life

Two Funerals

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Now before you start to think that this is going to be a morbid post purely from the title then let me reassure you that it most certainly is not. Whilst it is true that I have attended two funerals within the space of six days, I’m not going to dwell on the mourning side of them but rather the celebration of two lives and what I’ve learned about myself from them.

The first funeral, last Thursday, was my own mother’s. I could tell you the tale of how it just shouldn’t have happened and that Melton Mowbray hospital let her and us down with their negligence but I don’t want to do that (they did though) but that wouldn’t be my style. No, I’d much rather tell you how beautiful her send-off was.

We followed her wishes to the letter and whilst it was in the vein of a traditional funeral with church service, hymns and prayers it was also a time for my brother and I to inject a little light humour into it with our eulogy. Mum would have liked that. She enjoyed a good laugh. And I think what I took away from it was to treasure the small things in life. It isn’t always about the big things. Oh sure, we all remember those great, expensive foreign holidays or meeting the rich and famous or being at a certain major event; those are all good memories.

But reading through the eulogy (wot I wrote) brought back so many memories of times that still bring a huge smile to my face. For example, as kids we were taken to Mablethorpe for a week for our annual Summer holiday until I was 10 and we ventured as far as Cornwall. I have much better and fonder memories of those times than I have of say, going to Benidorm with the lads when I was 18. Much of that trip is a hazy San Miguel induced blur.

We thought we were going somewhere exotic where we would sip Sangria on the beach and that there would be dusky, hot-blooded, passionate Spanish women throwing themselves at our sun-bronzed bodies and that the air would be thick with the heady scent of oleander. The reality was a beach that was too hot to walk on, dingey nightclubs selling insipid lager and pretty much nothing else and a sewage system that left a permanent mephitis hanging in the air. We weren’t even bronzed. None of us dared take our T shirts off for longer than a few minutes at a time but then maybe we shouldn’t have gone in August.

And as for the ladies. Most of them were called either Tracy or Cassandra, came from the North-East of England and were all even drunker than we were. Although some of them did throw themselves at us but not in a hot-blooded tempestuous way. More like an ashtray breath, falling over, spewing in the street kind of way. Not the holiday we had in mind when we booked it and if truth be told I’d much rather forget it all together.

But those childhood days of playing on the Lincolnshire sands with bucket and spade are memories I will always treasure.

And there were other times too that came out of that eulogy. Not great, Earth-shattering life events but simple family moments that actually brought a good few chuckles from those in the church with us. And so, in that sense, it truly was a celebration of life. Not just my mum’s but my whole family. And that taught me something. I’m going to cherish every moment I spend with those I love – my beautiful, wise and funny wife Ange, my step-daughter Becky with her lust for life, my granddaughter Erin who makes me feel like the luckiest man on Earth, my wider family (both my own and my in-laws) and of course all the excellent friends that we have around us. I want to commit to memory all the funny little things people have said and the laughter we share over the years.

Sounds mawkish?

Probably, but so what? It’s better than filling your head with pornography or horror movies or soap operas or anything with Jimmy Carr in. It’s probably true that there are people in this world that remember Scott and Charlene’s wedding in Neighbours better than their own.

So that’s what I took away from Mum’s funeral.

The second one was just a few days ago, and it was the funeral of Judith; an old friend and colleague of Ange’s. Judith was a great character. A very glamorous lady (even in her later years) with an intelligence to match and a deep-rooted love of English history. Throughout her life Judith travelled extensively and lived in New Zealand for a time. She loved vibrant colours, animals of all shapes and sizes (especially cats) and indeed was in love with life itself.

And her family were adored by her and she by them.

I didn’t know Judith as much as I would have liked to have done but it was her joy of being alive that spoke to me the most about her at the funeral, which was perhaps one of the most light-hearted and joyful of such occasions that I have ever known. Part of the wake was spent by people sharing their memories of Judith and the sense of love in the room for her was palpable.

And do you know what? That is exactly how I want people to be at my funeral. I want to be someone who is missed. That may sound selfish but that’s the overwhelming thing that came out of Judith’s funeral. This woman had lived her life in such a way that she really has left a gaping hole in the lives of all who knew her.

So I’m going to try and live like that. Oh yes, I know I’m a larger than life, constantly joking, generous, kind-hearted man and I do have a great many people that will miss me when I’m gone. But from what I learned at Judith’s funeral I want to be more than that. I want to be a force of nature to people and treat everyone the way that I would want to be treated by them.

In a nutshell, I’m going to try harder.

So two funerals. I cried at my mum’s because of who it was that I’d lost but I’ll always remember that there were a lot of folks there for a 92-year-old’s funeral and they all had a laugh on the day.

I smiled during Judith’s funeral, just with the simple pleasure of hearing about a life well lived and that will remain with me always.

There you are you see. I said it wasn’t going to be morbid and it wasn’t.

P.S – If you’re wondering about the Jimmy Carr bit, I just think the man is a colossal, monstrously offensive bell-end with less talent than a handkerchief full of phlegm and shouldn’t be allowed to show his smug, gurning face on the television..

Vinyl Safari

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I wrote this initially for my Wednesday short story on Substack. But I feel it is too good not to be shared further and therefore why shouldn’t I utilise the blog as well.

So here for you delight and delectation I give you – The Joy of The Vinyl Safari.

I believe it was Jimmy Page who first coined the term “Vinyl Safari.” It basically means standing in a record store or antiques emporium or even a charity shop and perusing the 33rpm vinyl records, hoping to find that gem you’ve long been looking for. I did it a lot in my younger days, however, with records being between £4 – £5 a pop at the time and with me earning the princely sum of £25 per week, and having an overly healthy fondness for beer, it meant that actually buying records was something that only happened only a few times a month. Maybe four or five.

But on those days when I did have a bit of spare cash I would pop down to Revolver Records or dear old Woolies and re-appear from within, half an hour later, with a square carrier bag in my hand bearing a freshly purchased LP and feeling as pleased as punch with myself.

Buying a record, back then was a multi-sensory experience. For one thing, record shops (particularly second-hand ones) smelled different to other shops. A blind person would know they were in one. Then there was the thrill of slowly (slowly now) letting your fingertips flick through the records, relishing the touch of those gorgeous cardboard sleeves, before stopping on the one you’ve been searching for with lit up eyes. Then of course there was the cover itself. A whole square foot of artistic wonderment which often led to many of us judging the music by the cover.

And who can forget that feeling of walking down the high street with the bag in your hand? I was almost tempted to do a Travolta-esque strut at the time.

Of course, I couldn’t wait to get home and put it on the turntable for that first listen and then sitting and reading the lyric sleeve as it played. Then when you’d exhausted all the lyrics you would move on to finding out who the producer and sound engineer were and in what part of the world it was recorded. Every single word on that album cover was thoroughly read and inwardly digested as if it were some great Victorian literary classic.

You’d bought a record, and it felt bloody ace!

But time has a way of changing us and different fads come and go and it was in the early nineties that vinyl came under a sustained and prolonged attack from the, now much-maligned, compact disc.

And I can remember when CDs were ushered in, hailed as the saviours of recorded music and I confess that I fell under their crystal-clear-sound spell too. My records were, over time, consigned to the loft with childhood toys, dusty old suitcases and broken cassette players, there to languish for decades – forgotten and uncared for.

Until now!

I’m back on the vinyl with gusto! And I’m enjoying the thrill of the Vinyl Safari once again. Vinyl has resurged back on to the music scene and my cherished old records are being aired once again.

I’ve got my lovely wife to thank for that. For it was she who bought me a record player for my birthday in 2014 with the words, ‘You need to play those old records again Al.’ And damn it she was right. I started playing them and the floods of memories that they brought back was pure, immeasurable joy to me. I’d heard those songs many times on CD but to blow the dust off of Dark Side of The Moon or those old Quo albums and put the needle down was like hearing them again for the very first time. Yes there were plenty of snaps, crackles and pops but they were always there anyway. They were all part of the charm. It was great.

Fast forward to present day and we find ourselves living in a delightful flat on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales and my records have suddenly found a whole new level of usefulness. Every six weeks or so a bunch of us at the flats get together, we have something to eat, a music quiz and then I play records for about three hours.

And people love it. It’s brilliant to see them singing along and air-guitaring to rock classics. Heck, I even had them all doing the YMCA dance a couple of times. Which was a lot better than it sounds.

Something else that has been pretty cool is that other people are bringing their old records to Vinyl Night and hearing them played for the first time in ages as well. It makes for a wonderful, fun-filled evening

And so, to ensure the continued success of Vinyl Night I find myself buying records at every available opportunity. Why, only today I toddled off to the local antique shop which has a veritable wealth of vinyl on offer. I spent a good long time letting my fingers do the walking before setting off home again with two YES albums and one by Steeleye Span. Plus I bought one of those Top of the Pops cover version albums from 1972 because I had that exact one and I don’t know whatever happened to it.

I felt like that starry-eyed teenager from forty years ago again. I couldn’t, in fact, wait to get home before I had a look at them and stopped for a sit down outside a café to have a gander. They were all utterly gorgeous of course, although, on second thoughts, perhaps taking them out of the bag and sniffing them in public in broad daylight wasn’t the best idea. I got some funny stares off people, but who cares?

I’m really enjoying connecting with vinyl records again and my collection is growing quite rapidly. I’ve taken it very seriously too, buying replacement stylus and proper cleaning cloths. I’m also on the lookout for a carrying case to protect those precious 12-inch beauties on their travels.

I’ve still got my CDs, well most of them at least. I did sell a big load off last year with the thought, “What the hell was I thinking of when I bought this?” at the forefront of my mind. But the good stuff I’ve hung on to. Just in case.

Who knows, in twenty years time we could be doing “CD Night.” But somehow, I doubt it.

Vinyl rocks!!!

If you’re interested, here’s a to my Substack Home Page.