I happened to be in Manchester this week. Of course, I live in Manchester, what I mean is I was in Manchester city centre. Although it’s a city, when travelling there we always say “We are going into town.”
Local vernacular and all that. Anyway, there I was – in Manchester. Not much had changed since my last visit. One thing I did notice, though, is where you used to be able to buy a can of Pepsi or Fanta, there is now this:
An eyelash dispenser. Whatever next?
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Some of the homes on our estate have been without water for a while. There were reports on social media of water tankers scattered around the area. I’m not sure what the problem is, or if these tankers are indeed flushing water through drains as has been suggested, as I’ve not taken that much interest because our home has been unaffected by the problem.
However, yesterday morning, as we were on the school run, we spotted one of the tankers parked up on a neighbouring street. There was nobody with it. We turned onto a main road and saw another two tankers, again unmanned, as though they’d been abandoned.
“More tankers!” exclaimed my wife. “It’s like they’ve taken over the world. Just appeared overnight.”
It’s normally me that’s given to flights of fancy.
We approached the school and, lo and behold, more tankers were in the small car park outside the gates.
“They’re even here!” she said. “They’re like aliens. Everywhere we go they are hounding us. It’s like the world’s coming to an end and they are our masters.”
Wow.
Maybe there’s a story in that.
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I’ve always believed that it’s the insects that will take over in our absence.
I’ve been sorting through my Mum’s things since she passed away. Donating furniture to charity, giving things to people that we know, to friends of friends, anyone who would be grateful of them. Dismantling bit by bit the things that make up a part of who I am.
While emptying her kitchen drawers I spotted an ant trap on her window ledge. She had been plagued with them off and on over the last few summers. This was her last response – an irresistible cocktail of sugar and boric acid.
Some lines came to mind from a Walter Tevis novel I’ve just read, a novel about ‘another’ alien invader:
Or think of living with the insects, of living with the shiny, busy, mindless ants
which prompted the question: should we co-exist? Or should we exterminate?
Only a little snow, merely a dusting. Only a little fog, let’s call it mist.
I recently hoped aloud that 2023 would be better than 2022. Well, in the last couple of weeks I’ve been to the funeral of an ex-work colleague, lost a lad my wife and I have known since the 80’s, and spent the whole night in hospital at the bedside of my wife’s uncle before he passed away yesterday, his brother and nephew with him while I grabbed a couple of hours sleep.
We are not even out of January yet.
If you look carefully, among all of the chaos, I’m still there, recording.
But City Jackdaw can’t only be a list of unfortunate and tragic events. We’d all need therapy.
We all need balance.
As the year goes on there’s other stuff going on. There’s plans to make. Projects to complete, projects to begin. Children to lead through this patchwork of emotions we call life.
Winter only lasts so long. There’s new light coming.
I’ve lost track how long I’ve been blogging here. Nine years? Maybe ten, wishing you guys a Happy New Year at this time, scattered as you are all over the globe.
2022 for me wasn’t a good one. In fact it was an awful one.
I lost a childhood friend in the first half and then there was a terrible end to the year when I lost a family friend and then my Mum. I won’t tempt fate by saying that 2023 will definitely be better, but I always go into a new year full of hope.
One thing this last year has underlined is that I have great family and friends. And that includes all of you Jackdaw followers, extended friends who take the time to comment, encourage and console.
Have a healthy 2023.
See you all on the flip side. Much love to you all 💙
It’s that time of year again. Wishing you all peace for the coming new year, Jackdaw followers. Wherever you are in the world, I hope these words find you well.
I will be fifty-one years old. Is that too old to be an orphan?
From this point onwards, in this post-parent world, I will never have a card bearing the word ‘Son’.
It can’t be said to be unexpected. I’m not the first and I won’t be the last. Every generation moves up a row. Of my old gang there’s only two who haven’t lost at least one parent. I’m the fourth to lose both.
I was waiting in the chemist last Friday, the day before she passed, trying to get hold of her end of life meds. Beyond the shelves on the other side of the counter I heard a woman exclaim:
“Aw no, Marie’s had to have Jackson put down.”
“It’s always sad when it’s a dog, isn’t it?” a colleague agreed.
“I’m always more upset about dogs dying than humans,” she continued.
It could be said that the conversation was insensitive, given the prescription that I had handed over. I didn’t mind. Mum would have agreed. She loved dogs. We always had dogs.
I always had parents, until I had a parent.
And now the world has changed irrevocably. It’s a paradox, those ties have now been severed, but those ties will always be joined. In memory, in legacy, in story.
It’s a story rooted in place. I’m glad that we fulfilled a promise and were able to nurse her in the home where she’d lived for forty-five years.
She remained in her own house, in her own room, a room that became a sacred space. For that room became a portal through which the soul that I knew as ‘Mum’ passed. A room that will look the same, seem to be the same, but has now gained a considerable weight.
A friend took this photograph of the last leaf clinging to a tree near his place of work.
He wrote of Autumn, still hanging desperately on at this late hour, before finally conceding to the inevitable winter.
The symbolism is obvious, but to me it reminded me of another liminal point. My Mum, suffering from Alzheimer’s, is nearing the end. She is still hanging on despite a possible chest infection. A stab in the dark Hail Mary, she is receiving antibiotics to counter any such infection, with the hope of an improvement over the next 48 hours (I’m writing this on the Saturday).
If that doesn’t materialise then end of life care will begin.
To be honest, I kind of hope it isn’t a chest infection. What is the point of coming back from the brink for further struggle? A struggle she won’t even be aware that she’s in. A struggle she cannot win.
The irony is that for a while now my wife and I have been administering medication and calorie-providing drinks to prolong what she didn’t want prolonging. To keep her where she didn’t want to be. (Such is the nature of her illness that, even though she is still here, I speak of her wishes in the past tense.)
But it’s not for us to decide the hour. A ‘time for all seasons’ and all that. At least not until we react to her failing heart and begin the end of life care.
Maybe the leaf in the photograph can also stand for one final moment of clarity, glimpsed among the fog of confusion, where those clouded eyes show recognition, and the lips twitch in that old grounded humour.
But I fear that is wishful thinking. The leaf is hanging on but, despite those blue skies, there’s a cold breeze blowing now. The natural order cannot be defeated. One season is giving way to the next.
When the statement was made that the Queen was under medical supervision, with doctors concerned for her health, the gravity of the situation was immediately acknowledged as the Palace don’t normally comment on, or share, private things like that.
And it spoke volumes when we learnt that her family members, independently of each other, were all heading up to Balmoral to be with her.
We knew that she had been working just two days before, appointing Liz Truss as our new Prime Minister. We had seen the photograph commemorating that moment, even though it illustrated as it did an increasingly looking fragility about her. Speculation had also been prompted by the fact that tradition had been broken: Truss travelled up to Balmoral, in Scotland, to be appointed instead of the Queen travelling down to Buckingham Palace where the previous fourteen appointments had been made.
This all pointed to something ominous happening. My wife was out shopping with her Mum, and I text her the news about the ‘medical supervision’. She didn’t have to fall back on her experience working in the funeral business to know what ‘all of her family are travelling to be with her in Scotland’ signified.
As the news rolled on it seemed that every news presenter had unobtrusively slipped into dark clothing.
I missed the announcement.
By this time my wife was back and we were getting ready to leave to take my son and a couple of his friends to their football training. While I was in the kitchen locking the back door I heard the National Anthem begin to be played in the lounge. I walked in to see the confirmation on the screen.
Queen Elizabeth II had passed away that afternoon. I went to the door and shouted to my wife who was stood by the car. “Jen, they’re playing the National Anthem now.”
“She’s died?”
Even though the woman was ninety-six and we always knew it was going to happen sometime, the question was still asked with an element of shock. She had been a constant figure throughout our lives, and quite irrationally we expected her to go on forever.
We drove to the football pitch, the kids asking questions from the back seat. Who will be in charge now? And then who? How will that happen? What will change?
My son mentioned the currency, which hadn’t crossed my mind. How strange it will be to see the image of Charles on our coins, notes and stamps instead of the ubiquitous Elizabeth.
King Charles, no less. The next time we hear the National Anthem, I thought,. every time it will be sang before our international matches , our cup finals. “God save our gracious King . . . Send him victorious . . .”
It will take some getting used to.
Smooth Radio was playing a solemn, classical track that I knew although I couldn’t remember its title. I had it on an old Melancholy CD somewhere.
“Dad, can you put Capital on?” my unappreciative son asked. Capital is the one I normally put on for him and his sister, conceding to their requests with the caveat “Any rapping comes on and it’s straight back over!”
I switched stations and the same music track was playing on that too. Smooth, Capital, BBC.
“It’s going to be this music on every station.”
“All night?”
“All night.”
We arrived at the training pitch and parked up. Looking at my phone I saw I had a Facebook notification: a woman who, as a young girl, was my grandparents’ next door neighbour. She had tagged me in a photograph of herself stood with my brother and I, holding Union Jack flags while celebrating the Queen’s Silver Jubilee at our street party.
That was back in 1977 when I was six. Queen Elizabeth had reigned for another forty five years after that. That brought it home, the length of time she reigned. The length of time she served. Seventy years in total.
Of course, while the lads trained, the Queen’s death was the topic of all conversation among the adults. Afterwards we called at a local service station for a coffee on the way home. Immediately outside the doors, and inside too, there were reminders of this historic moment everywhere.
In the immediate aftermath there has been talk about sports events being cancelled, of previous funerals and coronations.
The second Elizabethan era is over. We are now in a new period of British history, a period of new beginnings but also, conversely, a period of continuity. For in the following proclamations and fanfares, we have been witnessing events that have never been witnessed before. Modern technology is enabling us to see what in the past has taken place in private.
And I am surprised at how I’ve been feeling.
When pressed I’ve always said that I’m neither a monarchist nor a republican. I didn’t feel a particular strong connection to either camp, not enough to sway me in any direction. Not exactly apathetic, just a casual acceptance of what has always been.
But I love history, I love these islands.
And what I’m now discovering, with the help of modernity, is a deepening love for our age-old traditions, traditions reinforced by a reminder of this woman’s seven decades-worth of selfless service, service to this land that is in my blood and my children’s blood. Service that began long before any of us were born.
City Jackdaw 