A Four-legged Friend with a Two-legged Name!

If the bedside alarm wakens me in the morning, I'm greeted by either some classical music, the traffic bulletin or the news headlines.  A few weeks ago I awoke to the news that the road I needed to use that morning was closed because of an accident and I had the opportunity to plan an alternative route should I need it.  Fortunately that proved not to be necessary.

Like many others, on Thursday morning this week, the first thing I heard was the shocking - but realistically not unexpected - news of the Russian incursion into Ukraine.  I was stunned by the violence, saddened that diplomatic efforts had failed, angry at the Russians for taking this action and sympathetic to Ukrainians whose whole world had been turned upside-down.

At times like this, whether international or personal, I find it helpful to remember something happy and peaceful.  Luckily, I didn't have to turn back the pages of memory very far.  Last weekend, I seemed to have started a cold and decided that it would be socially preferable to keep my snuffles to myself.  Instead of taking my usual drive to worship, I made a cup of coffee and settled down in the sunshine of my lounge.  Instead of my usual armchair, I made myself comfortable in what I call 'the Maureen chair', facing in the opposite direction.

You might think it strange to give a name to a piece of furniture; you could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps it was given to me by someone called Maureen.  But you'd be wrong; in point of fact I passed it sitting by the roadside one Saturday morning as I drove to make a delivery.  When I returned with an empty van, it was still there, bearing a conspicuous notice, "Free - please take me".  I'd had the second half of my outward journey and the beginning of my return to think through whether or not I wanted it, and what I could do with it so, having examined it and found it to be undamaged, I loaded it into the van, muttered a prayer of thanks to the householder who had put it there, and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the settled days pre-Covid, I was in the habit of leading a regular Bible-study meeting and every fortnight or so, that chair was occupied by a charming, diminutive octogenarian named Maureen.  Because for the remainder of its time the chair rested in my bedroom as a 'dumping place' for my clothes, rather than somewhere to sit, Maureen was the only person who ever sat in it.  She has been happily married to John for over sixty years.  

They've had their ups and downs, like any other couple, but, so far as I know, they've faced everything together in a positive manner.  When there were disagreements, these were, it seems, accepted and eventually reconciled.  Life has taken them to a variety of homes in this country and for short periods elsewhere in the world.  To see the two of them together - let alone to converse with them regularly - was to be infected by their love, peace and understanding.

As I sat in my armchair with my early-morning cup of tea on Thursday, I remembered the time I'd sat in the other chair only a few days before and, inevitably, thoughts of the chair led me to recall its regular occupant, and the sense of peace that those thoughts brought me set me up for the rest of the day.

Air-raid Precautions!

I admit it could be a product of advancing years, but I confess to having great feelings of dissatisfaction over the last year or so.  There is so much wrong with this world.  I listen to the regular news bulletins with their stories of political wrangling, most recently the build-up of tension over Ukraine.  I hear reports from nearer home and am faced with politicians unable to follow simple instructions that they themselves have imposed, while their colleagues - or they themselves! - are processing new laws that will curtail individual freedoms in a variety of subtle, and not-so-subtle ways.

Meanwhile, the world, we hear, is drifting slowly to complete melt-down resulting from, inter alia, our seeming insurmountable dependence on fossil fuels ... quite apart from the problems caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which is far from over, may never end and is causing us to re-think our lives in terms of 'living with Covid'.  There is so much famine, violence and hardship in the third world; boatloads of refugees are arriving daily on our shores - 25,000 last year, did I hear this week? - preferring, it seems, to be shut up in near prison conditions, in fear of deportation, to staying in the countries from which they have fled.  Are they being deceived by stories of a much better life here, or simply being let down by the unrelenting selfishness of the natives?

I'm dissatisfied because I can't see a way through all these problems - notwithstanding the immeasurable difficulties of executing any solution - and I realise there is virtually nothing I can do about them.  I can send donations to the Salvation Army and other relief agencies; I can support UNHCR, contribute to appeals for food in Yemen, medical aid in Ethiopia or hurricane relief in this or that country recently hit.  But how much can the few pence that I send help to reduce the problems?

I can write imploring e-mails to my MP, but I'm afraid that he won't read yet another boring contribution to his inbox that is just like the other hundreds he gets.  And even if he did, since he's only the Shadow Defence Secretary, I guess there is little he could do anyway.  If we had a better, more co-operative system of government than the present adversarial system - did you know that the two front benches in the House of Commons are two sword-lengths apart ... and why? - then there might be some hope.

HOWEVER ...

Amidst all this macro gloom and doom, there are micro-shards of the light of satisfaction.  In the strong winds of storm Malik the other week, my back gate jammed.  It was a one-off incident and it passed out of my mind.  Then this week storm Dudley had a crack.  This time the problem was far greater; I couldn't wrench the gate free by pulling it from the inside, and had to resort to strolling innocently around the block armed with a hammer, and thumping it into submission from without.  Close examination revealed what was making this situation possible so, when I later contacted the landlord's agent to report the problem, I was able to suggest at least one possible remedy.

I had scarcely put the phone down when I looked out of my window to see that the wind had once again released the gate from its moorings and was thrashing it to and fro once more.  I needed little thought to hit upon a temporary remedy.  When I re-modelled the garden last autumn, I unearthed a large slab just smaller than the others that were there, about the same weight but, unlike them, not made of concrete.  I hadn't known what to do with it, so it has stood against the shed wall ever since its discovery.  I've now found a use for it.  It holds the gate in the closed position, at an angle that - I hope - will not allow it to be blown out of place by storm Eunice, whose winds are beginning to be felt as I write.

I end with a picture of this week's 'air-raid precaution'.

Good Grief!

I must apologise at the outset if this post seems a bit of a hotch-potch.  I'm rushing to pull together some thoughts that have been running through my head in a busy week before leaving for a family birthday celebration. 

The key words on which these thoughts congeal seem to be grief, mourning and regret.  If in doubt, I often find it's a good idea to turn to the good old Oxford Dictionary.  Grief is undoubtedly the extreme, a deep and intense feeling of sorrow. Next of these three is mourning, which seems to be time-limited in nature but also extends beyond the human, to embrace things and events. And finally regret, which is an expression of sorrow that is directed, or at least focussed on a living third party.

Looking at the WFA calendar above my desk, I see that later this month comes the anniversary of the second battle of Kut.  I know very little of my uncle William's service in the First World War.  It is confined to just four words uttered by my father in answer to a vague question in my youth, "Will was at Kut,".  Will was born in 1898 and I've come to realise that, allowing for a period of training, and perhaps overstating his age on recruitment, the earliest he would have seen action would be in 1916 or 1917.  So my interest is excited at any mention of Kut (in full, Kut al Amara) and my desire to explore Will's involvement is revived.

The second battle of Kut, which took place on 23rd February 1917, was a short engagement, not really a battle at all.  It was part of the British advance to Baghdad and a force of some 50,000 recovered the town of Kut which had been lost to the Ottomans a year or more earlier.  The much smaller Ottoman force in the town decided to leave.  The key factor for me is that most of the 50,000-strong British force 'had come from India'.  Now, were they Indian battalions, or British battalions previously posted to India?  And, if the latter, from which regiments?  I haven't so far found answers to those questions.

I regret not talking to Will before he died at the end of 1976, but he lived in another part of the county, and I think I only ever saw him twice, so it wasn't as if we had some familiarity that could have been developed.  His death pre-dated by decades the start of my interest.  I joined with my father and mourned at his graveside at the time, but in no sense does his passing cause me grief.

Someone quoted a few days ago in my presence, "Grief is like love with no place to go."  I believe the speaker disagreed with this idea ... I couldn't clearly hear the rest of her remarks.  My immediate, but unspoken, reaction was, 'No, it's love reflected by the persona of one no longer able to receive it.'  You may or may not agree.

A friend, recently-bereaved, described on social media being most upset by being told, "That was six months ago - you should be over it by now.".  What right has anyone to determine how long someone else's grief should extend?  Many will agree with me that, though it might vary in its intensity, grief is never-ending.  You never 'get over it'.

I'll finish with a sort of 'reverse illustration'.  A few months ago I got a coat from a charity shop.  As I brought it home I realised that it bore the characteristic smell of whatever it is that such places use to treat second-hand clothing to purify them.  At first I was reluctant to wear it because of the smell, but within a week or two, I noticed that the smell had gone.  The coat itself, however, is as good as the day I bought it.  The immediate impact of bereavement is very deep. As one recurring event after another comes around and has to be attended alone, each forms another painful reminder of the loss.  After that sequence of 'firsts' is over, the pain might be a little less and there is possible encouragement from the fact of 'having managed it last time'.

I saw a useful graphic on social media only this week, saying "Some people say that grief gradually gets smaller.  They're wrong.  Grief stays the same size, but life just gets bigger to accommodate it."

Like the coat that's still keeping me warm, the emptiness of grief is there to stay, and life has to adjust to that fact.  Grief becomes part of a life that takes on a new shape: a shape that, however unwelcome, is here to stay.

Traces of Ancient Amidst the Modern

Life quickly gets embedded into a new pattern, usually based on the week that's just gone, rather than what could be.  That's as true for me as for the next person.  Recently, I've been well-supplied with WEBBS work that takes up free time quite easily because I enjoy it, leaving just enough for eating, sleeping and the daily contribution to my Welsh course.  Just lately, though, there has been a bit of a hold-up, while I wait for the remaining chapters of the book I'm working on to be finished.  So, what to do with the spare time?

Ordinarily, there would be little choice ... it would be family history.  However, with the recent burst of sunny and warmer weather - and knowing that, if the forecasts are right, it won't last long - I decided to go for a walk and explore my new-found home town.  After forty-odd years in rural Norfolk (albeit in a market town there) and twenty or so in the First Garden City, to move to an un-reconstituted former coal-mining town is, to say the least, something of a wrench.  Knowing that in my family tree there are people who moved out of East Anglia in the late 19th century, either to the cotton towns of Lancashire, or to the mining area of north Yorkshire and Durham, I've spent much of the last few months trying to imagine what this area was like a few decades ago with pit-head gear rising over every hill and round every corner.

Another aspect of this former age is the extent of the railway network.  Thanks to modern technology and the enthusiasts who utilise it, and in particular Rail Map online, I've discovered some of the strands of this network that provided transport for the coal produced nearby.  Even before moving here, I had realised that, like Letchworth, which I was leaving, this is a town divided by a railway.  Unlike Letchworth, this railway closed in the late 1970s and all that remains now is the deep cutting in which it ran.  This divides the town as firmly as if it still had trains running along it.

The Dearne Valley Railway was built in the Edwardian era, and opened in 1909 almost exclusively to service the local mines: passenger services began in 1912 but survived only until 1951.  A modern housing estate is now being developed on the site of a mine that was just the other side of the main road close to where I live.  The result is that, by walking less than half-a-mile, through this new development, I can find a modern footbridge that crosses the route of the former railway.  It gave me access earlier this week to the old track-bed and I offer below pictures of some relics I found there.