What a drag it is getting old

While I was away we got through yet another hamster. Years ago I remember how badly my dad was affected when one of the cats got knocked down. I was sad of course, but poor dad really took it quite hard. So much so that they didn't get another cat for a couple of years. But the older you get the more sentimental you get, I notice. So, yes, having fed our ailing hamster sugared water through a pipette for a few days and hoping against hope, I was ridiculously morose for a fortnight or so after Bilbo there took his one way trip to the vet. I loved that little guy. It torments me that he never got to the see the living room in its new configuration. There's a lot more scuttle room.

Music by which to sign death warrants (regretfully)

There are a few versions of this about. I found one today actually, in a cache of consort music lps in my favourite vinyl hunting ground. A bit sad, clearly an enthusiast had popped his or her clogs.

Martin Peerson The Fall of the Leafe 

Newsflash

I was caught unprepared for Thatch's death today. The plan had always been to crack open a bottle of champagne. However, our emergency bottle of champagne was whisked off to a friend's engagement party a couple of weeks ago and hadn't been replaced. 

So I marched down to my local and had a couple of pints. You might think that these could be construed as the actions of one who admired the late baroness and I suppose they could. But that was not my intention. The idea was not to exult in an individual's death, she was, after all, a mother. The ritual quaffing of drink was instead just my small gesture against the oncoming tsunami of bollocks in the media, a definite rejection of the idea that she should be granted any sort of special funeral, and that I do not sign up at all to the idea that Mrs Thatcher was a good thing.

Requiescat in space*

This arrived today, it's Trevor Henderson's depiction of Major Tom's probable fate.  Think I might get it framed for Christmas. After death by quicksand death by shattered spacesuit visor was probably that which most preoccupied my morbid nine year old mind. Looking it up, outer space isn't actually that bad for you. It's the lack of air mainly.

*Tortured by the thought of any passing Latinists: I realise that pace is not pronounced to rhyme with space, but it looks good.

Quick death

Zooming up the M1 the other day I spotted one of these beauties (just before Chesterfield I think). In previous posts I've touched on some other aspects of my ideal funeral (tunes to be played, type of coffin) now we have the conveyance. Yes, it's all falling nicely into place.

Ahmes Meryet Amun

Following up on that exhibition of Ghanaian coffins I went to the British Museum the other day and tracked down the two examples they have there. They're in the Living and Dying Room - one was a big eagle very similar to one of those at the exhibition but it was the other one, in the shape of a giant Nikon camera, that was really worth seeing. It was, for reasons of space I suppose, very high up though, so you couldn't get a brilliant look at it. Anyway, having seen that I thought I might as well have a wander.

Over the years I must have been in the museum literally umpteen times and out of all the monumental bits of Egyptian sculpture there this is easily my favourite - it looks exactly like an illustration by Moebius. There's something so satisfying about it, the shape of the hair (a Hathor wig according to this). I looked her up when I got home and found her in my copy of Faces of Pharaohs. I find it slightly mindblowing that, should I travel to Cairo, I could go to the museum there and gaze upon the actual (highly mummified) face of the woman whose three and a half thousand year old portrait this is.

Hall of Bright Carvings

I read about this exhibition in the Observer, a little article accompanied by a picture of the car or the eagle, I can't remember. The first thing that sprang to mind was the Hall of Bright Carvings. I was keen to go, and when I saw that it was only a ten minute walk from work that settled it.

I’m a bit wary of small galleries and it was weird compared to the anonymity of a bigger gallery, to stand there next to the gallery owner in a room that was maybe only just twice the size of my living room. But the owner (Jack) was a thoroughly nice guy, very chatty about the whole phenomenon.

My favourite was the aeroplane - would they take the wings off to bury it, I wondered, otherwise you’d be looking at digging a seriously big hole in the ground. It wasn't built for a pilot but for an old lady whose unfulfilled wish it had been to fly in one. Others were more representative of their final occupant, lions were popular for warriors and the eagle was for a king.


Another sign of my advancing years, the gallery owner seemed so young. Which brings us naturally enough to mortality and death. Until quite recently it’s fair to say that I spent too much time worrying about death. No matter how long you contemplate it I don’t think you can ever get your head round it.

When I would turn my mind to the practicalities of it all I thought I'd like to be buried, and I previously imagined a cardboard coffin. Now it seems a shame not to try to come up with some everyday item, a freakishly large wooden version of which I could be interred in. Maybe a cigarette packet. Benson and Hedges. As I’ve repeatedly said, I don’t really smoke, but I do enjoy my lapses and I’m pretty certain that the best part of two decades that I spent idiotically puffing away will be at the root of my demise.

A thousand years

While reading about Trinity House I found a link to this - through a link to London's only lighthouse Trinity Buoy Wharf, which is now a venue for cultural happenings and flagship host of Longplayer, which I'd never heard of before. I think it's truly mindblowing. Not the sound so much (though I do really like it) but just the thought of it. It reminds me a bit of the vestal virgins keeping the flame going in their temple.

Cold dead hands

I was following blog links the other day and found a site which had some amusing things to say about some cool tunes. The blogger was American and when I hit home his most recent post was a gloating tract on the relative failure of recent gun control legislation in that country. I thought about leaving a comment but didn't. I've forgotten the name of the blog now but I'd like to hear him or anybody else continue to defend such widespread gun ownership in the face of this pathetic lunacy.

York

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going camping for a stag weekend. Well, it was dead good and surprisingly civilized - I actually came back feeling healthier then when I'd set off. Probably the best moment was getting up on the first morning and, while everyone else was still snoring in their tents, making myself a cup of tea with my little stove and kettle and drinking it with a cigarette and a couple of chocolate hobnobs.

Anyway this weekend was the wedding. It was great - I enjoy weddings. As always I drank too much and went to bed very late. I had a bit of a hangover but that was largely vanquished by the hotel breakfast. I'm sure it was fear of a killer hangover that led to me booking my return ticket for the afternoon - but I overdid the caution and a five o'clock train left me with quite a few hours to kill. The wedding was in York. I love that name: York, such a weird little word.

My hotel was two hundred yards from the Minster and after a walk by the river to clear my head and a read of the paper I thought I might as well check the place out. I think I'd probably been in before (my parents were avid cathedral spotters in my youth and they're all a bit of a blur). There's a very good statue of Constantine the Great outside the Minster. He's lounging on a throne, menacingly toying with a sword. In Rome the colossal head of Constantine was one of the things that I really wanted to see. Sadly it was being tarted up for the millenium and not on display, I think they were painting the walls or something. I prefer the statue in York but the colossal head is more imperial - I think it's the vacant expression on his face. If I were a hostile mustachioed tribesman the colossal head would have given me the more pause for thought. Seated Yorkshire Constantine looks cruel and formidable but human. Colossal Roman Constantine just looks utterly untouchable.

All cathedrals are worth a visit and it's a strange person who isn't a little awestruck at the proportions of these places and the intricate craftsmanship to be seen everywhere you look. I was creeping about in the crypt when evensong started and it was an unearthly sound and very beautiful. It's strange though - it would never occur to me to listen to a recording of it. It only seems to make sense in a church. It's things like this that make me wonder if I'll ever go to church again. Going through bookcases at my parents' a few years ago I realised, by looking at the inscriptions in prize books, that I'd attended Sunday School for at least four years. I can't remember the point at which I stopping believe in God. I do remember I was about five when I first realised about death and how upset I was. My mum told me not to worry as it would be a long time before I died, to which I thought: "You're missing the point". And she was and no doubt deliberately because of course there is no answer. There are so many beautiful and reassuring things about Christianity but, call me old fashioned, I think you should only go if you believe in it all.

For whom the bells ching

Years ago I was sat around with a friend listening to music. "Purple Haze" came on and he cranked it up with the words, "Excellent, I want this song played at my funeral". I thought that was great but not the song for me and realised that I hadn't given the matter the serious thought it deserved. As it turns out, after not much very serious thought on the matter, I find I've pretty much settled on "Bike" by Pink Floyd. First off it's a good tune and the lyrics are as appropriate for an atheist funeral as anything. And it's short. The main part of the song is a cheerful litany of random things. But the end of the song - the horrible looped noise - draws things to a suitably bleak and mysterious end. That noise gives me the creeps. It reminds me of the bit in the Odyssey where Odysseus makes a sacrifice and the souls of the dead flit around the blood, gibbering.

My back up is the far more miserable "Dominoes". It's a proper dirge and the lyrics, I think, seem to touch on mortality. As far as I can remember I came to these choices years apart and it's just a co-incidence that they're both Syd Barrett numbers. Obviously his life was a tragedy but on the surface I don't think of him as a morbid character. Apart from the fact that he's dead of course. Pink Floyd are one of my favourite groups and I also find their band story interesting. Sometime after Syd's death, possibly the 25th anniversary of "Dark Side of the Moon", I saw a very good documentary about them. One thing in it irked me though, the idea that Syd had opted out of the music business because he thought pop was too shallow. This theory is possibly salving a few consciences but is totally blown apart by the fact that he showed up at the recording sessions for "Wish You Were Here" obviously wanting to contribute.