my husband, next time, I am booking the tickets.
The show was Tony Blair's last huzzah at Trimdon Labour Club. It is a long time since we went to a show. (I do not count the school nativity play). Unfortunately, my husband had forgotten you have to buy tickets. We looked for a tout. But I think the number of yellow-jacketed police put them off. We ended up standing in the crowd with the school children and the Trimdon locals who have mobile phones which can take photographs and the same foresight as my husband. We waited like Stage Door Johnnies to see the star and his wife. If you do not count several hundred journalists and camera crew, there weren't that many of us outside. It was ever so slightly pointless. My husband kept saying: "It's history." He wanted to see the only other man in the world who feels the same way as he does about Iraq. I exaggerate there are three of them.
The Labour Club is a matter of yards away from a stone built church on the village green. As Blair was saying his "goodbye and thanks for having me's", "Nan" was being carried in to church in a coffin for her own "goodbye and thanks for having me". Everywhere I go, there's a coffin lately. At least, this one was not open. The one in Ireland was open. An open coffin can be quite scary if you are not expecting it. In Trimdon, hearses, flowers and mourners sat next to armoured plated cars, satellites and more mourners. I am not sure if the grieving relatives knew what was going on as they drew up to find the world's media and half of Durham's constabulary parked up on the green.
A handful of anti-war protesters shouted their outrage; two of them in orange boiler suits with bags over their heads. I think they would have been better shouting: "Hurray, hurray" if they wanted to win hearts and souls. Instead, they had a loud claxon and shouted things like: "Come out. the building is surrounded by police." That was quite witty. They also shouted: "Shame" which is an utterly pointless thing to shout at any politician. Their banner said they were "Sedgefield against war". Maybe they were. The locals I heard talking to them said things like: "You're a bloody embarrassment, you are." If they are local, I do not think they have a big following.
It was a bit like the Oscars. The Oscars if just Billy Crystal turned up . Everyone got very excited when the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson appeared. Make that Billy Crystal and Ellen DeGeneres. Blair made a quick exit. He blew a kiss. Not to me. My husband was watching. Cherie waved at all of us. I waved back. She waved again. Not to me.
I thought about "Nan". I wondered if she would have gone along, if she was able. Whether she would have minded about Blair. If you get dead, and then you get buried. You want your funeral to be the biggest show in town, don't you? In any event, I have told my husband, next time, I am booking the tickets.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Au revoir
This is how I want to die. My husband was talking to someone today who has just lost his mother. She was 102. She died from old age and exhaustion (understandable I think). Her room was bathed in French Riviera sunshine and full of spring flowers. I imagine it to have white painted shutters but maybe I am wrong; maybe the curtains were of white muslin and moved gently in the warm breeze. She shared a glass of champagne with her son in the morning. It must have been chilled. Her son went out for lunch and she slipped away while he was gone. I could do that.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Smile for the camera
The album which keeps my baby photographs is worn and grimy with the years - a bit like me. It is a pale and padded plastic blue with white buttons; held whole with tape that has begun to curl and a sorry silk tassel whose burlesque days are through. When you open it, joints creak and it sighs a little. The inside cover, once virgin cream, is now a rusting and unpleasant brown, as if one day, I snatched it from a hearth where it was smouldering.
Many of its flattened subjects hold me tight in there and once loved me. Some still do. But others I could not keep by me: a father, two grandmothers, godmother, godfather, a curly-haired aunty and her cross-legged son. The blood list lost, goes on. Then, they were mine and I clutched their fingers. Now, they are mine only in memories and an album - for as long as they smile "Cheese" and the page is open.
I think the album sad, though it show-cases a content and lace-dressed child. Perhaps the thought that these days have come and gone, arrives too soon for me. On the very first page, a suited man relaxes, leaning against the rails on the windy prom at Blackpool; a cigarette between his fingers. You can only lean so long. Look again, he is sitting down on a wooden bench, my mother's leather handbag and a parcel beside him. The snaps are of my father who should perhaps have tossed the cigarette into the cold black and white sea behind him. My mother tells me I was six weeks old when she left with him for three or four days in Blackpool. Her husband - the first - my brand new father, had not confessed to coughing blood but pleaded for a seaside break. "I didn't want to leave you," she tells me, "but I knew he wasn't well and so we went."
One year and eight snap-filled pages later, the cigarette has quite gone out, the coughing stopped and there is no more suited man. Instead, another trip this time to Ireland; the camera shutter closes on a young matron in a tilted, black straw hat with her solemn fat-faced babe. My widow-weeded mother holds me forever in her arms in front of roses, river, bridge and church. He may be gone but I am her victory over death, a triumph in pantaloons and bonnet. I think she may be sad then. I'm sure she is, as she carries me around with her, a memory of him, until, in the way of things, she meets another kindly father man, marries him and smiles again.
Here is the confusion. I opened the album up because twice lately, I have had the sensation as I looked at my own daughter, that I was looking at myself. I never felt that with the boys. My sons are my lions; terrorsome and grand. See how they go; march and strut and shout. But the other day, as I gazed at my baby standing proud in the grass, deciding should she walk or not, I felt: "That's me. I'm looking at myself". Again today, I held her in my arms at the bathroom sink, glanced up at the mirror and thought again: "That baby in my arms. That's me." So I dug out this relic of the past to see if my baby-self had escaped her black sugar-paper prison. But no, she was still there, safe in her mother's arms.
Many of its flattened subjects hold me tight in there and once loved me. Some still do. But others I could not keep by me: a father, two grandmothers, godmother, godfather, a curly-haired aunty and her cross-legged son. The blood list lost, goes on. Then, they were mine and I clutched their fingers. Now, they are mine only in memories and an album - for as long as they smile "Cheese" and the page is open.
I think the album sad, though it show-cases a content and lace-dressed child. Perhaps the thought that these days have come and gone, arrives too soon for me. On the very first page, a suited man relaxes, leaning against the rails on the windy prom at Blackpool; a cigarette between his fingers. You can only lean so long. Look again, he is sitting down on a wooden bench, my mother's leather handbag and a parcel beside him. The snaps are of my father who should perhaps have tossed the cigarette into the cold black and white sea behind him. My mother tells me I was six weeks old when she left with him for three or four days in Blackpool. Her husband - the first - my brand new father, had not confessed to coughing blood but pleaded for a seaside break. "I didn't want to leave you," she tells me, "but I knew he wasn't well and so we went."
One year and eight snap-filled pages later, the cigarette has quite gone out, the coughing stopped and there is no more suited man. Instead, another trip this time to Ireland; the camera shutter closes on a young matron in a tilted, black straw hat with her solemn fat-faced babe. My widow-weeded mother holds me forever in her arms in front of roses, river, bridge and church. He may be gone but I am her victory over death, a triumph in pantaloons and bonnet. I think she may be sad then. I'm sure she is, as she carries me around with her, a memory of him, until, in the way of things, she meets another kindly father man, marries him and smiles again.
Here is the confusion. I opened the album up because twice lately, I have had the sensation as I looked at my own daughter, that I was looking at myself. I never felt that with the boys. My sons are my lions; terrorsome and grand. See how they go; march and strut and shout. But the other day, as I gazed at my baby standing proud in the grass, deciding should she walk or not, I felt: "That's me. I'm looking at myself". Again today, I held her in my arms at the bathroom sink, glanced up at the mirror and thought again: "That baby in my arms. That's me." So I dug out this relic of the past to see if my baby-self had escaped her black sugar-paper prison. But no, she was still there, safe in her mother's arms.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Cherry scones
A friend invited me for coffee this morning. As we arrived, she was still rubbing her fingers free of doughy gloves and the smell of baking cherry scones hung about her busy kitchen, spilling fragrant through the open door into a wintered garden. "Drop by for coffee, I'll make scones," I say it out loud to see how it sounds. Unconvincing, in my case. She, on the other hand, knocks out a warm batch of home baked treats with the same nonchalance as I swill a crystal glass of cool and gooseberry-tanged chablis.
Some friendships you keep for a life. Others for only a train-ride. Some friends you lose and never know why and when you are old, you think: "Whatever happened to?" or "What did I do?". Some friends you mourn; some walk away and you do not notice. This friendship is spring green and sweetly brief, lasting weeks. Now my new friend is about to move somewhere bouncing hot and sandy to feed oily egg and cigarette thin chips to fat Englishmen who would prefer to eat their egg and chips at home. I want to say to her: "Don't go out of my life. You have only just arrived there." But in her head, she has already quit this place for a different tomorrow.
As I drink the coffee and graze on blossom-coloured cake, I gaze at the bonfire of trucks and old jeans piled up on her dining room carpet, salvaged from the rooms upstairs. Each of her four boys is allowed one black plastic bag of toys to tote with him into his new and sunnier life. One final boy is missing - her oldest. Seven years ago, she lost him. Just 13, he slipped through her floury fingers in one of those "Dear God" disasters that make you catch your breath. Mowing early summer grass and daisies, he cut the lead. Zap. A boy-child. I have seen his face smiling out of a sharp school photograph and in his mother's eyes, you can see him yet.
They are packing for the sun and a fresh start. I admire her determination that the four remaining boys will run from school bench straight into a warm and salty sea, nylon homework bags, spray-wet and abandoned on the beach. But I will miss her. She is a new friend and no one else will make me pastries and froth my coffee. While she was packing, she found bed treasures her missing boy once slept with, his teddy bear and a keepsake velvet cushion. In a suitcase at the top of a wardrobe, she found his summer coat, its pocket packet rustling, the crisps long gone. Prawn cocktail. She slipped the packet back into the coat and the coat into a bag to carry with her.
Some friendships you keep for a life. Others for only a train-ride. Some friends you lose and never know why and when you are old, you think: "Whatever happened to?" or "What did I do?". Some friends you mourn; some walk away and you do not notice. This friendship is spring green and sweetly brief, lasting weeks. Now my new friend is about to move somewhere bouncing hot and sandy to feed oily egg and cigarette thin chips to fat Englishmen who would prefer to eat their egg and chips at home. I want to say to her: "Don't go out of my life. You have only just arrived there." But in her head, she has already quit this place for a different tomorrow.
As I drink the coffee and graze on blossom-coloured cake, I gaze at the bonfire of trucks and old jeans piled up on her dining room carpet, salvaged from the rooms upstairs. Each of her four boys is allowed one black plastic bag of toys to tote with him into his new and sunnier life. One final boy is missing - her oldest. Seven years ago, she lost him. Just 13, he slipped through her floury fingers in one of those "Dear God" disasters that make you catch your breath. Mowing early summer grass and daisies, he cut the lead. Zap. A boy-child. I have seen his face smiling out of a sharp school photograph and in his mother's eyes, you can see him yet.
They are packing for the sun and a fresh start. I admire her determination that the four remaining boys will run from school bench straight into a warm and salty sea, nylon homework bags, spray-wet and abandoned on the beach. But I will miss her. She is a new friend and no one else will make me pastries and froth my coffee. While she was packing, she found bed treasures her missing boy once slept with, his teddy bear and a keepsake velvet cushion. In a suitcase at the top of a wardrobe, she found his summer coat, its pocket packet rustling, the crisps long gone. Prawn cocktail. She slipped the packet back into the coat and the coat into a bag to carry with her.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Lost boys
Who says God does not have a sense of humour? Today, we spent six and a half hours getting to London for another children's birthday party and guess where it was. A city farm.
To me, the city farm is yet more evidence that nobody really has to go live in the country. The boys and the baby saw animals and got lots of fresh air in between the balloon fights and butter-creamed cake. The city even "does" the country better. At the city farm, there was a cafe with proper coffee. One Northumberland cafe I go to boasts "instant cappuccinos" on its menu and they are not talking about the wait. The farm also offered classes in upholstery, stone sculpture and bike maintenance with particular attention given to "wheel truing" - I have always wanted a true wheel. Best of all, there were helpful signs attached to the animal paddocks. I never knew, for instance, that sheep have very good memories and "can remember a face up to two years after a first meeting." That is better than me.
London still makes me heartsore though. It is the feeling you have when someone you love leaves you although I know I did the leaving. I am ashamed of myself for the teenage anxst of it all. So I moved. Big deal. I should shrug in a sophisticated way, inhale hard from a cigarette held in a costume jewelled hand and slowly blow a smoke ring into the already cloudy air. I do not live here anymore. I do not understand how I have left the city and yet carry it with me.
I think I have been in quite a strange mood though. I felt the day started oddly. We had not managed to snatch breakfast before we left the house in a bid to catch a 7.30am train. My husband had driven too fast down a dark and dangerous road and I had been worried throughout that we would miss it. Once we parked the car, we figured that if we ran, there was just seven minutes left to buy food before we crossed the bridge over the tracks onto the platform. Standing with the pushchair, I queued for five croissants, coffees and warm milk at the coffee stand on the concourse. The pressure mounted as I glanced at the large, wrought-iron clock which hangs over the heads of passengers warning them not to be tardy. The boys, muffled in their red wool hats and overly long scarves, were pulling at me and it was the sort of cold that makes you pull your shoulders close to your ears and wish you were anywhere else. One of those old men you find only in railway stations shuffled over. He asked me how old the boys and the baby were and stooped down to carress her small silky head. "A boy?" he asked. I did that up-down rapid calculation you do to decide whether the stranger spells danger and decided he was just sad and lonely.
"I had a boy but he died at seven," he told me. This is the moment at which the coffee seller decided to ask me what I wanted. I ignored her.
"That's terrible," I said. "You don't forget do you? What happened?"
He told me the boy had a hole in the heart.
"In four years, I lost six people," he said.
"How dreadful," I said, as you do.
I have been angry at myself all day because, anxious as I was to get us all some breakfast, there was a moment I turned away from him to order the milk and pastries for my own little family and I never asked him his son's name. I should have.
To me, the city farm is yet more evidence that nobody really has to go live in the country. The boys and the baby saw animals and got lots of fresh air in between the balloon fights and butter-creamed cake. The city even "does" the country better. At the city farm, there was a cafe with proper coffee. One Northumberland cafe I go to boasts "instant cappuccinos" on its menu and they are not talking about the wait. The farm also offered classes in upholstery, stone sculpture and bike maintenance with particular attention given to "wheel truing" - I have always wanted a true wheel. Best of all, there were helpful signs attached to the animal paddocks. I never knew, for instance, that sheep have very good memories and "can remember a face up to two years after a first meeting." That is better than me.
London still makes me heartsore though. It is the feeling you have when someone you love leaves you although I know I did the leaving. I am ashamed of myself for the teenage anxst of it all. So I moved. Big deal. I should shrug in a sophisticated way, inhale hard from a cigarette held in a costume jewelled hand and slowly blow a smoke ring into the already cloudy air. I do not live here anymore. I do not understand how I have left the city and yet carry it with me.
I think I have been in quite a strange mood though. I felt the day started oddly. We had not managed to snatch breakfast before we left the house in a bid to catch a 7.30am train. My husband had driven too fast down a dark and dangerous road and I had been worried throughout that we would miss it. Once we parked the car, we figured that if we ran, there was just seven minutes left to buy food before we crossed the bridge over the tracks onto the platform. Standing with the pushchair, I queued for five croissants, coffees and warm milk at the coffee stand on the concourse. The pressure mounted as I glanced at the large, wrought-iron clock which hangs over the heads of passengers warning them not to be tardy. The boys, muffled in their red wool hats and overly long scarves, were pulling at me and it was the sort of cold that makes you pull your shoulders close to your ears and wish you were anywhere else. One of those old men you find only in railway stations shuffled over. He asked me how old the boys and the baby were and stooped down to carress her small silky head. "A boy?" he asked. I did that up-down rapid calculation you do to decide whether the stranger spells danger and decided he was just sad and lonely.
"I had a boy but he died at seven," he told me. This is the moment at which the coffee seller decided to ask me what I wanted. I ignored her.
"That's terrible," I said. "You don't forget do you? What happened?"
He told me the boy had a hole in the heart.
"In four years, I lost six people," he said.
"How dreadful," I said, as you do.
I have been angry at myself all day because, anxious as I was to get us all some breakfast, there was a moment I turned away from him to order the milk and pastries for my own little family and I never asked him his son's name. I should have.
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