Memories of a Great Gran

As the “Annus Horribilus” that was 2011 draws to a close it dawned on me that I never wrote anything to celebrate the life of my Grandmother who died in May this year only days after we celebrated her 100th Birthday (Typical she said she didn’t want to be 100 – I think she only hung on because we told her she had to so we could see the telegram from the Queen!). It’s hardly surprising though given that her only son (my Dad obviously) had died in February which had hit her hard.

So I was thinking about the times that we spent at her house in Boldon Colliery when we were young and the things that stick out in my mind about those times. In the 50 years I had the honour of knowing her she only lived in 2 houses and they weren’t more than a few minutes walk apart. It was in the first of these two houses that I spent a lot of time as a child and Ihave very fond memories of that time which I’d like to share.

The thing I used to love most about staying there was that she’d let us sleep in her feather bed. The mattress was stuffed full of the things and it had to be fluffed up each morning but the joy of getting into it was unequaled. You would just sink into the mattress and be enveloped by the soft cosiness of it all. Unfortunately it didn’t last and by the early hours of the morning you were lying on a flat hard lump of a bed but it was worth it and we never passed up the chance to sleep in it.

She never owned her own house and when we were very young the house had a coal fire and an old range in the kitchen. Sadly both were lost in the 60’s as the house was modernised and while the fire in the living room was replaced by a coke fire, that gave my Grandfather no end of problems, the range was lost leaving only a little alcove which was a great place to hide. In the kitchen my Gran had a larder which was where she stored most of her food. She didn’t have a fridge for many years and all she had to keep things cool was a little coolbox. One of the disadvantages of this was that she always used sterilized milk which we all hated!

Even though she didn’t have a fridge until many years after they became a fixture in most peoples houses she did have an electric kettle many many years before any other person I knew! It was a big silver one which sat in one corner of the kitchen on top of her washing machine (which in those days only came out once a week on a Monday!). It had a huge big connector which was almost industrial grade and was a wonder to us who were used to the kettle on the cooker which, if you were lucky, whistled when it was ready!

Just to the left of the aforementioned alcove was the best thing in the kitchen – a cupboard that the door pulled down and became a worktop. My Gran would open it when she wanted to make a cup of tea, putting the cups on the rear side of the door and getting tea (or later teabags) out of the cupboard and putting them into the just warmed teapot before carrying it back to the kettle to be filled. She’d then return to the shelf/door and get out the sugar from the cupboard. There were always several packets of sugar in there, in fact there were aways several packets of most things – my Grandfather was a very organised person and the thought of running out of anything was abhorrent! He worked as a storeman in a local factory and in his spare time helped out in his brother shop down in the “Colliery”.

The other thing that was in the kitchen was the back door. This was the main entry to and from the house and the only time I remember the front door being opened would be if someone who didn’ know my Gran came round to the house. The main memory I have of the front door being open occurred every year on Christmas eve when the carol singers from the local chapel would come round and sing outside. It was always looked forward to and usually signalled that it was time for my brother and I to go to bed – which we didn’t mind because it meant Santa Claus was on his way!

In the days before Supermarkets and long before Asda opened their store in the town a trip to the big shops in Sunderland, Jarrow or South Shields was a long bus ride away so most of the day to day shopping was done locally in shops like the one owned by Grandad’s brother Uncle Norman. In addition to these there were mobile shops that came round. One was a mobile grocery and another a mobile butcher. I remember they used to stop outside and we’d go out with my Gran while she bought what was needed. The back of the van would be open and they’d put out a step and you’d get in the back where you’d be served from behind a counter. They knew all of their customers by name and knew exactly what they liked to buy!

But…..the one street merchant we would always love the arrival of most was Tommy, the Ice Cream man! His chimes would usually be heard around tea time and our ears would suddenly prick up and we’d look hopefully at Gran and Grandad. We’d usually get a ice cream cornet with “monkey’s blood” drizzled over it. If we were really lucky we’d get a 99 with a chocolate flake in it. Grandad was partial to an Ice Cream sandwich which was ice cream between 2 flat waifers and sometimes I’d have that. Often he would come before we’d eaten our dinner and on those occasions Grandad would take out a bowl and get it filled with dollops of ice cream which he’d then put in the pantry until after tea – how it didn’t melt I’ll never know!

Gran worked in the (Co-operative) Store in Sunderland, upstairs in the women’s clothing department, she was in her element as she always liked to be smartly dressed. We’d often pop into see her while she was at work which I loved but there was something that i always found daunting! As she worked up stairs we’d have to go up and see her and despite there being a lift my mum would always make us walk up the stairs. The stairs were wooden and open which meant that you could see right through them and this used to terrify me and I was always glad when we reached the top.

There are two things that I remember about being in the Store – the first was that while visiting my Gran at work my Dad suddenly appeared from behind a rack of clothes with a huge grin on his face and announced that he had passed his driving test! The other was most likely in around 1967 and there was a mobile display at the other end of the floor advertising the new radio station Radio1 – my Gran went off to get the DJ to sign an autograph for us and although at the time I had no idea who he was I would, many years later, discover that it had been Alan “Fluff” Freeman who had signed a bit of an old shoebox for her!

We’d go to my Gran’s by bus and this would take two bus journeys. The first would take us into Sunderland’s bus station from where we would have to walk around to Fawcett Street to catch another bus which took us over the bridge and out along the Newcastle Road (passing the bottom of the street we’d eventually move to) and on to West Boldon. There was a house on the right just before we got off the bus that we’d always look out for as he had filled his garden with wooden models of cartoon characters. Once we got off the bus it was still quite a walk to my Gran’s house and the journey would take us down through some open fields and over the burn.

The burn was a small stream that we crossed by an iron bridge but it was also so much more. It was an adventure playground for us kids and it was there we would play with one of the local kids who was slightly older than us (and apparently I found out later our parents hated!). I remember there was a little path that ran down the side of the bridge which gave us access to the side of the stream. It also allowed us to get under the bridge and hand from the supports. I don’t thing we ever managed to get across the river that way but I seem to recall falling in once so we must have tried. In later years we would be allowed to take the latest in a long line of dogs that my Gran owned (all of which seemed to have names that started with an S) for walks along side the burn but I never got to do any courting down there which my father told me he used to do!

Once on the other side of the burn it was a short walk up the other side and then you entered the estate between two blocks of garages. It was here that my earliest memory takes place – I can remember being pushed through the snow in a pushchair and being intrigued by the tracks left in the snow – I have no idea how old I was at the time. You then turned left and walked down the street and my Gran’s house was on the corner number 3. She used to have this really big garden as she was on the corner and we’d have bonfires on November 5th. I remember we’d go round the neighbour’s houses to see if they had any wood for the bonfire. One year my Grandad gave us his cap to put on the guy and that night we watched as it went up in flames. He then amazed us the next morning by coming down stairs wearing the cap! He’d bought a new one and had given us the old one to burn!

Sadly at some point the council took most of the garden back and built a block of seriously ugly garages on the land. We missed the garden but I think it was better in the long run for my grandparents as it was easier to mange and gave them a nice sheltered back garden. Once while playing Cowboys my Grandad helped us build a fire so we could cook some baked beans – he opened a tin and we heated them up over the fire – however when it came to eating them I lifted the folk to my mouth but just couldn’t put them in – I found the smell repulsive. I’ve never been able to eat baked beans and I’m sure this incident left me with a pathological hatred of the things!

My Gran on the other hand had a pathological hatred of thunderstorms. At the first sign of one she’d clear the stuff out of the cupboard under the stairs and replace it with one of the dining room chairs – she’d then stay in the cupboard until the storm had passed and stopped making her heido (never found out what that meant!). When she got older and moved to a bungalow, after my Grandad died, there wasn’t a cupboard under the stairs so I have no idea what she did. Maybe the fear subsided – if it did her other great hatred did not! She hated onions! Couldn’t bear them and she continued to tell everyone this almost till the day she died! My Dad explained in the eulogy he’d written for her funeral that it was because her father used to like to eat a boiled onion after his shift at the mine and in order to “please her man” her mother would spend most of the day cooking it which filled the house with the smell of onions!

The living room always held happy memories for us as that was wear we spent our Christmas’s. I can still remember the apprehension I would feel standing at the top of the stairs wondering if it was safe to go downstairs, had HE been yet? And coming down into the living room to find the floor strewn with toys and presents. Santa always used to set up the main present so one year we came down to find a Hot Wheels track, another year it was a Subbuteo set complete with floodlights and in the year that I have a picture of my brother and I smiling at the camera, still in our pyjamas, it was an Action Man Space capsule!

There would of course be a stocking and a sack full of presents from relations and neighbours like Mrs Dummer or Daisy from across the road. We’d eat all of the sweets from our stockings and never eat our Christmas dinner, much to my father’s annoyance! There was a long standing joke that whenever we sat down to eat on Boxing day a Police car would pull up outside (my Gran never had a phone in that house) and my Dad would be called away to investigate a murder or sudden death. We’d often end up getting the bus home with one small Christmas prezzie that we could carry and Dad would have to go and pick the rest up later!

The other thing that stood in the living room was Gran’s Cocktail cabinet – not that she was a great drinker (and gave up altogether after my father got her drunk one Christmas at our house years later). The cocktail cabinet was in my Gran’s living room for as long as I can remember and it could even have been as old as me! It’s certainly in the background of the Christmas picture and was there right next to her when she died. It was with great sadness that I had to accept that we couldn’t really give it a home when we were clearing out her house. But why was it so special? Simple really – whenever the door to that cocktail cabinet opened it meant something special was about to be given to you. When I was little it was sweets, as I got older it usually meant the Sherry (or Port) was coming out! or she’d have some money stashed in there ready to give us. The most magical words in the world were “Kevin, open that door for me will you…….”

Grandad, on the other hand, kept his money safely under lock and key in one of those old fashioned money boxes in the bottom of his wardrobe. When we went to visit he would always disappear upstairs into the front bedroom and get out the little black box before returning downstairs with it and handing us some money. It was at the window of the front bedroom that I saw him for the last time – he hadn’t been well and we’d been to visit. As we were leaving we l looked up and he was waving at us. Beth, my eldest daughter, suddenly shouted out “bye bye Great Grandad I won’t see you anymore!” much to our embarrassment – but she was right we didn’t.

Sometimes we’d sleep in the little front bedroom where there was only enough room for a single bed so we would top and tail – me at one end and Garry at the other! I would often lie awake at night listening to the sounds outside, few cars in those days but I remember the sounds of people walking home late at night and the clip clop of high heels as they approached and then receded. On another occasion I was ill and my Gran must have sat up with me most of the night as every time I woke she was there. Gran often made us feel better when we were ill as she would always turn up with a bottle of Lucozade, which was quite expensive in those days!

Sunday night my Grandad would go out and he would always have a shave before he did. He would boil the kettle and fill a big metal mug with water and take it up to the bathroom with him. I must have watched him shaving and think that was where I learned to do it as my father always used an electric razor. When he was ready he would head off to the”Chapel” for the Sunday service, he took us once and I recall it was seriously dull (and we were used to church as we’d be sent off to Sunday School every week) – he belonged to something called the Fellowship which I didn’t understand but he has a badge and they sent him a magazine every month. After the worship she would retire to the Wheatsheaf for a couple of pints.

During the times we spent at Gran’s house we would find things to occupy us. Often we would play with the kid down the road (who our parents hated remember – this may have had something to do with him teaching us things like how to spit!) or just with each other. Objects from Gran’s house were pressed into service in our games. My dad had been in the Boys Brigade and had a bugle and a wooden stick from those days. The stick had a brass end to it and was the sort of things that Sargeant Major’s tuck under their arms while barking orders. Once we watched a film about a hammer thrower and keen to try this out we used my Gran’s dog lead to simulate what we’d been watching. Unfortunately when we let go of it the wind caught it and blew it onto a neighbours roof! We tried to think of a way to get it down but in the end we just pretended that we had no idea where it had gone!!

I could go on for ages, there is so much I haven’t covered. Uncle George and his cine camera (that I now own), the wonderful smell of the bottom kitchen drawer where the shoe polish was kept, the day my Gran tried to smarten us us by plastering our hair with hairspray, going to visit Auntie Aba in her prefab or Auntie Edna in Jarrow or even the infamous visit to the Mill photo studio in East Boldon for the “pandies” photo that Sarah loves so much! However there is one last memory I’ll finish with.

At the top of the stairs was the toilet and seperate bathroom. The toilet was quite small and it was lit by a single lightbulb fixed to the ceiling. The lightbulb was unlike any I had ever seen before and I have no idea how old it was. It was small and not very powerful – about 10 watts I seem to recall but it was just bright enough to illuminate the loo. The thing that makes it stand out is that it was there for as long as my Gran lived there. I remember it being there when I was little and it was still there when she moved out. There’s a part of me that thinks that had she still lived there I would have gone to the loo after her funeral and it would have gone pop!

Mary “Maisie” Potts 13th May 1911 – 29th May 2011

Ashes to Ashes

On 16th April 1990 the unthinkable happened, my mum passed away in the early hours of the morning. The reality should have been that I was prepared for what was the obvious eventuality of lung cancer but you don’t expect your mum to die do you, not at such a young age – she was 53. My Dad was with her when she died and he took me and my brother down to see her later that day. He also arranged for the funeral director to call that afternoon, even though it was Easter Monday and things were quite understandably quite raw. During the discussion it became obvious that my Dad wanted my Mum to be cremated – this came as quite a shock…..

If we rewind back a few years to when my first wife’s Gran died and my mum came to the funeral with me. I remember her crying and telling me that at funerals she often shed tears for her father who had died when I was only a very young child. She told me that she had been upset that her Dad had been cremated and how she would have liked to be able to go and sit next to his grave and talk to him when she needed comfort. She said that when she died she wanted to be buried, somewhere that just simply said that she had been here.

So on that fateful day I related all of this to my Dad and the Funeral Director but was talked down – I was told how graves get forgotten about as time goes on. In order to pacify me my dad said that once things had returned to normal we would all go somewhere as a family and scatter my mums ashes. Reluctantly I agreed but I wasn’t happy and even went to visit my mum in the chapel of rest, against my father’s wishes, to see her and apologise for what had been decided. The funeral was on the Friday and was a lovely event but I still wasn’t happy about the cremation. As we stood talking in the garden of remembrance after the ceremony there was suddenly a plume of smoke from the chimney which seemed to swirl around us as we got into the cars – it felt as though my Mum was expressing her anger.

Over the next few months I waited for my Dad to get in touch regarding the scattering of her ashes but what happened was that he formed a new relationship with the woman who became his second wife. It all happened very quickly and I began to feel that my mum’s ashes had been forgotten about. As time went on it became more difficult to raise the issue as I felt that he didn’t like my mum to be mentioned in case it upset his new wife. Slowly months passed into years and it got harder and harder to deal with and more difficult to ask the question that I needed to know the answer to.

As both my wives would probably testify the issue caused me much distress over the years. I contemplated asking the question many times, going over and over it in my head but whenever I was there in front of him or talking to him on the phone it just wouldn’t come out. The fact I had no idea what happened to my Mum’s remains was probably a contributing factor to repeated bouts of depression. In 2009 with the 20th anniversary of her death looming I sought counseling and it was one of the issues that I needed to talk about. At the end of the sessions though I was only a little bit closer to asking the question and then something happened.

Just as I was getting up the courage to ask my Dad was diagnosed with cancer and as his illness proceeded it seemed wrong to ask the question. As he approached death I had almost reconciled myself to never knowing what had happened to the ashes. One day in my Dad’s final week I was looking through the notes about his funeral on his computer and I found a document relating to what he wanted to happen to his ashes after his death. This made me quite angry as the issue of Mum’s ashes suddenly came crashing back.

He died on Friday 25th February and two days later I sat with my brother in the Hospice where he died waiting for the death certificate. It was at this point that I decided to ask him if he knew the answer to the question that had been troubling me for so long. He confessed that he didn’t but said he was happy to try and find out. So true to his word during the next week he made some time and eventually tracked them down to the funeral directors where they had sat in a cupboard for almost 21 years.

In the days between my dad’s death and his funeral I ruminated on what had happened and the instructions he had left for his ashes. He wanted them to be scatted in 4 places by 4 different groups of people. He wanted one lot to be scattered on Penshaw monument by members of a walking group he had been part of which was made up of ex Policemen. The second lot he wanted scattering on the Bents at Whitburn by his school chums. The third lot he wanted to be burried on the grave of the parents of one of my mum’s friends in Corbridge and he said he hoped that his second wife’s ashes would one day join him there. The final set he wanted to go to the home of his step-daughter in Spain.

There were two things that annoyed me about the arrangements. The first was that none of the scatterings were for his family – we were off handedly invited to the Penshaw monument scattering and obviously the one in Spain would include one of his Step -children but it didn’t include his actual offspring. the second thing was that he asked for his ashes to be scatter on the grave of one of my Mum’s friend’s parents (her friends ashes were also scattered there) and he wanted his second wife’s ashes to be scattered there. This hurt – what about my Mum’s ashes why didn’t he want to be scattered with them.It was like she’d been forgotten.

I contemplated how to raise these issues with my brother but in the end I didn’t have to because I think he felt the same way. This came up when we discussed my mum’s ashes and what to do with them. The logical thing would have been on the grave of her friend’s parents along with the remains of her friend and my Dad but that didn’t seem right – if he’d wanted that he would have said so. I suggested that we find somewhere near there and the place that sprang to mind was a pub called the Rat where we’d often gone on Boxing Day with Mum, Dad and her friend Maureen and husband Charlie. Then however it didn’t seem right scattering her ashes there without my Dad’s – this was getting complicated! My thought was that we should split my Dad’s ashes into 5 rather than 4 but who to raise that with…..In the end I didn’t have to as my brother had obviously been thinking along the same lines.

Then one day I was re-reading his instructions and his opening lines suddenly jumped out at me. He’d written

After my cremation I wish that my ashes be scattered in specified places. I do not want my ashes stored in some funeral parlour or buried in a plot in a crematorium where I will become one of the forgotten. My wishes are to have my ashes scattered where people will look and say to them selves that’s where Macs ashes lie and hopefully remember the good times

 

I suddenly thought was this a dig at us, had he also been waiting for all that time for us to ask about her ashes? I have resolved not to think about this too much otherwise it could be another 21 years of wondering and that is the last thing I need.

So last weekend I went with my family and my brother and his family to the Rat in Nortumberland where after lunch we walked down a footpath, through a wood and into a field where we scattered their ashes together on a beautiful sunny day high on a hill overlooking the Tyne Valley. So much time had passed that Garry and I were the only people there who actually knew my mum. We had both been married at the time of her death but had both since divorced and remarried. Beth, who would have been her eldest grandchild was only barely in existence at the time of mum’s death – we discovered the pregnancy the night before her funeral!

The whole process almost didn’t happen because when we arrived in the field Garry got the box containing Mum’s ashes out and when he looked at it we discovered that we needed a screwdriver to get it open! However I hadn’t come so far to fall at the last hurdle and after searching our pockets Garry found a key which fitted the screw heads and I sat and slowly unscrewed the six screws fastening the box. Then we looked at each other, wondering what so say, my Dad was always the one who found the right words to say and he was no longer there. In the end there were no words to be said…..

So we all took handfuls of the ashes and without pomp or ceremony scattered them in the field. I think she would have loved the idea of all of her grandchildren participating and laughing and joking as we scattered the ashes. She would have loved them all so much and it’s such a shame that she never lived to see any of them. Even the youngest participated – although Noah was a little too enthusiastic and ended up being covered in ashes when he got too close as Garry tipped the last of the ashes out of the box.

So that was the moment I had waited for 21 years for, not what she wanted and to be honest anything would have come up short. I would have liked her ashes to be scattered somewhere I would be able to go to on a regular basis but if I’d done that it wouldn’t have been somewhere that meant anything to her so this was the best compromise. I’m just glad for the closure that it has given me – the fact I’ve been able to write this shows how far I have come in the past two months.

In my time of dying

I spent a great deal of time during my father’s last days at the Hospice where he had been admitted when his condition deteriorated. I got a phonecall on the Monday evening to say that he wasn’t expected to last the week so I went straight up to Sunderland but by the time I got there on Tuesday afternoon he had already slipped into unconsciousness and the prognosis was that he wouldn’t last the night. I spent the first night at the Hospice and he did make it through until the morning and indeed I would spend two more nights at his bedside before he finally passed away.

One of the things I was most concious of during the nights I spent there was that time when a person is said to be at their lowest ebb between the hours of 2am and 4am. In fact I was awake during the whole of this period for the first two nights and I noticed something very odd. At 2am each morning I would hear a bird singing outside the window of my father’s room and then again just after 4am there would be more birdsong. Apart from these two times I don’t recall hearing birds singing at any other time. It was as if the first call was a warning to me and the second like the all clear being sounded!

At about 11:30 on the third and final night I became worried about my dad’s breathing as it had become very shallow so I buzzed for the nurses who came but assured me that he still had a very strong pulse so I phoned Sarah and settled down on the sofabed which I had positioned so I could see him when I was lying down. I must have been very tired as I dropped off into a very deep sleep and slept for the longest time since I arrived. I awoke with a start at 3:30 as my subconscious told me that something was wrong. I sat up and realised his breathing had become laboured and again I buzzed for the nurse. She arrived and took his pulse which she said had become quite week, I asked if she thought I should ring my step mum and she said it was a good idea but she also offered to do it for me.

She arrived a few minutes later with my two step sisters and we were informed that he probably only had a few hours left so I moved aside to let my Step mum sit next to my Dad and I went to sit on a chair beside the door where I could see him. We sat there and waited for him to slip away. What happened next was most unexpected and has changed my outlook on death considerably and it helped me when the end came for I knew he had gone to a good place. Let me explain.

The room was very quiet as we sat around his bed but I suddenly became aware of the blinds and door rattling even though the window was closed. I looked around the room and as I did I suddenly started to feel a change in the atmosphere. It was as if the room was suddenly filled with a great energy, I could feel it running right through me and it felt as if it was going to lift me off the seat I was on. I felt a great upward pressure and as the energy coursed through me I started to become quite warm. I looked around to see if any of the others could feel it but they were all starting to complain about how it had suddenly gone cold.

It would be great if at this point I could say that I knew it was my mum or someone else but it wasn’t like a singular person but just an over whelming feeling of what I can only describe as love filling the room. Then quite out of the blue I felt something resting on my right leg, almost like someone had put a hand there to comfort me. I moved my left hand and placed it over where I could feel the pressure. My dad’s breathing faltered – he took a huge breath which seemed as if it were going to be his last but after what seemed like a very long time he started to breath again and I felt the energy dissipate as quickly as it had arrived.

A few minutes later a bird started to sing outside the window as I felt the energy coming back again. The feeling was the same as before, it started in my abdomen before starting to spread throughout the room and I felt the same upward pressure that I did before as if I was going to fly up out of my seat. This time however I felt like someone had placed a hand on my right shoulder and again I reached out as if to take it. I sat there with my left hand on my shoulder while once again my father’s breathing faltered and then returned. As it did the energy faded away as quickly as it had come.

Once again I sat there watching my dad and I fully expected that the energy would come back again but as we sat there it was as if the light had returned and as the sunshine flooded into the room I knew that the energy had gone for the time being and that my dad had got past the danger point. I looked around and it was as if everyone else knew that the danger had passed but I don’t know if they had felt the same thing as me but there was an unspoken belief that he was no longer about to pass on. I broke the silence eventually by saying “I think he’s changed his mind”.

Over the next few hours I could still feel the energy inside me, not to the extent that I had before but it was still making my body buzz. I feel very claustrophobic and restless in my dad’s room and had to get out and either sit in the kitchen or the conservatory. The energy slowly dissipated from my body but the feeling of well being stayed with me and in some respects is still with me now more than a week after my dad finally passed away. The really odd thing was that the last place on my body from which the energy left was my left hand – the hand I had touched the energy with when I felt it touching me.

I know that it’s possible that I imagined all of this but I don’t think I did – and even if I did there must have been a reason for all of this to have happened. I’m sure that for a few brief seconds I was touched by what lies beyond death. I don’t know why my dad didn’t go then, I wasn’t the only one who commented that they thought he was about to leave us on two occasions that morning. It’s possible that the earthly love for him in that room held him back when the energy came for him or maybe, given that he eventually went when he was on his own, he resisted because we were there.

There was one other thing that I thought I saw and this one could be my imagination but as the energy left the second time I thought I saw a small silver thread just around his abdomen. At first I thought it was leaving his body but as I watched in the half light I was sure it was actually returning. The reason I say I’m not sure about this is twofold – firstly it was quite dark at that point and I was a short distance away and it could have simply been a trick of the light. The second reason is that when my dad had sat with my mum as she died he told us later that he had seen two small silver threads leaving her body so the idea could have been implanted in my head. Alternatively I could have witnessed his spirit or soul returning to his body after a near death experience.

So it has taken me some time to write this down as the whole experience felt very personal at the time and there was no way I could have spoken this out loud. The upshot of my experience that morning was that I wasn’t frightened for him anymore. I said to him as he lay there that I had felt the love that was waiting for him and I knew he had felt it too. I joked that when we were kids he always used to say that where we went on holiday depended on which way he turned when we reached the top of the street and that he still couldn’t decide which way to go!

One other thing I had said to him as I sat next to him in silence one morning was that he always knew exactly what to say in most situations (it wasn’t always what you wanted to hear but he was never stuck for words) – I said to him that I wished that I knew what to say. The curious thing is from the moment we found him passed away I seem to have inherited this trait from him ( I hope it stays). I certainly have gained some strength that I haven’t had for a long time since he died so maybe he has passed something on to me.

Thinking about the big issues

Last week I tweeted “I’m finding this week that everything I’ve done keeps coming back to the same ideas – weird!” and indeed the week had ended with me thinking about something that been triggered off by listening to Radio 4’s start the week on the way to work on Monday morning. That idea was one of “a new morality” and where it would come from.

The spark for this train of thoughts was the discussion of a new book called “Chocolate Wars” by Deborah Cadbury which:

charts the rise of the three big Quaker chocolate companies – founded by the Fry, Rowntree and Cadbury families – and examines how these chocolate pioneers adapted their religious principles to grow the businesses. As the families battled it out against each other to perfect the latest recipes to entice more customers to their chocolate brands, they were also working closely together to address local poverty and improve conditions for their workers. Deborah Cadbury explains how this so-called ‘Quaker capitalism’ gave way to short-term ‘shareholder capitalism’, which ended with the American food giant Kraft paying nearly $20bn for Cadbury in early 2010. (from BBC Radio 4 website)

The discussion questioned where a new morality would come from given that the religious principles that drove the Quaker capitalism was no longer a dominant force in society and that something was required to bring the current attitude to wealth creation without responsibility or conscience under control. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, that a huge sea-change is needed in our society to bring an end to the me generation and restore community at the heart of daily life. It saddens me to think of the way society has changed during my lifetime and that I have sat back and let it all happen. Short term greed and self centred behaviour has become the norm – and I too have been guilty of this sort of behaviour myself in the past.

The latest financial crisis has brought a lots of issues to the surface and it’s time that we as a society stopped trying to make a fast buck and worked out what’s best for us. It has shown us that banks only care about making money and they don’t really give a shit about how they do it. The current trend is to invest in emerging markets such as China or India, which on the surface is all very admirable, but in reality the money could be pulled out from under the feet of these markets as soon as it looks as though performance doesn’t meet expectations or when the bubble inevitably bursts just as it did with the dot.com boom. And I wonder just how much of the money the previous government printed in it quantitative easing program has been invested outside of the UK where it was supposed to help restore the economy and ease the lending crisis.

During the week a picture was posted by David Gans of a sign he had seen which was a quote by Mahatma Ghandi which again returned to this theme. It listed the causes of violence and at number 4 was the expression “Commerce without Morality” which to me sums up the situation we find ourselves in today. The theme of a new morality raised it’s head again at the end of the week when I was editing a video of a discussion about climate change. The panelists asked the same question “where will the new morality come from” citing again that a sea-change is required to bring about the changes that can prevent catastrophic changes in the earth’s climate.

They discussed the vested interests that would prevent the changes from taking place and suggested the only way we in the west could prevent the developing economies from creating more and more greenhouse gasses by burning more and more fossil fuels,  which they have in abundance and would need to do in order to produce the energy that would be required as their economy expands and drives consumerist growth, would be for the west to develop the technologies it and give it away to the developing nations – not a scenario that many people could see happening. They also discussed the concept that the financial markets have already seen a way to make money out of any attempts to reduce carbon levels proving that if there is a chance to make a few bucks these people would sell the existence of mankind down the river!

The final thought arrived via Twitter yesterday, again from David Gans, who tweeted “There is something gravely wrong with a system in which a few hundred people make billions and a few billion people make hundreds”.

This week the big issue came from a source not usually connected with weighty subjects – Coronation Street – although I didn’t realise it at the time. The second episode of the soap yesterday concerned the death of one of it’s long time regulars Jack Duckworth. The scene was filmed in a way not typical to the soap in that Jack, sitting alone in a chair, suddenly sees his wife Vera who had died a few years ago. He asked her for a kiss before asking if she had been waiting for him. She replied “Of course I have, come on there’ll be a bus along in a minute”. With that the camera zoomed up through the house and out of the roof into the street.

I liked the idea of Jack not being afraid to die because his beloved Vera was waiting for him. I know my dad told my mum as she lay dying that her father and her sister would be waiting for her. The question of what happens after death is one that I’ve given some thought to over the years. I don’t believe in a god per se but I do believe that there is a force beyond our understanding from which we come and to which we return after death and I like to think that we would be reunited with our loved ones who have gone before us.

This issue came back again this morning which is why I started to analyse the scene from last nights show. Listening to the radio on my way to work this morning there was a program on Radio 4 called Twin Sisters, Two Faiths which told the story of two twin sisters, one of whom was a Christian the other followed Islam. The story also dealt with the terminal illness of their mother who was a lifelong Agnostic. It discussed the ways in which the family dealt with their different beliefs and as the mother’s condition worsened how each sister felt her faith helped her. In the end the mother has a sort of deathbed conversion and decided that she did feel that their was a god but what sort of god it was she didn’t know. She said that she tended to feel more for the Christian faith as it was too late to try and understand Islam.

In some ways it touched me on a personal level as the lady in the program was suffering from lung cancer, from which my mum also died and my father is currently undergoing treatment for the same disease. I know as my mum lay ill in hospital I went to the hospital chapel and as I sat in that sterile environment I prayed that if god had any mercy he would end my mums suffering – he didn’t. I hope it’s a long time before I have to watch my father go through that. I know death comes to us all but it would make things a whole lot easier if we knew that the ones we have loved and lost would be waiting for us.

It was 20 years ago today

The worst day of my life.

The day my mum died.

Still miss her

20 years on

Today would have been my mum’s birthday, Sunday is obviously Mother’s Day and next month will be the 20th anniversary of her death. So as you can imagine this is quite a difficult time for me. This time last year I was in a really bad place and although I’m feeling a bit better now there is still a long way to go before I’m fixed! One problem is that I still haven’t got over the death of my mum who died far too young but with help I hope to move on in the not too distant future.

When I first started blogging about 5 years ago this issue came up and at that time I started to write about my memories of her but I didn’t get very far and I never published it. Well in order to move the healing process on I resolved to do so this morning to mark her birthday…..so here goes!

Jean Edith Shewan

1938-1990

There is a picture that I always think of when I think about my mum. It was taken on Christmas day and she is kneeling on the floor, smiling at the camera and holding up her arm to show off the watch she got as a present.

I guess the reason the picture stands out in my mind is that she was wearing the watch the night she died and afterwards my dad gave the watch to me – not much compensation for my loss but would anything have been?

She died far too young and at a very important stage of my life and the hole she left just hasn’t healed. It was such a big hole that for many years I couldn’t remember her before the onset of her illness. This single event that has had more effect on my life than any other and now 15 years later I’m only just beginning to come to terms with it.

Memory Flash #1

It’s lunchtime and my mum and nana (her mum) have returned from the town. They have been into numerous shops and now sit with a handful of till receipts doing what they call “reckoning up”. They will have been into both of the towns fledgling supermarkets, peas would be 1d a tin cheaper in Hintons than in Presto’s so they would buy them there. Binns, the department store, would have been visited to buy sausages, the only food my brother would eat and only then if they were the right shade of pink. Now they had to account for every penny, even if this meant retracing their steps 2 or 3 times, until every penny had been accounted for.

We were creatures of habit at lunchtimes and my brother and I always came home for what we called dinner. In those days we had an hour and a half for lunch so there was time to get to and from school. In any case we wouldn’t have eaten anything other than mums cooking so even after we moved house we still came home, even though it involved a half hour bus trip in each direction.

You could tell what day of the week it was by what we had for lunch. There was a routine to life back then that I’ve never been able to achieve in my life or my chilren’s lives since. I don’t remember them all but here goes: Mondays lunch would be made from the leftovers of what we’d had for Sunday lunch. If we’d have beef or lamb my mum would make a meal she called ash. This was a sort of stew with the leftover meat and potatoes in a stock. I didn’t always like the potatoes and would often leave all these little white cubes in the bottom of the dish. If we’d had chicken she would make chicken casserole.

Midweek we would have mince and dumplings, the dumplings would have been cooked in the oven and browned on top. Fridays, it would be fish fingers and chips because, well you always have fish on Fridays don’t you.

The loss of a very dear friend

I was still working at 12:45 this morning when my phone buzzed to let me know an e-mail had arrived. I looked to see what it was and it was an automated e-mail to let me know that my friend’s blog had been updated with a private message. I don’t know why, perhaps it was the time it arrived, but I knew instantly that it was going to tell me that she had died.

When I logged in the title of the post “Very Sad News” confirmed my instinct. I’d known for some time that she had been ill, she had been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus some time ago and she had undergone major surgery but her last post had informed us that her condition has worsened and that the prognosis was that she only had 6 months to live at best.

In some ways I guess it is better that she went as quickly as she did, at least she didn’t have to suffer a slow and agonising death. I feel sorry for her family especially “t’old man” and her two daughters and my thoughts are with them at this time.

Isadora was one of the first friends I made when I first started blogging about 5 years ago. She had been one of the first people to set up a blog on blog.co.uk and she had called it “Greetings from a Greeter” because she worked in Asda at that time and she would often blog about the strange events that went on in her shop. Even after I left blog.co.uk I still kept in touch – she was only one of two of my blog friends that I kept in contact with.

She had such a zest for life and could see beauty in almost anything. She had been a hippie in the 1960’s and had gone to some of the big UK festivals including the Isle of Wight events. She would often reminisce about her youth which had been quite eventful including a time when she had to be repatriated from Ibiza which resulted in her having her passport taken off her and when she wanted to go abroad about 30 years later she had to pay the £10 that she had been loaned to get home before she could get a new one.

She had a passion for music and Spain. She would often pack up her tent and head off to a local folk festival for the weekend and blog about the music and the dancers and whatever else had attracted her attention. She also went off to Spain regularly and stayed with a Spanish family she had met on her first visit. She had been taking Spanish classes and although she said she wasn’t very good – I suspect that she was really. I also seem to recall her taking up belly dancing at one point as well.

It’s such a tragedy that such a life should be cut short in such a cruel way, she was only just in her sixties and was looking forward to retiring and having fun. I for one will miss her dearly and even though I never actually met her I feel honoured to have been her (cyber) friend. And judging by the comments on her blog I won’t be alone in that.

Rest in Peace Isadora – the world has lost one of it’s brightest lights.

That’s Entertainment

Oh my God I’ve just watched Eastenders and Coronation Street and now I fell like slashing my wrists! Doom and gloom just what you need to cheer you up on a wet Monday night!

Random Fact #2

Ten famous people I have met who are no longer with us

Ken Kesey

Phil Lynott

Muddy Waters

Frankie Howerd

Nico

Rory Gallagher

Russell Harty

Harry Chapin

Pope John Paul II

Alan Hull