The Last Resort

Today I signed a contract for what my Nana would have called 'The Last Resort'. I'm getting some creative counselling. In case you're wondering what's so strange about that, we don't do counselling much in Britain, even in the year 2013.

Advocaat

Admittedly, we've 'given in' to various practices that would have had my afore-mentioned Nana throwing her Advocaat snowball across the bar - for example, showing lots of soggy emotion, en masse, in public. We definitely didn't do that, when she was a gal.


There was a time it was considered fairly disgraceful to cry at the funeral of someone you knew, never mind at the death of a random but famous stranger.

Not Even at a Friend's Funeral

Nor did we walk such a delicate tightrope when it came to Health & Safety. Today in the Post Office, I was thoroughly reprimanded by a counter clerk because I'd used a staple on a jiffy bag. It could, she said, cause  serious harm and then the Post Office would send me a stern letter, possibly summons me to Court.

A Cause for Serious Alarm

'Reality check,' I replied, 'are we sure we're not exaggerating just a teensy bit?' However, by this time she was eyeing the sign which says 'WE WILL NOT TOLERATE ABUSE OF OUR STAFF UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES' so I left.

Anxious About the Weather

Don't even get me started on the weather. Ever read Charles Dickens, or George Eliot? All those sturdy little British types marching through snowstorms to reach the local hunt ball, at which point they damped their petticoats so as to show off just that bit more sturdy bosom for the likes of Lord Byron. Last Saturday, the venerable BBC contained a weather report in which a weatherman told the nation he was anxious - yes, anxious, about the coming thunderstorm.  Twitter was alive with anticipation and rightly so, because when it came it was - well, a thunderstorm.

Nana's Snowball

Anyway, I've nothing to report at present on the subjects of tear-jerker funerals, Health & Safety or weather, but I hope to be able to confess, shortly, that the Creative Counselling had me turning out fresh projects at a speed of knots. Or not. Watch this space...

You can find out about Creative Counselling here

Nana and Our Denise

In the week when the Grim Reaper took not only Star Wars' princess Leia but her mother (Debbie Reynolds) as well, I'm back in dear old London for Yuletide.

Photo by Jennifer Pittam

The first pleasant surprise is that we are to have an 'extra second' added to the year. It's called a 'Leap Second' and it's done to keep our clocks in time with the earth's rotation. There's a committee (quel surprise) to decide when we should all get a Leap Second, and it's based in Paris. In picturesque French fashion, the committee members are known as 'Time Lords.' In typically British fashion, the great 'bongs' of Big Ben will be slowed an extra second using a stack of old pennies balanced on the mechanism - although, to be fair, it's a way that's worked for hundreds of years.

Something else that awaits me on the doormat is my new passport. I had mine stolen earlier in the year and can't believe the lengths you have to go to, to get a new one. Of course I understand, and salute, the trouble they take in these days of rampant terrorism but it's more kerfuffle than the first time you ever got a passport.  I do like the pages inside though - rammed with intricate designs, depicting achievements in Great Britain, including of course Northern Ireland, dating back some 500 years. The engraved images portray this land's successes in invention, art, architecture and music. William Shakespeare's there, as well as artist John Constable, the Falkirk Wheel and Stephenson's Rocket.

This is the year when Britain famously left the European Union - how much that's going to affect our passports in London, both design and usage, remains to be seen.

It's also the year when we said goodbye to so many 'celebrities' - aka famous people - some tragically young. There was Ed Stewart, who had been the DJ on 'Children's Choice' throughout my childhood, David Bowie, whose early appearance in Aylesbury had us all agog; dear, funny Terry Wogan, Lady Penelope, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood, Carla Lane who wrote the Liver Birds, Muhammed Ali who was called Cassius Clay when I was a gal. Jean Alexander - Hilda Ogden, Leonard Cohen, Andrew Sachs, Ian McAskill the Weather Man, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Rabbi Lionel Blue who wrote wickedly perceptive editorials long before bloggers existed, Rick Parfitt and lastly Liz Smith, which meant that the Royle Family lost Nana and our Denise in one year. This list isn't comprehensive, by the way - just those I remember, who had some sort of impact on my life.

I guess it's a fact that life, unlike a gloriously stinky Stilton cheese, doesn't get better as you get older. That's a closely guarded secret - along with the one that grief and remorse are harder to deal with when you're older and more frail yourself. A lifetime's healthy diet and yoga doesn't prevent you from losing sight or hearing, either, children.

So am I facing January 2017 growling and moaning like a bad-tempered old bat? Actually, no. There is much to rejoice in - work, which continues to fascinate, yoga (thank you Rod Stryker) and my writing which has brought fresh challenges (no less than three new commissions for the coming year). Family members still intact plus the gorgeous blessing of a new life, nine pound Charles Laurence Dunn. The sun-god has been appeased for another year, and the days grow a little lighter and a little longer with every swing of the pendulum.

Wishing you all a peaceful New Year 

And a shining 2017

Our Mother, Val Doonican & Omar Sharif

The Urge to Dignify Death

After a death comes a funeral, pretty much anywhere in the world.The urge to dignify the passing somehow means that we try to despatch the departed loved one with a ritual. In Victorian times, certainly in London, it  took as long as possible and 'death-bed' scenes were strung out with weeping and wailing. There were specific words, rituals and keepsakes known as 'memento mori'.

Unless you work in a funeral parlour or something, the language of death, arriving right slap in the  rawness of your grief, comes as an experience both surreal and funny.

The first thing that happens, in Britain at any rate, is that your family doctor certifies that the recently departed is actually dead, and there's nothing suspicious about it.

The Doctor's Jaunty Tie

In our case, the family doctor had been calling daily throughout the final week of my mother's life. The visit was strangely similar to the day before's, except that he arrived wearing a dark blue tie instead of his usual jaunty scarlet one.

Naturally, my sister and I wanted new outfits for the funeral. Even when you know someone's going to die, there's a reticence about going out to choose your special frock before the event. After our mother passed way, without thinking we arranged this ludicrous schedule, making sure that when we felt that urge to shop, one was always available to stay at home.

Feeling That Urge to Shop

 That's true grief, we discovered. It's not about how sad you feel or what a huge gap someone's left in your life. It's about the little things. Forgetting that you can now go shopping,

Much-Travelled Posy

That week I learned, too, about floral artistry, and the unique terminology that goes with it.  For example, you don't order a wreath but a funeral posy. If you order for a funeral on Dartmoor when you live in North London, Interflora doesn't actually drive 200 miles with said posy, they just charge you as if they had.

Another thing that made us fall about laughing was a Cockney superstition that my Nana, born and bred in London's 'East-End', taught us. If you hear of a death, then the next two people you hear of in the same predicament will go to Heaven with the first one.  So for example, our local butcher died this week and will now go to the abode of the angels arm-in-arm with the critic Brian Sewell and the much-loved writer of erotic fiction, Jackie Collins.

Clearly this sweet old fairy tale dates back to the time when London was a collection of small communities centred around the docks, the alleys etc. To Ma and me, it didn't matter a jot that there were millions of people in the world and hundreds of deaths per day. We still applied the theory, to gales of laughter, every time we heard of a death in the news or in our part of town.

So for what it's worth, my mother, who died on 2 July 2015, went to Heaven with Val Doonican and Omar Sharif. And boy, won't she remind us of that one next time we see her.

  Weep if you must,
Parting is hell.
But life goes on;
So sing as well.

Joyce Grenfell 

1910-1979