A Portrait Of (A) Death

I’ve seen quite a lot of dead people in my time and been with a few when they died.  Two were peaceful, the others weren’t, and the worst was the Squire.  When I got the call from Mama about the diagnosis – they were in Herefordshire and I was in Newbury - I didn’t know how to process it, to be honest.  He’d been a giant in my life, a sort of living hero as well as in adulthood a friend.  All of us, including Mama, assumed Mama would go first.  This wasn’t meant to happen!

Anyway, he had cancer of the oesophagus, pretty advanced, and though they were going to operate they didn’t reckon much to his chances.  I’m not sure when this all was now, sometime in the early 80s, anyway, and the call was during a school holiday, I had just had a new partner move in with me, and I couldn’t quite get my head around things.  Essentially I didn’t eat, just drank Holsten Pils lager for a week and played pool at my ‘local’ pub.  I wasn’t that great at pool but that week nobody beat me.  They weren’t being kind – they didn’t know – but I just put all of myself into it so I didn’t have to think about the Squire.  An interesting lesson, in retrospect, on what can be achieved with sheer concentration.

I guess my subconscious maybe needed that space to chug along, and so it was at the week’s end I suddenly knew what to do.  Then it was just down to logistics.  Valda, Rex’ Mum was the new partner.   I’ve got to give her her due; she hadn’t been moved in for long and I said I was selling the house, quitting my job and going down to Herefordshire.  She said that was fine and quit hers too.  The head was very kind and offered to keep the job open but I didn’t think it was fair on the kids or the staff since I didn’t know how long I’d be away so I turned the offer down. 

I was fortunate.  I’d bought a little terraced house after leaving my first wife, dear Magee and then living with Annie for a while in a rented farmhouse and then leaving her.  Valda moved in after I’d been there for quite a bit.  Property prices had shot up and I lived next door to an estate agent which wanted to expand, so I flogged it off to them.  At the same time I got in touch with folk in Herefordshire and rented a little black and white that was about a mile, max, from my parents.

The Squire had his operation and it went much better than expected and they even reckoned there was a chance there would be no recurrence.  Judas, that was a bloody Hallelujah time.  I drank Pol Roger and Bollinger with great, relaxed and joyous enthusiasm, and a fair few bottles of Remy to celebrate.  I was gloriously happy for the Squire and Mama, but also a bloody dark demon had been ripped from my back too.  I have to wonder if that was selfish?  Maybe it was.  Anyway, in that great cloud of bubbles and happiness I also asked Valda to marry me and she consented.  Everything was groovy!

Obviously I was living off capital and that wasn’t going to last for ever.  Luck was with me though, and I got a job straight away, there being an immediate vacancy, teaching English to mostly top ‘O’ level sets – the easiest money I’ve ever made! – and Valda and I got married in a quiet ceremony with the Squire and Mama in attendance.  The Squire looked good, strong and relaxed, and it was a grand day.  Little did I know how much it was going to cost me to untangle the end results of that moment in time, but that’s another story!

Everything did seem great.  Valda and I decided – well, truth be told, I decided but Valda was happy enough with the decision – to get a job abroad and there was a post came up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia wanting a couple, with the post to commence in around 9 months.  It was a large British School and the contracts were guaranteed by the British Council.  The salaries and conditions were more than acceptable, there was a promoted post which they gave to me, so that was us sorted.  So we thought.

Then the Squire started to show symptoms that the cancer had returned, and this was the first time I’d seen him ducking the truth, because he did not face up to the fact that this was the case for as long as he possibly could.  Maybe I would have done the same.  I don’t know.  I guess some day I might find out.  Anyway, in the end the biopsy showed that it was back and after further tests it was decided that this time it was inoperable.  I remember, I’d taken him to Hereford County Hospital to get the results.  He came out into the rain and got into the car, telling me that he was going to have to give Mama some bad news.  Mama knew.  We all knew … and now the Squire knew, whether he wanted to or not.  I told him that I thought she wouldn’t be surprised and we drove home in silence.

You know that thing about no man being an island?  It’s bollocks.  Sure, we were there for him.  When you get a death sentence, though, that, in the final analysis, makes you an island.  Your death is personal, obviously, but you really do have to do the dying.  Nobody can do it for you, no matter how much they love you.  In some ways, too, everybody who loves the person who is dying is an island also.  Yes, again we’re all there for each other but in the end you’re in a place you can’t really share.  I couldn’t go on about my feelings, for instance, to my mother.  Hell, she was his wife and I was one of the people on the scene who was meant to be helping hold it all together.  We were all islands, in truth, with temporary bridges joining us in this particular event.

I’m not saying any of the above for a ‘poor me’ moment.  It was as it was.  I’m just writing of a great learning experience in life.  Your death’s your own, and in the finals analysis, so is everybody else’s grief their own.  Hanging together through the whole experience is to be highly recommended though, and we hung together well, including Valda who was obviously new on the scene.  Remarkably, actually, we all had some good times after that, after all accepting what was really happening and our roles in that ‘play’.

The Squire’s health deteriorated pretty quickly after this.  I quit my job again and Valda and I moved in with the folks.  A sort of pattern was fairly quickly established.  You know that thing where you think about 4 o’clock in the morning as the darkest hour before dawn and all that?  Well, I think we felt, without discussing it (and erroneously, it transpired) that that was when the Squire would die.  He very quickly lost weight because his throat was wrecked, so he drank some slosh that was apparently full of goodness but wasn’t, and eventually his strength really failed and he spent a lot of time in bed.

On the theory that 4 in the morning was the big danger – bloody daft in retrospect – and the fact that the Squire now didn’t sleep in long stretches but dozed off and on, which became increasingly the case when the morphine was essential more often, it was necessary to rethink how we dealt with the days and nights so he always had company.  We didn’t want a nurse. Too impersonal.  So, during the day I’d snatch bits of sleep and Mama and Valda spent time with him and then I’d sit up with the Squire all night.  We’d talk about this and that; anything from Einstein’s theory of relativity and my difficulties with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to times he’d had as a child, times we’d had together when we shared a house in Wiltshire and Mama was in Herefordshire, politics, philosophy, favourite places, authors, plays, music – hell, we talked about everything.  It was great!  And then when the light started to change and we could make out the hedge from his bedroom window there was a little moment of unvocalized triumph.  We’d made it to another day!

I’ve written before about his confession about cheating at Pooh Sticks for all those years, about watching Noggin the Nog together, his taking up the fags again, and enjoying the whiskey.  We had some good times, and, yep, some pretty low ones, but the good way outweighed the bad until pretty close to his death.  Of course, he didn’t die at 4 in the morning, more like 11.00 ish, but I happened to be with him.  It suddenly became pretty shitty.  He managed to tell me I’d better get Mama and I gave her a yell.  She cuddled him as everything went to hell in a handcart and told him to let go, and I injected him with a huge dose of morphine so he didn’t really have any choice other than to do what she said.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I reckon when somebody dies it is obvious pretty much immediately that they’ve left the building, so to speak.  That has been my experience, anyway.  When, years later Mama died, very peacefully, I was sitting ‘vigil’ with my brother-in-law, a doctor, and though her breathing slowly became shallower and sometimes stopped, when she died it was obvious. Thus it was with the Squire, but Mama needed to do all the old stuff with his pulse and then a mirror, which was fair enough.  Her island had just had the most important bridge blown-up.  I’ve got to say, during all of this my Mama was incredibly good, selfless and strong, right from the first diagnosis.  T’was not always thus, but this was her finest hour, as they say, or year really.  Anyway, Valda phoned the doctor who was a family friend, while I put the Squire’s teeth back in – I remembered when his father died and we went to view the body he was really upset that his teeth weren’t in, so this was a duty I felt I had to undertake.  It was somewhat uncomfortable, in truth, but there you go; it needed to be done and was.

As I was doing my stuff and we waited for the doctor, Mama went down the garden and sat in the summer house.  She was calm.  It was a relief, in truth.  Valda made some coffee and I finished the rest of the glass of whiskey the Squire had been drinking earlier and sat quietly and looked at his body, sharing that last drink together, sort of, and toasting his freedom and journey.  My solitude was broken with the arrival of Brian, the doctor, who checked to confirm the obvious and then asked where Mama was.  I told him and he went down stairs to go to the summer house.  Moments later I heard an almighty crash.  I shot down stairs and found him unconscious on the floor.  He’d whacked his head on a low beam.

Now, dearhearts, I don’t know if you’ve ever had to put your dead father’s teeth in while you mother grieves in the summer house, but somehow Brian’s timing for knocking himself out wasn’t really all that great!  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and briefly, to my shame, thought of kicking him!  He came round quickly however, staggered to his feet and somehow had the ability to realise that everything was teetering on the edge of becoming a farce.  He looked at the beam, apologised profusely and tottered off down the garden rubbing his creased head while Valda waved me to a chair in front of the Rayburn and put a coffee in front of me.  Suddenly everything was so normal it was bizarre!

Anyway, the normal stuff then had to be done, and it was blessedly busy, busy for a while.  Of course the church and crem were packed, everybody sang up  (It was odd somebody else, a friend of the family, being up in the organ loft playing, since the Squire had normally been the organist)  and everything went off very well, in terms of there being no further fiascos!  With the singing, though, there was a little part of me hoping that he’d play an extra verse, as the Squire did if he thought people hadn’t sung very well, or sometimes dropped a verse because he’d lost count and everybody sort of blurted without music and then ground to a halt.  Naturally it didn’t happen.  Those days were over, for ever.

That was it, sort of, but of course it wasn’t.  As well as learning about being an island I learned something else, something which is extremely selfish and makes me really a somewhat tacky human being.  For months, if not years, my abiding memory of the Squire was of the way his body looked when he left it, sans dents.  It was the image that came to mind whenever I thought of him, not all the fun things we’d done over the years.  Not him as a tall, charismatic, handsome, smiling man.  His life was defined by his death, which was ridiculous but it was really hard, and required a conscious effort, to shake off.

When my Mama was dying it was obviously my filial duty to be there to the end, and her end was a different ball-game altogether, and I wanted, of course, to offer whatever comfort one could.  Because, I think, her death was so ‘comfortable’ and she looked pretty much as she had for some years, it somehow didn’t define her life when I thought about her.  Other deaths, unfortunately, tended to do to me what the Squire’s did, in terms of remembering them.  This cumulative bit of experience made me do what was tacky, but before that I had to go and visit my most beloved sister Carol as she was dying, at 49 which still has the illogical power to make me angry at the ‘injustice’ of the event.  She’d had MS for yonks, but her death was caused by an aneurism in the brain.  Whether that was something to do with the MS I don’t know, but anyway it wasn’t a bad death.  She sort of hovered in a kind of surreal, betweeny world for a bit and we had conversations about a Plantagenet man, of all things, and weird stuff which made no sense but seemed quite smooth at the time, oddly requiring no effort on my part to stay in the groove with her.  Anyway, it wasn’t bad, just far, far too early, but didn’t really define her life too much in my memory.

As a total aside, before I reveal the tacky thing, a little amusing event.  Carol and I had had a deal for years that the first one of us to die, the other one had to go to the funeral in a yellow Rolls Royce.  My brother-in-law Ian who sat with me some years later while Mama died, knew of this deal and he was happy enough for me to go for it, but also kindly said that I didn’t have to if I didn’t now want to or couldn’t.  I don’t when you last tried to hire a yellow Rolls Royce for a funeral but if you ever have to, you’ll find they’re not as common as you might think!  Patti, my partner at that time, was relentless, however, and managed to get one.  The last funeral it had been to was Freddy Mercury’s.  Anyway, my dear Mama had been going on fairly relentlessly about how incredibly vulgar it was but when it pulled up at the house she apparently had a change of mind.  She looked at it, in all its beautiful canary yellowness, and said, “I think I’ll come with you Christopher” to which I replied, “Fat too vulgar for you Mama” and Patti and I got in and off we went.  End of story other than to say that when we got to the crem we thought we must be hitting the end of another funeral because of the crowds of folk outside the doors.  We weren’t.  These were people who had come for Carol’s funeral but couldn’t get in because it was packed inside apart from seats reserved for the family.  A whole lot of people, rightly, loved my big sister!

So, that bit of light (ish) relief aside, on to the tacky and selfish thing that I have learned from various experiences.  When it looks like somebody is dying, don’t go to see them.  Oh, I would if I felt I could make a serious difference to them somehow, or their family.  I don’t however, if I know they are supported by friends and family and I’d just be going to say goodbye, essentially.  If relevant I write to them, sometimes daily, as was recently the case, but I don’t go to see them and, hugely selfishly and importantly for selfish old me, their final decline and death does not define them for me.  I remember them pretty much hale and hearty.  I can celebrate a life, not remember a death. 

Now, it’s wonderful, though tacky.  These folk remain ‘untainted’ by dying in my memory. There can be odd, somewhat bizarre spin-offs from this but in a strange way they’re quite pleasant.  As an example, I met somebody here in France who had once lived in Kerlanguet with her now dead husband,  and loved it as I do.  She was in her 80s, tech savvy, artistic, into dowsing, hypnosis, flower essences etc – a real broad character – and we became firm friends.  She’d come every week and we’d paint together, eat cakes and natter.  (Actually Ali and Barbara would paint and I’d sort of colour in!)  Anyway, we really hit it off and in the 4 years or whatever, we knew her, we really became friends, the sort of friendship which usually only happens when you’ve known somebody for years.

So, what happened was she started presenting with the symptoms the Squire had.  She had all sorts of bits and pieces wrong with her wee body – nothing wrong with her mind though – so she was used to odd physical things happening to her.  Now, I’m not a doctor but it did seem similar, and of course I Googled it.  I didn’t feel I should say, ‘I think you’ve got cancer of the oesophagus’ – in retrospect I wish I had - but I did nag her constantly to see a doctor.  When at last she did, it was confirmed. 

Off to hospital she went but being frail it was difficult for anybody to do anything.  She had with her her very dear friend, a constant and most loyal and dutiful companion, during her decline and eventual move to a hospice to die.  Family came and lots of friends visited.  I didn’t.  I wrote often long letters to her just about every day and they pleased her and cheered her.  She knew I wasn’t keen on hospitals, not having had a ball in such establishments myself, and perhaps knew more, but anyway, it was as it was so I didn’t see her ‘decline and fall’.

Now I drive past her house which has the shutters closed and my mind plays foolish tricks, seeing her in there, listening to loud music and painting, the whole death thing being a ‘mistake’ or hoax.  I still see her alive, as I do another less close but none-the-less real friend who I didn’t go to see in his final days, knowing his family and friends were supporting him, and now I see him in my mind’s eye as big, bluff, laughing and taking the piss out of me about Brexit!  It’s selfish, I know, and if everybody did it, which is a question one needs to ask oneself if one is truly exploring one’s responsibilities in life, it would be a disaster.  In my defence, if there weren’t sufficient family and friends about and somebody I knew well was dying I’d do my damnedest to be there for them.  Otherwise, though, I won’t, and my life is much better for it!

As for my own death, I’m most certainly not ready now.  I don’t fear death; I do however, fear a death that is lingering, painful or, most of all, includes dementia, for it is my mind that most matters to me.  I don’t fear the personally big event, and am very curious and quite excited to understand the more relevant existence that will be clearer to me when my clogs have popped, though I do not want to leave loved ones and beasties.  I know I’ll see them again but the circumstances will be different and anyway, they matter very much to my daily / general existence and it is hard to imagine that not being the case, or not ‘hurting’ because of their absence.  On the other hand I’m looking forward to seeing family and friends again, or at least those who are still doing whatever it is we do in between incarnations. 

Looking worldwide, 151,600 people die each day; that’s 151,600 personal and family griefs and, in relative terms, often tragedies.   Almost double the amount are born each day, 360,000; that’s potentially 360,000 joyous celebrations.  Personally I find the numbers staggering and am unable to get my head round so much grief and so much joy.  Also, if you believe in reincarnation, as I do, one has to wonder where the 208,400 additional souls come from!  Maybe one is being somewhat parochial, assuming that they come from the dominant species of this planet.  Maybe they come from an inferior species on another one.  I don’t know and, in the final analysis, I accept that there are certain things which are inevitably unknowable.  I find it a curious conceit that different kinds of Mosques, Churches, Temples and Gurdwaras etc contain billions of people who apparently know what the plan is, what God is thinking and what his – it’s generally a him, though not for Hindus – rules of play for the game of life are.  Me, I think what I think based on personal experience, talking with loads of people, thinking and reading.  I have no desire to encourage people to my truth since I don’t for a moment think I, or anybody else, is capable of understanding the creator of the whole kit and caboodle.  The idea is absurd!  From my own experience I know there is an immeasurably large amount of love involved and as for the rest, whatever else is going on, I’m sure it will all work out okay. Relative to my belief systems, logically, new life is worthy of celebration, each an individual, unique and to be treasured, but death should be celebrated also as, at times relief from pain etc. but more importantly because the ‘soul’ / consciousness or whatever is going on into the next phase of development.  Our grief is a ‘selfish’ thing, in a sort of unselfish way, because we’re going to miss whoever it is who has died.  Logic, however, doesn’t take the pain of loss away, nor the anger when the death is that of a child, or happens too soon to a very good person like my sister Carol, who was the pick of the litter! And that’s about it, dearhearts.  That’s my portrait of (a) death.  C.S. Lewis said, ‘We do not have souls; we are souls’, or something to that effect.  I agree, and life as we define it normally is not the most precious thing there is, souls are, whatever they are, souls and love. Love to you all.

Letters To My Eldest Niece to Answer Queries About Her Mum’s Childhood

Hi Lyndis,

This is Dartan Hall where your Mum, your Aunty Lyndis and I grew up in - where I was born, indeed - when we lived in Ireland. They were different times, less complicated, less money conscious. Your Mum used to practise her cello under the bows of an oak that was near the house and I used to drive my pedal car round the kitchen, much to the annoyance of cook. I remember once your Aunt Lyndis had done something to annoy your Mama and we were all woken by screams of pain and horror. Your Mama had put a hedgehog - Tiggy by name - in Lyndis' bed. Probably the world is a better place now, but it was a joyous childhood

Hello again Lyndis. 

Okay, you asked, what happened next and how did we end up in England.  I know this is public but it’ll make it easier for your siblings and my cousins to read and chip into if interested.  Also, remember that it was long ago and the memory does strange things! That said, here goes! 

Okay, I’m guessing we moved because we all missed your Mum.   This meant the Squire, never motivated by money or power, moved up the greasy pole in education anyway and took a job in, of all places, London, but of course that was logical, since that was where your Mum attended Sadlers Wells.  It was a hell of change but it did mean your Mum could live at home a lot of the weekends.  I wasn’t happy because it meant I left my Nanny, Pam, (who I was far too old to need!) in Ireland, but I was pleased that I could see your Mum, though in those days we would often fight like hell at every opportunity!   (She being older and stronger, when it all got physical I developed the strategy of lying in a corner of a room and kicking outwards.  Great defence if you ever need it!)

We moved into a Victorian house in Teddington.  It was okay, but very different from Dartan.  It did have Teddington Lock to go and look at though, and unremarkably there were a lot more people around!   There was a little Prep school near there which I attended as a day boy.  I’m not sure what happened to Lyndis, school-wise.  Anyway, we didn’t stay there long because your Mum’s knee started moving out of joint which meant the end to her aspirations to be a ballet dancer.   I don’t know it, but I think the folks weren’t really enamoured with living in a city, even though in those days Teddington was very sleepy. 

Anyway, the Squire got a Headship in Carlisle and we upped sticks and moved to Copper Hall in a village about 15 miles away.  (Cous Ginnie, do you remember swapping houses for a holiday, you going there and us going to your Manse in Swindon?)   There your Mum ended up attending an Art College, Aunt Lyndis went to a Convent and after a wee while in a local school, when I was 10 I went back to Ireland to the boarding school the Squire had been teaching in, and ‘my’ beloved Pam used to come and visit me with sweets and comics. 

It was fairly soon after this that your Mama had an accident, throwing her arms in the air in a comical gesture and catching her hand on a meat hook which was fixed into a beam.  (You probably know, but just in case, people used to hang salted meat on them to keep them through the winter.  They were big and sharp!  Copper Hall had them in the kitchens but your Mum was visiting a friend and they had a smaller house and therefore the (obviously unused) meat hooks were in their sitting room.)  Anyhow, she ripped her large finger to buggery and was hospitalised and her fingers, muscles, tendons, whatever were sewn back together as well as possible, but as you will know, a particular finger never quite returned to its original mobility.  

After a while when she came home – I was told about this by the Squire and Mama, as I was away in Ireland – the hospital proved to have extraordinarily good post-operative care systems and a handsome young Scottish doctor who had performed the operation visited the house several times to ensure she was healing properly.   This, of course, was your Dad.  The rest, as they say, is history with regard to that story.  They started courting and then got married.  I remember the wedding well.   They made a handsome couple. 

Your Mama remembered her first sight of your father’s naked body well also.  In those days everything was a bit more ‘innocent’.  Also, then stag night’s weren’t a weekend away on the lash in Amsterdam, they were the night before, and your father’s friends had got him ridiculously pissed – your folks told me this story in your house (was it Lonsdale/Langley Avenue?)  anyway, they told it to me in the sitting room there, and said ‘friends’ thought it a merry jape to take him back to Carlisle Hospital and put him in a bath of some kind of green dye.  When he woke up he managed to use a pumice stone to remove it from his face and hands so he was fine for the wedding and festivities but when he stripped down, the first time your Mama saw him in all his naked glory, the rest of him was like the Jolly Green Giant!   

After that, as you know, I guess, nobody talked to them about contraception – at least I assume this is the case, since it certainly wasn’t for religious reasons - and they had the 5 of you.  I seem to remember that by the time Morag was born you were only 7 or 8?  I also seem to remember you all being Christened by Uncle Peter, the Squire’s brother, and at least 4 of you were ambulatory.

Backing up a bit, your Papa, as was good form in those days, had asked the Squire if he could have your Mum’s hand in marriage.  It was obvious to the folks and even to a small boy like me, that he was a man of good character and they were madly in love, so he said yes.  As a little joke the Squire also said she was a little immature but like a good wine she’d mature well with age and if she hadn’t reached full maturity by the age of 30 he’d have her back.  Talk about a hostage to fortune! 

On her 30^th birthday apparently your father turned up on your grandparent’s door step with your Mum and the 5 of you and handed her back!   You know how serious your Dad could look if he wanted to?   Well, apparently he managed to look that serious and then some and the Squire and Mama thought for a minute or two he was serious!  

When they were first married they were really poor in the early days.  Junior Housemen, as they were called in those days, were appallingly paid and worked ludicrously long hours.  Your Papa sometimes, as a surgeon, worked up to 40 hours on the trot with little or no sleep.  He had remarkable stamina and dedication to duty.  Anyway, they had an account in a garage – people used to do that a lot in those days, indeed even I did for a few years when I started working – which was paid monthly, so if they had been to see my parents several times already in a given month and eaten them out of house and home they used to fill up the car and drive to Paisley and eat your Dad’s parents out of house and home and drive back the same evening.  There being no motorways in those days it was a fair old trip! 

I remember that they had a flat in Carlisle and when I was back from Ireland one holiday I went to stay with them for the first time.  It was winter and when we got to the flat there was a power cut.  I think I’d only just got back from school, literally, that day, and the crossing hadn’t been great and I was knackered (and it was bloody cold!) so by torchlight they showed me to my bed and I crashed out.

Next morning I woke early in the half light, a bit disorientated about where I was, and, I must be truthful, I yelled wildly, madly, extremely loudly and your parents bundled in to see what the problem was, and I pointed a trembling finger, unable to speak – Imagine that! - at the full sized skeleton which was standing at the end of my bed, looming over me.  Your Mum said something like, “Oh, that’s Fred.  He’s Ian’s” and once they’d got me calmed down they went off back to bed.  I felt a bit of a fool and somewhat a coward, but I got up, dressed and sat quietly in the sitting room, alone with my thoughts, until they got up. 

I think it / he was called Fred.  Do you remember him from your childhood?  Was he? I can’t remember seeing him when your folks moved to Glasgow.  Anyway, from here on I guess you know the story, and I hope I haven’t bored you, but you did ask. 

To finish I’ll just say something of my relationship with your Mum and, a bit, your Dad.  As said earlier, your Mum and I used to fight, but after I started living in the Royal, somehow when I went ‘home’ for hols I often ended up staying with your folks.  Your Dad and I had a slightly prickly relationship.  I was a boy, growing into teenager, grunt mode and knowing all the answers.  In retrospect he was very patient, forgiving and always, always welcoming. 

As I got older, however, he still treated me as a boy until, to my shame, and perhaps they told you about this, on one occasion, most extraordinarily, whilst we were having a row standing in your sitting room, he pushed me physically. I’m afraid, though I eschew violence whenever possible, if violence is called for I go from nought to a hundred in a nanosecond.  So … I picked up the coffee table, whacked him with it and then unsheathed the sword by the fire which was used for poking the coals and chased him upstairs where he locked himself in the bathroom and you Mama persuaded me to stop hacking at the door and yelling at him.  Did she say, “Think of the children?”  I’m not sure, but probably not.  After that I think I behaved a bit more cautiously and your Dad no longer treated me as a boy, and for all those many years afterword I’d like to think we were good friends. 

I said, however, I wanted to tell you about my relationship with your Mama.  We became great friends in a way that I think only siblings can.  When you were in Glasgow you may remember I visited often, coming straight from school at the end of terms, and for extended periods – though not as often or for such extended periods, I sincerely hope, as my Mama!   That continued through Uni and on through times of working in the UK.

As later I wandered the world, when ‘home’ on leave I would see her and you all as much as possible.  We had a strange bond.  We ‘clicked’.  We made each other laugh hysterically, easily.  We knew what each other was thinking, a great deal, without a word.  In retrospect I think even more highly of your father, for a lesser man might have been irrationally jealous. 

Your Mum (and sometimes Dad) took me to the theatre, museums and galleries and helped to educate me about art.  She ‘infected’ my eyes so that I looked at art and in some ways the world differently.  I started seeing people differently, also. We were ‘easy’ together, always.  When she phoned me in, say Jakarta, I’d pick up the phone and say, “Hi Carol”.  No, I didn’t say “Hi Carol” to everybody when I answered the phone!  It was only your Mum, and though nothing was planned for a phone call, I always knew it was her and answered without thinking. 

I still dream of her quite often, and often the dreams are so vivid about the absurd things we talked about that it is hard to make myself believe when I wake that somehow, in some incomprehensible way, it didn’t really happen.  She was, of course, my sister but your Mum, and she loved you all dearly, fiercely and proudly.  I was never jealous of that and loved you all also, because she loved you and because you were (are) all lovely children and then adults. 

I see your Mum in all of you and though it has been ‘forever’ since we’ve all seen each other, what I know of you now gives me no cause to change my mind.  As you know, she was a remarkable human being in so many extraordinary ways, she was a remarkable mother and she remains my remarkable sister and friend. 

Love to you all.

‘Unc’

(As Nicky likes to say)

Unsettling Conversation In A Pub

I've got to say this, even though it's unlikely anybody will read it, which truly saddens me because I've spent a lot of time on it because I think it hugely important. Somehow, also, if I don't say it then I'm complicit, accepting a status quo which is very wrong. So, here’s a thing. I went to a pub one night and before drink was taken, by me at least, got into a conversation about Islam. Those I spoke with were friends and had, apparently, met Muslims but, as is often the case, not lived for any length of time in a Muslim country, had no Muslim friends and I doubt these good folk had read the Qur’an, or had much idea of the thinking behind the hadeeths in the Sunnah, the difference between Sunni and Sh’ite Muslims, or much about ‘fringe’ groups, like Sufis, Salafis, Alawites etc. the latter group being pretty important, for instance, if one wishes to understand the Syrian civil war, without even factoring in Climate Change, crop failures and resultant moves of young, male farm workers into the cities like Aleppo to find work, where they found none and, ‘The devil makes work etc’.

It’s a bit likely, too, that they in addition don’t know that the Qur’an also contains most of the Jewish scripture which Christians refer to as the Old Testament, or that Muslims revere Jesus (pbuh) {Isa} as a great prophet and believe he performed miracles. They also believe he will return to Earth before the Day of Judgment to restore justice and to defeat al-Masih ad-Dajjal ("the false messiah"), also known as the Antichrist. (A crock, as far as I’m concerned, but it is an important feature in Islam, with Christian and Jews being seen as people of ‘The Book’, monotheists with many shared prophets and the same God/Allah/Yahweh.)

My friends also, as so many people do, appear to believe that the percentage of Muslims in European countries’ populations is higher by far than is really the case, and that Muslims, with their (totally exaggerated) numbers and perceived vastly different values will take over their countries in the foreseeable future. Apart from the fact that the vast majority of Muslims wouldn’t want to, and their faith obliges them to obey the laws of whatever country they live in, the Muslim population in Europe as a whole is only 4.9%. (See graph below for population percentages by European country – and please, spare me the fact that the numbers have increased in the last couple of years; I know, so maybe it 5% or 5.1%. Big deal.)

So, anyway … as is often the case, it was ‘Muslims bad’, nearly all 2 billion of them! For perspective – there wasn’t much – of those two billion only 17 were involved in 9/11. A Physicians for Social Responsibility study, conducted by a team that included Nobel Prize winners, determined that at least 1.3 million Muslim men, women and children have died as a result of ‘The War On Terror’, prosecuted by the Coalition since then, but the real figure might be as high as two million. Fewer than 40,000 people have died worldwide as a result of terrorism in the same period.

When you look at it like that, it’s surprising more Muslims aren’t pissed off with the West. Oh yes, and here’s another thing, the influx of refugees etc. was caused by us interfering in Iraq and Libya and encouraging Syrian opposition groups to overthrow Al-Assad, and a Christian country, Russia, supporting Al-Assad and assisting his butchering of his own folk. Galatians 6:7 ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ It just so happens that it says that in the Torah, the Bible and the Qur’an.

I don’t enjoy being an apologist for Islam/ the truth, especially since I think if people want to have, and verbalise, strong opinions, for or against, they should feel some sense of responsibility to educate themselves or stay silent. So often they do not. Also, I’m not into it, Islam, that is, and you have no idea how weary I feel, listening to stuff that is very short on facts and having to say the same things over and over to try to counter the darkness, because if I don’t I’m complicit, just as very, very many Germans were when people started bad-mouthing the Jews in the same way. Still, I have to ask, why don’t all people see this?

Anyway, this was pretty much the usual experience I have when discussing Islam with folk who are making judgements based on little evidence, but on this occasion a new feature crept in. Some little jokes, not in the best possible taste but mea culpa also, followed concerning suicide vests, my waistcoat prompting the thoughts. I tuned out of the conversation a bit at that point because I was also talking with another couple of friends about cars – multitasking! I caught, however, an unsettling ‘joke’ where somehow I was lumped in with suicide bombers, but apparently then it was okay, perhaps because I’m a ‘Muslim apologist’, to take the piss out of me, though I’m a tad unsure. Anyway, please don't believe I'm some wilting flower, offended or hurt by my friends. I'm not, I'm confident in our friendship and I'm just 'curious' about how things change, things that somehow become acceptable but, in truth, aren't.

So, the joke ran along the lines of me needing to get help setting the timer on a bomb, one assumes because I’m an old fart and can’t see (I can) and then needing to set it for 10 minutes because, again I assume, I’m old and therefore, apparently very slow, and then followed a bit of mockery about me limping out, illustrated by one of my friends, which it is true I sometimes do when my back is less strong, though I think the vast majority of the time I don’t.

Now, dearhearts, maybe I’ve been insensitive, but I haven’t noticed people poking fun at me in such a manner before - and they were friends, it was gentle and most certainly not meant to hurt - and it seems to me – I accept I may be over-thinking – that somehow my being an Islamic apologist made it seem okay for these three lovely people to do so. It isn’t okay, not about me or anybody.

And, do you know, all this shit drains me because if something is important enough to feel strongly about then, call me old-fashioned, but in this age of information, ignorance is a choice, and just about everybody I’ve had these crap conversations with over the years is as bright or brighter than I am and the majority are good, kind, decent people … and ill-informed Islamophobic bigots, and because I care deeply about many of them, and the future for my kids and humanity generally, one way or another, these forays into predictable darkness make me want to weep, truly, and at times give up in despair. Islam isn’t much of a problem, dearhearts, ignorance and resultant prejudice based on fear of the unknown is, and it might be nice if we stopped bombing the crap out of innocent people. You never know; if we stop killing their mothers, wives and children maybe they won’t feel inclined to kill ours.