Funny old blog this one. I had the urge to write and started several anecdotes to see which one appealed enough for me to elaborate further. I couldn’t choose between them so you’ve got the lot. Sorry.
The Living Years
I’m still sorting through Mum and Dad’s belongings, trying to decide what to keep, what to chuck and what to give to the hospice charity shop. Today I was tackling the last of their scrapbooks and photo albums. Most stuff I’m happy not to keep; a few items I’ve placed on the to-be-decided pile. I know I won’t look at most of it again, but I can’t yet bring myself to part with everything. One such item is a letter I wrote to Dad when I was five and he was away from home. Where he was isn’t important, neither was what I wrote (although the spelling, grammar and punctuation are impressive for such a wee bairn). It was the fact that he’d kept it, in his ‘special’ scrapbook. I never knew that. He died 14th March 2015, as undemonstrative as ever, apart from when he squeezed my arm on the 13th.
I’m still sorting through Mum and Dad’s belongings, trying to decide what to keep, what to chuck and what to give to the hospice charity shop. Today I was tackling the last of their scrapbooks and photo albums. Most stuff I’m happy not to keep; a few items I’ve placed on the to-be-decided pile. I know I won’t look at most of it again, but I can’t yet bring myself to part with everything. One such item is a letter I wrote to Dad when I was five and he was away from home. Where he was isn’t important, neither was what I wrote (although the spelling, grammar and punctuation are impressive for such a wee bairn). It was the fact that he’d kept it, in his ‘special’ scrapbook. I never knew that. He died 14th March 2015, as undemonstrative as ever, apart from when he squeezed my arm on the 13th.
Amazing Grace
One of my proudest ever stints was years ago as President of my college alumni society, following in the footsteps of previous incumbents such as Sir Ken Olisa, David Starkey and Dame Sarah Asplin. The morning after the Reunion Weekend dinner, where the President is supposed to deliver a suitable speech (mine wasn’t ‘suitable’, which is probably why it got belly laughs and table-thumping), the President is expected to attend Sunday service at the college chapel. Thank God for paracetamol. I’m not a Christian but usually hold the Church in high esteem because Mum and Dad were devout, and the Church is part of England and vice-versa; you can’t have one without the other. However, a previous unnerving episode with the Church had unravelled my life-long security blanket, and I was feeling a bit raggedy.
The lady chaplain took the service with a warm, quietly confident and commanding demeanour. She was both didactic and empathetic, funny yet reverent, and guided us through repentance and celebration as being one and the same thing. I welled up, confused by my recent distasteful ecclesiastical experiences and my sudden renewed feeling of belonging to a family I had no right to belong to. Except, even though I’m a non-believer, the Church should be about universal love, solace, tolerance, and forgiveness.
Never was “I once was lost, but now am found” so fitting.
Stairway to Heaven
This September I returned to college for another Reunion Weekend dinner and Sunday service. These days, I’m a lowly life-vice-president with no speeches and no other obligations. I went to chapel anyway because a couple of my friends were going. The lady chaplain had moved on and her replacement is a bit of a dish (God moves in mysterious ways). What really captured my attention, though, were the choir and the two organists. They were glorious and I’d have preferred to listen to only them rather than the chaplain (as long as I could still ogle him).
I stood at the altar for the Eucharist, facing the wall of glass that was the east window and the imperious plane tree just beyond. Boughs, branches and twigs reached out. Sunlight skipped through the spirited leaves and warmed my face. Behind me the choir sang the climax to an anthem by Judith Weir – soaring, uplifting, healing. Warmth to the front of me, angels to the rear, there I was, knowing at that moment what it must feel like to ascend to Heaven.
Highway to Hell
Recently I did what I swear I’d never do; I blocked someone on LinkedIn. I always said I would never block anyone whose views I found abhorrent, because I support free speech and don’t agree with ‘cancelling’ people. I also said I’d never block a troll because they might think they had me running scared and that they’d won.
I changed my mind!
I was agreeing with this woman that there was a climate emergency but disagreeing with the M25 blockades because of the impact on people - some disadvantaged or vulnerable - unavoidable congestion and long detours that result in more carbon emissions. For that eminently sensible point of view, she called me a fascist and proceeded to ‘react’ to every comment I’d made on that topic and everyone else’s replies to my comments until my feed was inundated with her, her and her again. Something in my gin told me to forget the bravado, block her and reduce my online visibility for a few days.
Note to police: if I’m found face down in a ditch, check my recent social media activity for the perp.
Blithe Spirit
I suppose because a lot of this blog is about death-stuff, I decided to contrive something around Blithe Spirit after that hilarious movie about a man’s dead wife who returns to haunt him before killing his new wife, and the two ghost-ladies then kill him. As I said, hilarious.
I suppose because a lot of this blog is about death-stuff, I decided to contrive something around Blithe Spirit after that hilarious movie about a man’s dead wife who returns to haunt him before killing his new wife, and the two ghost-ladies then kill him. As I said, hilarious.
Another reason why I like this as a sub-heading is because ‘blithe’ can mean unthinking and heedless or light-hearted and happy-go-lucky. The former evokes insensitivity and indifference, even callousness, whereas the latter is redolent of being smiley and relaxed. Ecky thump I love the English language! It’s the most interesting and quirky and thought-provoking and challenging. And fun. Blithe. What a word! It has two different meanings and, ominously, two polarised impacts: wounding and crushing, or healing and uplifting, and I have experienced both extremes from ‘blitheness’ in a short space of time. Did my head in.
It was philosopher Jacques Derrida who first said that the meaning of a text is as much dependent on the reader as the writer. (The same would apply to a listener and a speaker.) In other words, two people subject to the same words can attribute different meanings and motives to the writer / speaker. I think it’s reasonable to also apply this to a situation where one person interprets differently the same text delivered by the same author because of the different contexts in which they find themselves. For example, Laurel says or writes something to Hardy on Monday; it’s unremarkable and forgettable. Laurel says the same thing to Hardy on Friday, and all hell breaks loose because, this time, Hardy is feeling a bit anxious / paranoid / fed up / sensitive / overwhelmed / sense-of-humour failure / whatever. Laurel’s words hit a nerve and BAM!
What a to-do. And what are we to do: not say or write anything for fear of inadvertently upsetting someone? Welcome to the World of Woke! I wonder if Derrida anticipated that his paradigmatic philosophical pontifications of the 1960s would stigmatise and stifle academic debate and communications at all levels in the 21st century. I’m not claiming to have an academic mind, more like a curious one.
Curiouser and curiouser
Like ‘blithe’, ‘curious’ is another neat word with different meanings. I say I have a curious mind, by which I mean I’m inquisitive, questioning, testing. The alternative meaning is that my mind is peculiar or incomprehensible. I can’t argue with that, given that I don’t understand me a lot of the time either. Why would I be nonchalant about throwing away Dad’s favourite tie but stress about a letter that I’d written to him? Why did I react so emotionally to a couple of ordinary Church services when more profound ones leave me stoical? Why did I block a bully when I’d won the argument, evidenced by her resorting to name-calling? Was I in straw-camel’s-back territory?
It's fitting that I end this blog with a quote from one of Dad’s favourite authors. The most obvious one is "curiouser and curiouser" from Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I don’t do obvious. Instead, I’ll quote from another favourite of Dad’s, Rudyard Kipling, which kind-of answers the above questions:
“But the mad all are in God’s keeping”, Kim (1901) chapter 2.
I can empathise with the dilemma of what to throw away and what not. I'm a hopeless holder, evidence is my flat fit to burst at the seams where you have to walk sideways in corridor and rooms, tred carefully and where it takes me 1/2 an hr to clear a way to read the electric and gas meters and 3 hrs to clear a way to the gas boiler. So when said boiler ceases to work, which it has done twice this year I go into meltdown.
ReplyDeleteA shame you had to block someone, I've not been blocked yet only deleted! Some individuals are just out and bullies, some resort to bullying and name calling when they lack the intelligence to form an intelligent reposte to what they object to. When we were growing up there was a saying "sticks and stones may break my bones but calling names won't hurt me" or something like that. Unfortunately
In are current cotton wool woke society you can't even call a spade a spade, and banter is frowned on to the point of been positively discouraged in case someone is inadvertently upset. All I can say is Man up. Its called a back bone, grow one.
And finally, as for our heavily subsidised economy warriors who think disrupting innocent lives is acceptable in the name of enviromental campaigning, Bird Brains, sorry birds have more brains, where is Mad Max and his brigade of warriors when they're needed?