The 2nd January was a very different kind of
day this year. Last year, my mother's funeral was blessed with a clear blue
sky, but jings! was it cold. Inside the little country church, a small
congregation shivered in unison. Later, in the car park of the oldest tea room
in Romsey, where we had a brief restrained wake, I mimed a swan landing on a
frozen lake as my legs almost went from under me on the black ice.
This year, the temperature was autumnal and the rain was
constant. My brother, my two sisters and I guided our fragile father along the
muddy track through the church yard to our mother's grave. It was the first
time I'd seen the headstone. An elegant unpretentious stone slab with a classic
stone cutter's font that bears the legend Peace
at last. The older of my two sisters and I wanted the rather more wry and
ambiguous Free at last! (with
exclamation mark).
I'd left my wife and daughter to their own post-Christmas
symbiotic devices to nip over to the UK – by airplane for once, rather than by
interminable road or rail – to spend a bit of time with the Aging P and to
celebrate New Year at my sister's annual party. The marking of my mother's
death was incidental but felicitous. I don't intend to make a habit of it, but
I figured that the first anniversary has a symbolic importance.
As it happened, my sister Jo caught a humdinger of a
cold. Unable to face the food preparation involved, the event was called off
and New Year came not with the pop of prosecco corks (seemingly the drink of
choice for the Waitrose sorority) but with the damp squib of an early night.
Snug in my sofa bed, I couldn't even be bothered to watch Jools Holland. And
while I enjoyed the bells of the abbey, I didn't get up to watch the fireworks
over Romsey.
Bah! Humbug. I hate New Year anyway. I'm not the sort to
jump into a fountain and frolic with fellow revellers. It's just the passing of
another damn year, and another reminder of all that I failed to achieve during
it. On top of which, it's one year nearer the day when my account will be
closed and signed off with a dismissive Could
have done better. File under 'Dilettantes'.
So any 'celebration' as such took place on a mild wet Saturday.
My younger sister, Gina, brought a potted plant to lay at the graveside, Jo
sprinkled wild flower seeds around and my brother laid a single arum lily at
the foot of the headstone. I read another of my mother's poems: a delightful
childhood memory of a trip across north London to see a distant aunt with the
disquieting habit of weeping at the drop of a lace hanky. Written in the vein
of Stevie Smith and Sir John Betjeman, she called it 'Aqua Erratica'. When I've
finished digitalising her verse, I shall send a sample to Faber & Co.
After this ad hoc ceremony, we betook ourselves to a public house for some muffled chatter and a
spot of luncheon. The Little House at Home, or something of that nature, with
its thatched roof and a door for 16th century dwarves, is my
father's favourite pub in Romsey. He can just about totter there on the arm of
a sister with a stick passed down via my former father-in-law to drink a pint
of London Pride or Stella, his favourite lager as it bears the name of his wife
of 60-odd years.
They reserved a table for five by one of the leaded
windows, where we could eat, drink and be a little merry without disturbing the
other diners. When he's not seriously depressed or seriously drunk, my brother
has a quick wit and a comic's timing and we had fun with the language in which
the menu is written. It's good, simple food described in the kind of flowery
prose that's de rigueur since TV
chefs became the new rock stars.
Wondering about 'Soup of the moment', I volunteered to go
to the bar to find out what it was at that precise time. The woman described a
roast butternut squash and pumpkin concoction. Sounded good, but I couldn't
resist asking her whether it was liable to change. 'Oh no no; it's the same
soup all day.' Well, I thought it was funny, but I went back to the table
feeling slightly ashamed for flaunting my sarcasm.
The soup when it came was delicious. As was the main
course and the dessert. It was all unpretentious, attractively 'plated' and
copious without being intimidating. And it was, too, I felt, rather better than
I might have found in an equivalent kind of hostelry in France, supposedly the
home of fine cuisine. Whether it's due to TV stars or Michelin stars or both,
we seem to have become obsessed with the look of our food. It's rarely good
enough now, for example, to serve well-cooked vegetables. We have to froth,
drizzle and de-construct them. If we worried half as much about the source of
our food, we might not be in quite the mess that humanity finds itself in at the
moment.
Last Thursday night, the three of us went to see a
documentary film called Demain (or Tomorrow in English currency): the
laudable project of a group of young French film makers who wanted to show the global
disaster scenario in a more positive light by focusing on some uplifting attempts
to pull back from the precipice. In general it showed the French to be earnest,
the Americans to be awesomely enthusiastic, the British to be more than a
little barking and the Scandinavians to be the most enlightened people in the
world.
The cinema at Vayrac was packed and there was hesitant,
desultory applause at the end of the film, which suggested that the message had
struck a chord. I'm not quite sure how we or they are going to contribute
meaningfully to saving the world. I can't alas see how boiling less water in
kettles or even banishing Nutella from our collective kitchens will preserve
what's left of Indonesia's natural world, but the film at least showed that there
are pockets of humanity determined to demonstrate another way of doing things.
I'm particularly fascinated by the post-apocalyptic case
study of Detroit: the way that the city effectively died with the old
automotive industry and how it has attracted a new breed of pioneers who are
helping to green the desolate city by planting market gardens everywhere, which
will soon produce enough vegetables to feed its citizens. As a couple of old former
assembly line workers said, it's hard
work – but it's life-enhancing.
My father's comfortable first-floor flat has a little
balcony. He likes his new residence so much that he draped some blinking lights
around his balcony this Christmas. My mother, unlike the rest of her family,
had no time for Christmas and my father's more festive inclinations have re-surfaced
after decades of repression. It would be nice to think that, now that the
lights have come down, he would plant tomatoes, basil and courgettes on his
balcony and help to turn Romsey, Hants. into a kind of Todmorden, West Yorks. (where
residents with the backing of an enlightened council, have planted every public
and private space imaginable).
But Romsey is far too cosy and privileged and my father,
God love him, is far too indolent. After our lunch, we steered him slowly along
The Hundred, as the main street is so quaintly named, towards his home of less
than a year. We bumped into a couple of his fellow residents, a pair of widowed
women of a certain age who have
already succumbed to his charm. One of them introduced herself to me as his
drinking partner. Cue much merriment...
Back in his flat, we hung around for an hour or so and
reminisced about childish affairs. The following day, I flew back to Limoges
from Southampton and helped to take our jolie
sapin de Noel down for another year.
My sisters go in, separately, almost every day to check
on our father. He's happy enough and quite enjoying his solitary routine. At
six every day, he pours himself – and sometimes perhaps his drinking partner –
a stiff dry Martini and sits down to watch BBC News highlights of the soup of
the moment on his huge flat-screen telly. Growing harder and harder of hearing,
he plans to buy some Sensaround speakers this year. They will be linked by
wi-fi to his laptop in the next room, where his playlist performs from morn
till night for subliminal company.
With the end in sight, my father has turned consumer with a vengeance. Next Christmas, I could buy him a virtual reality headset.
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