Some snow came in last night. It wasn’t a lot and it wasn’t a surprise.We had been told that it was coming, dragged down by some northern, arctic air, but going to bed last night it was just a few flurries.
What was a surprise was the message this morning that my kids’ high school was closed. There wasn’t that much on the ground, not enough to wall us up alive, and certainly not enough to turn our uphill main road into an impasse. (Yes, I know that it’s only an uphill main road if you’re going up it and not down it, but that’s the direction the school is in.)
It seems that the reason given was that other towns received more snow than us and that’s where some staff would be travelling from.
I don’t ever recall schools closing due to weather when I was young, not even in our younger primary school days. But, then again, in the 70’s wellies were cool.
We could be forgiven for starting to think of climate change and unseasonal weather, but apparently we get more snow here in March than we do in December. Who knew? Not I, and I’ve only been here all my life.
I have heard that saying: If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb.
It wasn’t really roaring last night though, maybe just giving a little warning growl.
I had some things to get this morning so I walked down to the town centre as I’d originally planned. The kids were still in bed, not even aware that school was shut. Wouldn’t it be great if they woke, thought they’d overslept and scurried off to the best days of their lives?
I’m scurrying off now to another day in mine, hoping you all have a great weekend, but before I go can I just give a shoutout to the meteorologist, on TV at 7.30am, who explained that “snow is crunchy beneath your feet.”
It wasn’t until Boxing Day night that I realised that I’d not had my Christmas pudding. Nor my brandy sauce. We are going to have to do Christmas Day all over again.
In the meanwhile, my daughter, Courtney, tried to make a nice, spontaneous Christmas greeting photograph for her friends with our dog, Bryn. You know, one of those cute festive things that would have everyone going “Aw.”
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.
My Fitness app blew up. We had been walking that much it stopped counting my steps and went into meltdown. Sun cream was running into my eyes, stinging as they were as I squinted against the sun.
I convinced him that it was time, after hours walking around Blackpool in the heat, to head back to the B&B for a shower.
Cold shower done, it was bliss to lounge on the bed in the shade.
“Dad, can we go on the beach now with the football?”
I silently sighed in exasperation.
“Why don’t we take a break for a bit first? We don’t have to do everything at once. We’ve still got three days here.”
“Please. I want to go into the sea while you take shots at me.”
I mentioned the sun, how it might be cooler and safer in a few hours, but he broke down all my walls. So off we went, sun cream back on, into the oppressive heat. It was a million degrees.
There wasn’t much relief in the sea breeze, either, and as he waded in there a few feet I began launching the football at him beneath the sledgehammer sun.
The only thing off-putting to him were the jellyfish, they were washing up everywhere on the sand. It wasn’t enough for him to call it a day, though. Maybe he felt challenged by the two younger kids (they sounded Australian) who were scooping them up and throwing them back into the water.
And then came was Divine Intervention.
The next day was the first of the annual Blackpool Airshow, with the Red Arrows, Spitfires and all others expected to attract a further 100,000 people to the holiday resort. While we were stood there, he up to his waist in the sea, me wilting on the beach, two low-flying jets came screaming in above us. Maybe they were coming in early for tomorrow’s show, or the pilot’s were familiarising themselves with the route they were due to take.
“What are those?” he shouted in alarm, looking upwards.
“Quick!” I said, taking the opportunity, “we have to get back to the B&B. It’s the Russians!”
It was the first day of five spent in Blackpool, and he was eager to try out the rides on the South Pier. So, after a Maccies breakfast, we had a walk over. The day was young but was already heating up, our stay coinciding with another August heatwave.
We purchased tickets from the booth – twenty five tickets for twenty five pounds – and he nudged me towards the first one that he wanted to go on. I can’t now recall its name, but that became the least of my worries.
We were locked in and the ride began as the music started to blare, the speed building as we began to spin in our seats as the mechanical arms holding us moved us in and out of the attraction’s outer edge.
In/out In/out.
Within minutes I thought I was going to throw up (did I mention that this was straight after a Maccies breakfast?).
How embarrassing would that be? Me, at fifty, by far the oldest person on it, surrounded by young children with my eleven-year-old son cheering alongside me. As the speed increased so did that feeling in my stomach. I painted on a smile for James every time he glanced at me in this, our great shared experience, and tried my best to contain myself.
The relief I felt when the ride began to slow. I’d managed to get through it without raising any suspicions of how I was feeling, thus maintaining an aura of heroic cool in his eyes.
But soon I discovered that the only reason we had stopped was because a kid, about seven years old, had banged his head and they were letting him off as he was upset.
And then, over the speakers: “BECAUSE WE STOPPED EARLY, WE’LL SENDALLYOU ‘ROUND AGAAAAIIINNNN !”
Jesus.
“SCREAM IF YOU WANNA GO FASTER!!!”
Keep your fucking mouths shut I thought to myself.
I could hear them over the music.
In an effort to distract myself from what was building within, I began reciting a mantra: don’t think about food/don’t think about food/don’t think about food
But the only word my tormenting mind was focusing on was ‘food’.
It got worse. I kept my mouth closed and my eyes down to avoid the swirling, dizzying landscape around me. Somehow, I’m not sure how, I managed to contain myself until the ride’s end and clambered out of the carriage on shaky legs.
An oblivious and excited James was eager for more fast-thrill stuff, rhyming off a list of all of the rides that awaited us. I managed to convince him that if he went on the rides alone from now on his tickets would last longer and he’d get to go on even more rides. He appreciated this altruistic gesture as I waved him off on the Waltzers and then hurried forthwith to the toilets in the amusement arcade. I thought that if I could induce myself to vomit, getting the seeming inevitable out of the way, then I’d be okay after that.
There was no toilet roll. With there likely to be someone waiting outside to use the toilet after me I couldn’t affordto miss the target. I’m going to have to get this right. I lifted the seat to avoid any splashing, bent right over the pan and stuck my finger down my throat. Twice.
Nothing.
I abandoned my plan as my still unsuspecting son would be coming to the end of his ride. I went outside to be confronted by the sight of a boy being sick at the pier rail. He was about ten. A security guard was asking him if he was alright, speaking into a radio when the lad shook his sweaty head in response in-between heaves. I started in horror at the idea of him having to deal with middle-aged me if I followed suit. The current casualty list age being: seven, ten, fifty.
I looked out over the seafront and took deep breaths, hoping the sea air would help but the sight of the rolling waves made me worse.
“That was great!” James said when he found me, his hand finding my sleeve to tug me towards the next ride in his sights.
And again. And again. Literally: ad nauseam.
Eventually he ran out of tickets and we ran out of morning.
Which meant only one thing: lunch time.
Although feeling a little better, I was still slightly queasy, and everything he suggested sounded greasy. Chips; burgers; hotdogs.
I tried to play it cool. “How about a nice salad bar?”
“What’s one of those?!” he asked with barely disguised disgust. “A salad bar? On Blackpool front?” While pointing out a stall nearby that had onions frying at eye-level. I needed to avert those eyes.
City Jackdaw 