Funerals

It wouldn't be surprising if funerals were to come to mind from time to time at my interesting age. Well, I find age interesting. I am living with a monkey on my shoulder with a degree of interest which borders on compulsive obsessive. He watches my life as if it were his sole source of nourishment. For all I know it may be. (I can just see the fellow, with his bright, intense eyes, and he is clinging to me as if his life depended on it). I have already planned my funeral with great care. Actually, I planned it some time ago and it may be that the details will need up-dating. Indeed, the nice Welsh minister I had in mind to conduct it has retired and gone to live a long way away. Recently, I attended a funeral other than my own. It was a lady I had met but not really known. One of her sons is a friend of mine; a good friend, a friend in need. When a drain is blocked or the downstairs is flooded, there he is, six foot in all directions and equally strong. (His is, of course, help in addition to the Guru's. In fact, I didn't know how nuch the Guru did for me, outside of Cyberspace, until he moved out and stopped doing it). Anyway, I went in order to support my friend. Before the interment, there was to be a service at the Chapel in the grounds of the cemetery.The day was foul: driving wind and rain and really cold. What's more, finding my way is not what I am best at. Even having, eventually, found a Chapel, I couldnt be sure it was the right one.But, I spotted a group of men and women, each one six foot in all directions and hoped this may be a reliable clue. Indeed, I had stumbled on the right Chapel and was soon being interrogated by the largest and clearly the lead quizzer of the bunch. After a few questions, which I was beginning to find border-line cheeky, I realised I had been mistaken for the lady- friend they knew my friend had recently acquired whom none of his family had yet met. Since he is in his forties, I was seriously flattered. Having clarified my role, we all relaxed and chatted like old acquaintances until the hearse and other family cars arrived.So far, so ordinary.

I found the service touching and effective. Three huge sons, a sister of normal proportions, and assorted relatives I had no way of placing assembled and prayed and sang and listened and gave what had clearly been a good and worthwhile human being a fitting send off. There were no surprises and, in due course, the Minister invited us to bring our cars and follow the hearse to the burial plot which was some distance away. At this juncture, it seemed prudent, having done my duty by friendship, to slip away. No point in exposing another old lady to the vicissitudes of wind, rain and mud when my presence had been noted and my respects paid. Therefore, I took the opportunity to find the door to the Ladies at the back of the Chapel and attend to a need which had become rather urgent given the extended length of my journey there and so on. Duly found, I got on with my business, tidied my weather-blown hair, taking my time, and prepared to leave and drive back home. Dear Reader, to my horror,emerging back in to the Chapel I realised I had been waited for. Hearse, Minister's car, kin cars and kith cars all waiting, just for me. Up there with the most embarrassing moment of my life, it was. Anyway, no hope of retreating for home and a hot bath. Back in my car and meekly follow the procession miles and miles round the cemetery to the interment, like a good girl. Naturally, I was last so last in a long line of cars on a single lane road. It was clear the way out was ahead and around so there I was trapped, hopeless. The shorter version of this sorry tale is that I, following the example of Another, backed down the approach road and managed to get away before the assembly had an opportunity to berate me for holding them all up and what- did- it- matter- what- my- hair- looked -like anyway? I promise to have my funeral on a dry, windless day and I'll forgive you if you miss the actual interment because of Nature's needs. I'm sure my friend's Mother would have, too. Nos da

Marriage

If you think that Marriage can be dealt with in a single blogpost you are probably not married. If you think I would have the temerity to cover it in one post I must have misled you, grossly, about who I am. At any rate, I do intend to make a start on a subject I have avoided up to now although it exercises, often, my mind and because, yesterday, it leapt in to focus in a rather unexpected way. To begin at the beginning: the mores of marriage are amongst the greatest changes observable in the years between age 40 and 75. Obviously, one great change is what might be called 'non-marriage'. Two people of opposite genders living together without benefit of clergy, as the saying goes/went, in the 70s when I was in my 40s, were regarded as Living in Sin. The woman was no better than she should be. The man was on to a good thing. The waterfall of reasons, ideas and philosophies inherent in that and, more important, in the acceptance of the current status quo, would take a dam of unimagineable proportions to control and exploit. At risk of drowning, I shall, nevertheless, approach and hold a jug under the flow to analyse just a litre or so. Marriage must have seemed the only solution which would both protect a woman and give her an acceptable role in a world where she was largely excluded from professional gratification. This solution would have lost its attraction as women gained more and more freedom and stature in the world of work. I have watched this erosion with mixed feelings. I am both pleaased for and envious of women who are currently 40. But I am also concerned. I do see value in tradition and containment. Whatever went on behind closed doors, men, women and children, too, for that matter, knew what was expected of them and, more or less, how to carry it out; no bad thing, surely.
Yesterday, I took part in a discussion which was, loosely, about comparative religion. The significance of woman was raised. An idea was put forward that there may be an intrinsic fear of women, of their power. A power that may be implicit in their fundamental and essential faculty to feed the young. From Nature's point of view, before the arrival of teeth - and Formula - civilisation could not survive without the milk of the Mother. The fact that without the man there would have been no conception in the first place got swallowed up in the overwhelming awareness that things would have progressed no further if there had been no means of nurturing the new-born baby.The point being that this dependence on the woman for survival made her threatening beyond tolerating and, as I see it, led to all the sublimation of that gender that we know about. Simplistic? yes, indeed. What it incontravertibly (?) shows is that there is essential necessity for both genders. Does equality follow, I ask myself: I ask you? Anyway, this may well prove to be quite the wrong forum to raise the matter. I suspect the Guru switched off a hundred words ago. Why should a man for whom a mobile phone is as ordinary and accepted as are his ears, his hands, be caught up in the mind-blowing development of the role of marriage between the time when his Godmother was married and the present day?
The story may have a happy ending. A couple, married 62 years, attended this meeting having travelled by 'bus. The lady got off first, at a particular stop and walked through a passage to reach the top of the road where the venue was. The man continued on the same 'bus, up through the village and down again to a stop at the bottom of the venue road. This was done with complete unanimity and acceptance. No argument about efficiency, no marital sniping, no "I told you so" by the first to arrive, just the independence each to do what he/she thought worked better. Who would want it any other way? Prynhawn da

Just a Minute

Yesterday, I took the minutes for a meeting of my Doctor's General Practice Patients Group. There were about a dozen people there. Now, I live in a community that is highly articulate, educated and political. The latter not necessarily in the sense of allegiance, more in the sense of involvement in what's going on in our community and in the country. Proudly, I drew a little map of the table so I could note not only the names of those who attended, (absolutely not: I refuse point blank to call them attendees, so there), but also where they were seated, to make it easier to ascribe comments. This is an occupation in which I have indulged before, however, not for more decades than it would be decent to remember. I tell you this because I was under the impression, when I offered to stand in as a one-off for the appointed Secretary, that my earlier experience of committee note-taking and my ordinary student experience, when the notes of the Professor became the notes of the student without passing through the head of either, as the old saw goes, would be all I needed to keep the pen on the paper. I suppose I was also thinking of my later professional need for note-taking. Crazy: the making of headline notes in a 50 minute consultation when 45 of those minutes consisted of a profoundly constructive silence has nothing in common with a room full of jabbering interested parties falling over one another in their eagerness to be heard. No, I don't do shorthand. I did attend a Secretarial School for Young Ladies sixty years ago when it was the thing for well-brought-up young Welsh girls to do if they wished to leave the Principality (Wales, if you are over the Pond)and set themselves up in the Smoke (London, ditto). I left on the third day and managed to resucitate my offer of a University place and embark on quite a different path. All this would be of little interest if I were as young as last I was in this situation. I am not. I don't hear as well, I don't write as fast and I don't, after all, remember those things that seem so obvious they don't need writing down. To cap it all, when I made my egregious offer, I was unaware that there was to be a guest speaker.
Thereby lies the rub. A youngish, prettyish woman, a highly qualified medic, buzzing with enthusiasm, energy and evangelism arrived to address us on the part she, the practice Doctors and we were to play in the re-organisation of our National Health Service. Dear Reader, she dived from a height straight in. I was utterly drowned in her words. I have hung on to a few of the Pitman shorthand symbols, learnt in those three days, (Does Pitmans even exist now, I ask myself; I ask you?) and the improvised shorthand I used for lecture note-taking - no vowels, for instance - but none of my resources was equal to the flow of fact-packed, urgent and essential information emanating from this gifted and unstoppable person. What to do? I put down my pen, wiped my fevered brow and decided to fall back on my facility for recall to fill in the gaps at home. But I couldn't. My mind is/was a blank. I have suffered the guilt, the shame and the inevitable. I could tell you what she was wearing to the last button but what she said is mush in my ears. It is Phillip Glass where it should be Mozart. I ask you to pray with me, that the Practice Manager is in a good mood, on good form and with a good memory when I report back to her on Monday. Otherwise the minutes will simply have to read: "there was a guest speaker." Nos da

Focus

Yesterday, I attended a Focus group organised by a huge and very well-known clothing manufacturer and retailer. The subjects were knickers and bras. With a degree of mischief threatening to become unmanageable, I found my inner voice chanting "vicars and tarts" to itself as I did the bustling necessary to arrive on time. I'm sure my Mother would have been as horrified at the thought of a forum discussion on knickers and bras as she would have been had she been invited to a party with a theme of vicars and tarts . My naughty response will suggest to you that my own mindset is also not that far behind. Since I am, however, really only 40, I did feel equal to what I expected to be quite a challenge. The system was for some fourteen women to sit around a table with a Focus group specialist, a designer, a structural engineer and,in the morning, a knicker expert and, in the afternoon, an expert in bras. As it happens, I have attended one of these gatherings at this institution before. It was led by a man. He, having written the email of invitation, was unwell and, therefore, not in. Very sensible, I thought. Schoolgirl giggles could have been the only possible outcome if the ensuing process had been led by a man; even this man who seemed unlikely ever to watch a woman dress and undress. The instruction was to say which of our knickers we liked best and why and which had disappointed. Purchase from another source was to be acknowledged along the lines of ' what are they doing better than we are?' I was sitting where I was second in the round. (This matters, as will emerge). Now, Liz wears what I can describe only as 'school knickers': fitting round the backside, over the bulge and up to the waist. I love them. I have progressed, through the years, from this firm's pretties to this firms sensibles. My comment was that, pure cotton as they may be, they had shrunk. Time had been spent in selecting a pair that had and a pair that hadn't, to prove my point. Dear Reader, the entire team was round me like a piece of elastic. My undies were photographed, felt and recorded and the upshot was that my address was taken with the promise that I should receive replacements at their expense. Of course it matters, silly. If they shrink they are no longer capable of covering the bulge. They rest in an uncomfortable squeeze in the middle of it. This dilemma is meaningless to you young ones, but it is jolly disconcerting to the elderly aspirant to some degree of elegance - the line, silly, the line. You have probably guessed, but the relevance of being second emerged as we went round the table and the most frivolous, lacy, racy bits of nothing were displayed and examined, in colours I had walked passed with eyes averted when I was in the shop. I would have slunk out leaving my sample behind had I been any further round the bend...double entendre intended.
The afternoon was even more of a challenge. I was forced to confess I didnt buy their bras. I tried and they don't work for me. Expecting to be thrown out, I suffered even greater shame: the attempt to persuade me to have another go. If you have been at the receiving end of a concerted campaign by expert marketeers to get you to buy their product, you will have some idea of what I went through. Charm, discretion and a brickwall politeness finally exhausted me to a point where I agreed to a new fitting and another try. Well, you would wouldn't you when they are half the price of what I had bought and there are so many to choose from? But, actually, no. There were so many to choose from I was quite overwhelmed.....and exhausted. What kind of a world do I live in, I asked myself, that I can spend a whole day focussing on my underwear when the outside world is as the outside world is. Death, destruction, cruelty, tragedy: what can it possibly matter? How can a group of women, a group of experts and their employer call this Focus? But when I had run out of green ink, I realised that this particular employer gave work to more thousands of people world-wide than my imagination could encompass. So, drown your scruples and focus on that. Bore da
PS Mountain View, California. Do, please, put me out of my misery! Who are you?
liz.mountford@gmail.com

Benevolence

It seems only fair, having used "Under Milk Wood" and my view of the Welsh character, to point up the need in all - most - of us for a bit of bad news gossip, that I should counter-balance this with an example of quite a different take on the world. If you have been kind enough to keep up, you will know that I have a fairly strong connection to the way things work for Buddhists. Recently, I was at one of the Buddhist centres around London. I was greeted by a young, female Nun in a state of great excitement. She was off to Scotland in a 'bus over night that very night. She had'nt done that before and her pleasurable anticipation was palpable and rather touching. After she had left me, her arms full of things to take with her, several other people came up to me and gave me the same exciting news. Her joy in her adventure was shared and delighted in by the entire community. For myself, the thought of a night in a 'bus brought up the opposite of joyful anticipation. I do prefer a room and a bed and a ticking clock and not too many other people to share my night, anyway, with two legs. I had taken with me a little offering of snowdrops, plucked from my small garden. He- to- whom- they- were- offered found an egg-cup to house them and then put them on the desk of the presiding Lama. It seems a blessing lies in giving someone the chance of doing a good thing for another. This blessing is called a Merit. Two people benefit. One, in this case me, from creating an opportunity to obtain a Merit - the giving on of the flowers, and the other for the one who chose not to hold on to the gift but to present it to someone else. Still with me? I suspect I have taken us through this complex, simple notion before. It still fascinates me. Perhaps it is not unlike the Hebrew 'Mitzvah'. But there was none of the eager 'what happened next' thirst of the thrill-seeking Gossips of my youth. No secretly cynical view of the Nun's innocent excitement at what may have been seen as a fairly prosaic and not very comfortable way to spend a whole night.
Thinking of cynicism has brought to mind one of the most blatant examples I have encountered in my celebrated more than three score and ten years. Two months ago, turning left at lights, a car which had been waiting beside me in the right lane also turned left and went in to me. So far so straight forward, or left turning, if you will. I stopped, with damage to my wheel arch. He continued for a few seconds with the result that his car was damaged along the entire side. It now turns out that, in his account, he has up-ended the map of the location where this occured. He avers we were on the opposite road coming from the opposite direction. He says I was in the left lane, and that I tried to turn right and thus went in to him; all this on the other side of the intersection from where we actually were. The enormity of this chutzpah is beyond my capacity to take in. I have offered to swear under oath to my version of events so we shall see what happens next. In fact, I also offered to ring up the Queen if that would help, getting quite Alice in Wonderland in my frustration, but my Insurers felt she probably had enough on her plate what with Jubilees and Olympics. You must be thinking that Liz too often loses her capacity to see the fun in stuff. I promise to try harder to laugh at life if you promise not to look for the bad news too often. Prynhawn da

Amateur

The difficulty with'amateur' is that it has picked up a pejorative significance. I am thinking of it more literally, as something done for love. I do love Dylan Thomas's play for voices," Under Milk Wood". Recently, I took part in a rehearsed reading of it put on by a local amateur theatrical group. (I can't think why you are so surprised. Liz is not nailed to the computer thinking up blog posts, you know). Anyway,that is what happened, I took part. What wouldn't surprise you is that "Under MIlk Wood" should rank second only to Messiah in my must-have list. In case you have no reason to be aware of its provenance, I should explain that it is about a day in a Welsh Village inhabited by what this Welshman has always seen as typical Welsh characters. A harsher, more dispassionate evaluator, may see the characters as borderline stereotypical but, so what. There is rather a thin line between essence and stereotype, wouldn't you agree? Anyway, going with the essence approach, there are, represented, many figures only too recognisable from a life up to late teen-age spent among them. It's the gossip which springs primarily to mind. As a matter of fact, both gossip and Gossip. Even after I left my parents' home to go to University, during weekend visits I was expected to go to the local Cafe and rendezvous with my Mother's friends to hear and furnish the news. My observation was that these ladies enjoyed my news only when it was bad. Good news was greeted with a thin smile and an instant implication of 'let's move on'. Bad news was greeted eagerly, excitedly with a demand for more details. These were not basically bad people. After all, in our hearts, we all know that bad news is more gripping than good. They were just unconsciously innocent about letting it be seen that it were so. There is irony, meanness and also compassion in my experience of the Welsh character. They may gloat, not all that secretly, over your downfall but they would fall over each other with bowls of soup were you to be too ill to make it for yourself. The Welsh couldn't claim exclusivity in the area of compulsive, obsessive behavior, neither. However, there is rather a lot of it about west of Bristol and north of Chester. In the play, Mrs Ogmore Pritchard, widow, twice, of Mr.Ogmore and Mr Pritchard presents a portrait of obsessive, compulsive disorder which out-clarifies all the psychiatric definitions I have ever come across.For instance, "Put you pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas". "Before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes". Get it?
Sadly, the stock of the soup of Thomas's work in this particular production had nowhere near the intensity it not only needed but deserved. The several exceptions served only to unbalance the whole by pointing out how things could and should have sounded. It is hard when someone takes the ball of your passion and runs away with it to play a game foreign to you. I doubt I behaved as I would have liked. In fact, I gave up and detached myself, torn between my instinct and familiarity with the work, and the direction, which I allowed to take away my spontaneity so that I did neither what I was told nor what I had been able to do so often in the play in the past. The venue was icy and the outside temperature only a touch warmer. The audiences were, therefore, not huge and I am not aware of the presence of any that were Welsh. So, not that serious, then. There you are, you see: As I told you, news is interesting only if it's bad. Therefore, I must now add that there was fun in it and new friendships and I learned a great deal. For instance, amateur must always mean 'for love', not 'unprofessional'. I must do as I'm told. I must carry on blogging.I must be less obsessively compulsive about, well, everything, and I must name a drawer'pyjamas' so I can put my pyjamas in it. Prynhawn da
PS. I'd love to know more about my reader in Mountain View California. Would you add a comment or email to: liz.mountford@gmail.com Of course, maintain the mystery if you prefer!

Rehearsal

You will be sympathetic to know that Liz had been laid low with a lurgie these last few days. How bad it was, in reality, is hard to assess. The first day I got up and prepared for a normal day when I realised that I was still sitting on the bed pulling on a sock five minutes after that manoeuvre had been initiated. I reversed the process, removed my upper and outer garments, too, and got back in to the bed. The next day I reviewed my situation and realised that, were I to have an exam that day, I would certainly have been able to get it together and present myself as required. However, I have not had to take an exam for about fifty five years so there was no incentive in that category. I have, however, experienced similar situations. Fifty years ago, I had my first child. The day after his arrival was certainly comparable with the day after exams. There was the most delicious feeling of 'it's over. It's done. I 've got through' I'm not sure about flying colours but I am quite sure about blood and sweat; tears, too, of joy and relief that there were ten of all that should be ten and four of all that should be four and a complement of accessories, as in eyes and nose and the like. Today, I arose and prepared myself as if for a normal very-well-thank-you day. As it happens, I don't feel all that well but the spirit feels better upright than prone. There is no rehearsal for being three score and more than ten and, when I feel poorly, I am always wondering how much is due to virus and how much to antiquity. The Father of my children is four score. He would be a good reference point but he is in such robust good health that he is disqualified - unqualified? - from being a role model. There is no rehearsal for first time childbirth , neither. Several miscarriages gave me a clip but there was no way to pre-see the whole film. Fortunately, if one goes on to have more than one child, the first can serve as a good run-through of what to expect. How is it I can remember every moment of that birth from forty nine years, eleven months and two days ago when I can't remember what I had for breakfast this morning? (Yes, I can. It was just a poetically licenced way to put short-term memory loss).

Liz has another reason for being up and about, today. There is to be a rehearsal of "Under Milk Wood" this evening. Adult for the last circa sixty years, but still influenced by maternal counsel, I am doubtful about staying in all day and then going out in the freezing night air to attend. I have to be particularly careful because, not having been assigned the part I aspired to and saw myself as best qualified for, my inner world may conspire to make me forget to go or raise my temperature back up so that even this matyr could not possibly go out. The fact that one is particularly well related to one's unconscious rarely precludes its doing what it likes to achieve what it really wants, no matter what, I've found, haven't you? Illness is a very reliable way to make an I-don't-really-want-to statement. I believe there is a way in which the inner world does offer the possibility of serving as a rehearsal for life. As in: I will try out whether this is the right thing for me and if I break a leg so that I can't proceed I shall know it is not. Someone I know quite well complained, for a long time, of a stiff neck. Movement was difficult and she was in constant pain. On top of that, she had a very demanding job and a toddler with the usual NO, WONT,SHANT, CANT MAKE ME position in life. She tried everything you would expect her to try and it was not until it was pointed out to her that her life was a pain in the neck that she began to feel any relief. Anyway, I shall apply my poorly self to my disappointed role. As in life, keep a sharp eye out for hidden signposts and hope, that in spite of poorly understood and under-appreciated rehearsals, it will be alright on the night. Prynhawn da.