| Carrying On |
[May. 28th, 2012|10:29 am] |
Dot is going through drawers and clearing out things Eric had hoarded. We have acquired two silver plated book marks, one gold-plated one, a pocket knife and other gew-gaws.
We've moved the upstairs rabbit into the yard to be with his brother. It's not clear yet whether this was a good idea or not. Outside rabbit has made it plain he's the boss and upstairs rabbit is acting very cowed. The yard should be big enough for both of them, but...
Our second bedroom has been "the rabbit room" for something like seven years. Now we've got it back. Carl has expressed a willingness to decorate it for us.
We have an appointment to see the vicar this afternoon- the one who'll be taking the funeral. I mean to sit quietly in the corner and say as little as possible. I'm inclined to get a little edgy and antsy around the clergy, and I'd rather not let it show. |
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| Keeping Busy |
[May. 27th, 2012|10:58 am] |
We're in the middle of a heat wave.
Yesterday I changed a toilet seat.
Bought Dot some cat food (she feeds several ferals and a magpie).
Spoke to Odi- she's coming to the funeral with the kids in tow (help!)
Walked through the park and took photos- a couple of which went onto Wikipedia Commons.
Sat in the shade and read ghost stories (Eliott O'Donnell- what a snob, what a liar, what a master of the macabre!)
Clipped the hedge between our yard and Sam's. |
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| Events Of A Day |
[May. 26th, 2012|10:37 am] |
We got the funeral arrangements- from registering the death to booking the refreshments- sorted out in the course of a morning.
The registry office is in Chadderton Town Hall. The grand, early 20th century interior has been partitioned up to make lots of pokey little offices. Our registrar had a poster about forced marriage behind her desk.
Registering the death was an education in how completely the State owns and controls us.
All you have to do to cancel a passport is clip a corner off the front cover. I'll bet there are people out there who are expert in sticking them back together again.
While we were dealing with the registrar the lights blew.
The Co-op Funeral Home will be moving its premises in three weeks time. We've watched the new building going up and wondered what it was. Our best guess was a Lidl.
Undertaking is a job that builds character. I've rarely met an undertaker I didn't like. Contrary to stereotype, they tend to be happy souls. Our undertaker is called Vanessa. She's young and pretty and roly-poly. She looks as if she'd enjoy a knees-up.
A cardboard coffin costs more than a veneered one. A wicker one is even more expensive. You thought the green option would be cheap? Think again.
It costs over £300 to put a notice of death in The Manchester Evening News.
In the evening we took a huge bag of unused drugs to the pharmacy to be destroyed. What a waste. While the assistant was sorting through them and putting the controlled drugs in a separate pile an addict came in to have his methadone prescription filled. The pharmacist wouldn't oblige because he was a day late. The addict was very tall and very thin. He told her she was a "fucking halfwit". |
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| A Moment Of Bonding |
[May. 25th, 2012|02:23 pm] |
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The funeral director suggested we put that soppy "Footprints" thing on the back of the service sheet. We all agreed. After she left the room (to tot up the bill) Dot said how much she hated "Footprints" and Ailz and I said we hated it too. When she came back we told her we'd have the 23rd Psalm instead. |
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| The Mystery Of Other People's Lives |
[May. 24th, 2012|03:55 pm] |
I carried a box of old photos in from the garage this morning. I'd put it there last week to make elbow room for ambulance men and carers.
The pictures fall into three broad categories:
Family
Holidays
Masonic dinners.
Me :What a lot of dinners.
Ailz: That could be why he lost interest in eating. Eating was about conviviality. He couldn't see the point of doing it for its own sake.
Me: I hate eating with other people.
Ailz: Me too. |
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| Waiting |
[May. 23rd, 2012|10:31 am] |
We went to collect a prescription for Eric. We were advised it was for a specialised end-of-life drug we'd probably only find at the big pharmacy in the Integrated Care Centre by the Bus Station. There's no parking or waiting outside. Ailz drove round the block three times while I got it filled.
I spent the afternoon in the garden at Dot and Eric's. I looked at the greenery, I slept, I flipped through a Reader's Digest book which left me feeling queasy. The Readers Digest is to literature what MacDonalds is to nutrition. |
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| Elizabethans |
[May. 22nd, 2012|11:59 am] |
So, how many of the original Elizabethans still matter to us? Well, there's Shakespeare and- erm- well- after that it gets tricky. A few playwrights and poets, an adventurer or two, a couple of composers, Dr John Dee, Francis Bacon. But it would be really difficult to come up with 60 names. In fact 20 would be pushing it. Most kinds of fame are transitory. Will any of the 60 new Elizabethans being feted on Radio 4 still be household names in another 400 years?
Here's the list
I'll venture a guess that the well-informed person in 2412 might be expected to have heard of Hitchcock, Britten, Larkin, Lennon and McCartney, Bacon and Hockney- and that's it. |
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| A Change In The Weather |
[May. 22nd, 2012|09:49 am] |
Ailz spends much of every day at the bungalow, coming home to eat and sleep. I walked over yesterday morning, which takes about 15 minutes, and fetched some spare pillows down from the loft.
The weather's turned fine again. I'm reading a book of short stories by A.S. Byatt. She's very good at light and colour.
Joe sends me an email describing Eric- his step-grandfather- as "a bear of goodwill". I like that. It's very Joe. |
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| Birdies |
[May. 21st, 2012|09:38 am] |
The earliest bird begins tweeting shortly before 4 o'clock. The song dips and rises as if it were speaking Swedish. I'm half asleep and try to fit words to notes- "I'm a birdie, me"- but the song outpaces me and is more complicated than my brain can deal with so early in the morning. I'm hopeless at identifying bird-song. I know what a dove sounds like and a cuckoo (it's decades since I heard a cuckoo in the wild) but the high-pitched voices of the dawn chorus all sound the same to me. I'm hopelessly unmusical.
The starlings are bringing their young'uns to our yard. Yesterday I saw a mother feeding a baby as big as herself. This morning she's brought it to the same place- the tree hung with fat-filled coconut shells- and abandoned it there, as if to say, "You've seen how it's done, now get on with it." |
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poliphilo's journal