Some people should never be 77

Posted on 5th July 2022 by 192.168.1.1

There was a barbecue at my cousin’s house in Pitney last Friday, followed by disco music for the gathering of cousins.

Dancing to Blondie’s Atomic, one of my cousins said how much she loved Debbie Harry.

‘I think she is 76,’ I said.

‘No’, my cousin replied, ‘she couldn’t be.’

Unbeknown to us, Friday was actually Debbie Harry’s birthday, her 77th birthday. This seems to run contrary to the natural order of things. In Star Wars terms, Debbie Harry being 77 is like a disturbance in the Force. Debbie Harry should always be young.

Certain people should always be certain ages.

When I was in ministry, I used to think that clergy should always be in their late 60s and worldly wise, grey and lined, carrying the marks and the bruises of four decades of work, and even if they’re not, they should think they are. Whereas pop stars should be at the other end of the age range, they should never be more than 35, or perhaps 40, if the more mature image suits.

I am troubled sometimes when I meet someone from twenty or thirty years ago, I don’t mind that I have got much older and have gone grey, but I expect them to be as they were when I last saw them. It is a reassurance that some among my cousins show no more sign of ageing than did Dorian Grey.

The expectation that people should not change is strange, perhaps a projection of my own fears of ageing and death on to others, but it raises thoughts in my head about whether our pasts are lost forever.

In my rather vague theological thinking that has endured in the years since I resigned from the church, I have clung onto the idea the redemption of creation that is described by Saint Paul in the Bible in his Letter to the Romans.  If such a redemption takes place, I hope, it will include the redemption of time, allowing us to recapture the moments that are important, allowing us, perhaps, to put right the mistakes of the past (and I have many, many mistakes I would like to rectify).

I am aware these thoughts are very unorthodox. But should I ever find myself in that state of existence known as heaven, I think I would probably be happy with being maybe 68, the age at which I might get a pension.

Ms Harry, if I should happen to meet her, would be no more than half of my age, and my cousins would remain as young as they are now.

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Teatime with cousins

Posted on 3rd July 2022 by 192.168.1.1

A weekend of laughter, the visit of two cousins from Cheltenham to join with local family members for a barbecue on Friday night and a music festival yeseterday.

The Cheltenham cousins would have been among those who would have gathered in my grandmother’s kitchen on summer Sunday teatimes.

In the kitchen there was a long settle stood against the wall.  On those summer Sunday evenings when a large proportion of her twenty grandchildren might have gathered,  it seemed able to accommodate an unlimited number of small children, there for the abundant teas that marked the boundary between afternoon and evening.

The settle was always the preserve of the many little girls among the numerous cousins, this weekend’s visiting cousins among them. Perhaps more girls could fit in the limited space, perhaps their more refined table manners demanded less elbow room than the habits of uncouth boys.

Fits of giggles at silly stories combined with a desire not to incur the displeasure of the family matriarch, all four feet ten inches of her who would be sat nearest the kitchen door and never needed to raise her voice in order to exert her authority.

The sun did always shine at such teatime assemblies, for had it not been a fine afternoon, so many would not have gathered at the farm.

Perhaps children’s appetites were smaller then than now, perhaps there was a contentment to be found in having jelly and ice cream and fairy cakes, but there seemed always more than enough to sate the desires of every child at the table.

The moment owed much to family who had come from afar. The cousins who came from Gloucestershire and Berkshire created a mood different from that when it was just those from the locality. Perhaps it was similar for all big families, the returning exiles bringing something different to the table.

The chair nearest the window became a personal favourite, perhaps it was the most distant from the threat of the wooden spoon. Sitting at the end of the table meant being able to watch everyone; those from elsewhere had always the best stories and the funniest humour.

The teas were not frequent. It was summertime when the family from afar would come to the farm. It was perhaps only once a year that we sat around that table, yet it was a meal from which memories would linger long. Other accents among our Somerset burrs would tell tales of excitement and variety far removed from our gentle country lives.

More than fifty years later, it is the cousins from afar who bring us laughter.

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Forgetting Jackson Pollock

Posted on 27th June 2022 by 192.168.1.1

Walking along the waterfront in Liverpool on a fine summer’s evening, I came to the Tate Gallery.

At half past seven on a Monday evening, it was closed, but sight of it recalled a previous visit.

Back in 2015, I had gone to see an exhibition of the work of the American artist Jackson Pollock. Being in Liverpool for the afternoon and it being a gloriously sunny day, I had walked down to the Albert Dock and had gone to the Tate Gallery.

Admission to the gallery was free, but it was £10 to see the exhibition, on the top floor of the very atmospheric building. Not having a vocabulary to express any understanding of any sort of art and not being conversant with the conventions of abstract art, it was impossible to say anything about the exhibition. It was thought-provoking, some of it was dream-like, but that doesn’t convey much to anyone.

No matter! The point was that I had gone to an exhibition on a Thursday and on the following Monday I had started to tell a friend that I had been.

‘I went to an exhibition at the Tate in Liverpool last week . . . there was an exhibition of work by an abstract artist . .. he was an American artist . . . he died in 1956. It was interesting stuff, provocative. Oh dear, I cannot remember his name’.

There had been a moment of deep frustration.

This continues to happen from time to time. Just with names.

Back in 2012, I went to the doctor and expressed fears about memory loss. He looked at my date of birth, 1960, and said, ‘This comes with age. While you are here let’s do some other tests’.

I left his surgery with high blood pressure and high cholesterol and no cure for the loss of names.

My greatest fear in life has always been dementia. Cancer, heart disease, even neurological disorders, seem preferable to that gradual retreat into a world of confusion and shadows.

I am told that the rest of my memory is functioning perfectly, that there is no cause for concern, but if the loss of names offers an insight into the dark world of progressive memory loss, then it is a frightening prospect.

Of course, the conversation was hardly over before the name ‘Jackson Pollock’ sprang to mind, just as the names of the people I meet, and cannot greet properly, spring to mind when I have gone further down the street.

Perhaps there is some psychological block, some part of the sub-conscious preventing names from coming to consciousness, perhaps the part of the brain where names are stored has become dusty or overloaded. Perhaps, one day, those experiments with mice will cure not only those trapped in the dark lands, but those embarrassed they cannot remember a name from four days previously.

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Finding Excalibur

Posted on 25th June 2022 by 192.168.1.1

‘Go to Shapwick Nature Reserve. You can walk the bronze age track’.

The Reserve last month became only the second National Nature Reserve in the country, a place of tranquility away from traffic and development.

We easily found not only the reconstructed bronze age path through the marshland, but, unexpectedly, unanounced,  at a distance along the path, there was a monument to the sword Excalibur.

The inscription on the monument was drawn from Thomas Malory’s King Arthur and His Knights, ‘Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England’. The man to draw the sword from the stone would be the young Arthur.

No explanation for the presence of the sculpture was offered. No panels of interpretation told the story of the sword in the stone. There was nothing that would have made the monument meaningful to someone not familiar with Arthurian legend. Was this the place where, at the end of the days of Arthur, Excalibur was thrown into the waters of Avalon?

Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, tells of Sir Bedivere’s throwing Excalibur into the waters and of a boat coming for the dying king.

Then Sir Bedivere departed, and went to the sword, and lightly took it up, and went to the water side; and there he bound the girdle about the hilts, and then he threw the sword as far into the water as he might; and there came an arm and an hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.

So Sir Bedivere came again to the king, and told him what he saw. Alas, said the king, help me hence, for I dread me I have tarried over long. Then Sir Bedivere took the king upon his back, and so went with him to that water side. And when they were at the water side, even fast by the bank hoved a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and among them all was a queen, and all they had black hoods, and all they wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur. Now put me into the barge, said the king. And so he did softly; and there received him three queens with great mourning; and so they set them down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head.

Perhaps beneath the soft marshy ground, Excalibur still lies somewhere waiting to be found.

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Ghosts revived

Posted on 20th June 2022 by 192.168.1.1

The Point. In that privatisation of public space it was renamed the O2 and then when they withdrew from the market it became the 3 Arena. Presenters on one of the Dublin music stations call it the 2.3. The sign at the tram stop outside says, ‘The Point’, so The Point it will remain.

Before the development of huge outdoor venues, The Point was a place where major artists would play. I saw Bob Dylan and Fleetwood Mac play here (and Diana Ross, although I don’t tell people about that).

The Point became a place for laying a ghost. Fleetwood Mac’s Rhiannon had become the backing music to a time of isolation and loneliness when I was 20. Three decades later, I stood in The Point and listened to the tale of the Welsh witch with complete equanimity.

More than a dozen years after the velvet tones of Stevie Nicks filled the space of the old docks depot, it is time to spend an evening under its roof again.

The loneliness of those days in Surrey four decades ago is again pervasive – and there is no-one whom to blame except myself.

What was it that Springsteen sang in The River, “is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?”

Dreams are dreams precisely because they do not belong to the realm of reality, they are foolish, fond imaginings. They are shreds of the fantastical and threads of the impossible.

Confrontation with the sense of having pushed a self-destruct button comes with standing among the crowds awaiting the concert by Elbow. The band’s Looking like a beautiful day provided a theme tune to the loss of everything there had been.

To be honest, I am not even sure now why I spent €55 on the ticket. Perhaps it seemed cheap when compared with other ticket prices in Dublin (tickets I saw on sale for The Eagles at Lansdowne Road were €200). Perhaps it seemed to offer a way of marking an end to the working year, the state exams coming to a conclusion.

Perhaps the mood is just post-viral fatigue, the shingles still require the consumption of a pack of Panadol every day. Perhaps it is the onset of some syndrome. Perhaps it is simply a confrontation with reality, a signal to look around and try to find a route out of the bind into which I have tied myself. Perhaps there will be a line in a song to lay a ghost.

 

 

 

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