Ahh - here she is. Five and skipping. It doesn't get much better than that.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Saturday, 15 March 2008
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
Great Aunt Ethel el morte
Today I drove to Birmingham for GAE's funeral. She was my Dad's aunt but we'd never met while she was alive. This I think is a sad thing.
I was glad I went today. Ethel was our last link to the Hudsons, and my Dad's real mum who died of an asthma attack, right in front of him, when he was four years old.
May: that was her name.
We've always had a rose-tinted view of her. As if she'd been around everything would have been a lot better for my dad, who had a pretty unpleasant childhood at the hands of the Dundee Stepmother who washed his hair in fairy liquid and treated him like a servant for a long long time.
I don't know what May was like - but she was Ethel's sister and so it seemed important to mark today, if only for my Dad.
I like a good funeral though. I think it's the one thing the church does really well. Emotion wringing hymns like 'Abide with me' which allow the men to cry with dignity ... The vicar talking about Vera Duckworth in the address. Bizarre, but very British.
I get a real sense of closure from the ceremony as the final clumps of wet earth thud onto the coffin lid deeper down in the ground than you thought it would ever be. And then the other gravestones. Eileen Crump, William Bytheway. Names you couldn't make up or imagine, are there.
I was glad I went today. Ethel was our last link to the Hudsons, and my Dad's real mum who died of an asthma attack, right in front of him, when he was four years old.
May: that was her name.
We've always had a rose-tinted view of her. As if she'd been around everything would have been a lot better for my dad, who had a pretty unpleasant childhood at the hands of the Dundee Stepmother who washed his hair in fairy liquid and treated him like a servant for a long long time.
I don't know what May was like - but she was Ethel's sister and so it seemed important to mark today, if only for my Dad.
I like a good funeral though. I think it's the one thing the church does really well. Emotion wringing hymns like 'Abide with me' which allow the men to cry with dignity ... The vicar talking about Vera Duckworth in the address. Bizarre, but very British.
I get a real sense of closure from the ceremony as the final clumps of wet earth thud onto the coffin lid deeper down in the ground than you thought it would ever be. And then the other gravestones. Eileen Crump, William Bytheway. Names you couldn't make up or imagine, are there.
Friday, 1 February 2008
The French Lieutenant's Four Year Old
I am quite proud of this picture of a very cold looking Tilly, looking a lot older than 4. Hengistbury Head is a beautiful, rugged, windswept place near Bournemouth, with some of the most expensive beach huts in the world don't you know....That beach knows me quite well. I've sat on rocks here as a teenager at night. Chucked flints at the ground and watched the sparks fly up. Brought girlfriends here. And now my children get to play with it too.
Sparking in the night
Chucking stones off rocks,
Flints on flints send shoals of sparks
Right into the sea
And in the darkness the warm wash
Of the weighty waves,
The vast sheer of the night sky
Buoy lights in the harbour.
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