'As a woman I have no country,
As a woman my country is the whole world'
Virginia Woolf
Tuesday, 8 March 2016
Happy International Women's Day!
'As a woman I have no country,
As a woman my country is the whole world'
Virginia Woolf
Sunday, 6 March 2016
The Inexperience of Attending Funerals.
It has been a long time since I have written. Several months in fact. Why? Well 'Life' has a way of becoming busy and intruding on any possible writing time. I have, however, come to the conclusion that I am happier when I write, even if it is only 5 or 6 lines a day. So here I am, back at the whole blogging thing, sending my words out into the cyber stratosphere. It is a chilly Sunday morning in London, the sun is shining through the big glass windows in my living room, I have a cup of rooibus tea and a toasted hot-cross-bun and I am playing some folk music on Spotify. My neighbor has just got up (late, as is his usual habit) and is banging about in the flat downstairs.The sky outside is blue, but large pale grey clouds are threatening to move in off the horizon and I suspect that we will have some rain before the day is finished. My husband is off elsewhere visiting his father and I have, unusually, the whole flat to myself. Peace and quiet with my own thoughts. There are a million and one things I could do, should do. But if I never make time for writing. If I never prioritise it, then it will never happen.
The last week has been a bit tumultuous. I am in a rather uncertain position at work. I may be promoted, but it is all still up in the air and I must wait a little while to see where I stand and what will become of my role. As with most things: 'good things come to those who wait.' I think I used to be a patient person, but over the last few years, my ability to wait for things to happen seems to have been eroded. I like to 'make' things happen now. So when I can do nothing to further the course of a particular path, I often feel frustrated. However, I have decided to be patient with my job and to wait it out, live with uncertainty for a while and see what happens.Once you decide to accept that some things may always remain uncertain in life, you actually feel a lot freer.
Apart from the uncertainty surrounding my career, there was also the uncomfortable and sad occasion of a funeral. An old work colleague and friend of my husband died suddenly two weeks ago and we attended his funeral on Friday. I have been very fortunate not to lose too many people in my life so far and so I have not attended many funerals. My mother assures me that when I reach her stage of life, I will be attending one every month. Any funerals I have attended have almost always been in the UK. Except of course for my grandfather's memorial service which took place in America and was very small and only attended by my family. Funerals are odd events, especially in the UK. People often seem very stoical and reserved. They may show emotion, but they seem to keep a lid on any outpouring of grief. I suppose it must differ depending on the bereaved family and on the cultural background of the community, but I have never yet seen such outward displays of grief in England as I have seen in other countries, such as funerals on the news or in documentaries. This intrigues me, as I wonder if people grieve more in private after or before a funeral and then put on a brave face of others. I wonder, if when the occasion arises, it would be healthier for myself to just simply bawl my eyes out, even if I am doing so, very publicly. Perhaps the wailing and crying done in other parts of the world is actually cathartic. I suspect I am too English now, after growing up in the UK, as the idea of big public displays of emotion (especially crying) fills me with embarrassment.
I am often unsure how to feel, how to act and what to say at a funeral. I did not know my husband's friend at all, I went to the service to support my husband, but I could see how the deceased was much loved and how many people turned up. As usual, my husband and I got lost in the car on the way to the crematorium, ended up at the wrong end of the cemetery and we had to run to the service like two characters from Four Weddings and a Funeral. We almost always get lost on the way to a big occasion: weddings, funerals, birthdays, Christmas gatherings etc. We only just made it into a pew seconds before the casket was brought in and carried down the aisle. A rather unprepared priest said some prayers and random things that I thought were a little strange and inappropriate (including commenting on the choice of casket, which was a wicker basket and referencing Fifty Shades of Grey). My husband assured me that his friend would have probably thought the whole scene was hilarious. We sang a few hymns, a poem was read and two wonderful speeches were given by the brother of the deceased and his boss. The deceased was partially-sighted so his guide dog was brought to the ceremony too and everyone attended a wake in the local pub afterwards. People wept quietly, talked about their absent friend and work colleague, exchanged pleasantries and offered each other cups of tea and mini sandwiches from a nearby buffet. It was very civilised.
My husband later remarked that it did not feel real. That he could not believe his friend was truly gone. I wondered if this is how we process death now. Clinical, private, quiet and removed. As if the person you knew just walked away one day and disappeared. My husband described it as feeling like the deceased could just pop into the pub unexpectedly and have a drink with you. I don't think the average person in the UK experiences death regularly. Unless of course your job is somehow related to death and the dying, you are very removed from what people must have had experienced knowledge of in the past, when death was more regular and seeing dead bodies was more common. I've never seen a dead person. My husband saw is grandparents' bodies after they died and he describes it as a very disconcerting experience but that it was also helpful in saying goodbye to them. He felt that they had truly gone and not in some sort of theoretical sense, but in a very real and organic way. They had physically died and although it was very upsetting, it allowed him to grieve and to understand that this was a natural cycle and nothing to be frightened of. It gave him closure. In a way, it helped him to move beyond the event of their deaths and to remember their lives as well. When I think of my grandfathers, I cannot remember even the last time I saw them alive. I can't remember what my last words to them were. They simply existed and then they didn't. It is like they floated away off into some other reality. There was no finality in their passing. I heard of it like I heard the news on TV of some famous person dying, albeit more upsetting of course. I was across an expansive ocean in a different country when both my grandfathers died and somehow that makes me sadder than the idea of witnessing either of their deaths.
Everyone is different and what feels right to one person or one culture, will feel wrong to another, But personally for me, hiding away death, makes it more frightening and mythical. I don't want to be frightened or embarrassed or even reserved. If an idea is difficult or disturbing I want to look it in the face and confront it directly. I may be young and in good health and lucky because those around me are alive and prospering, but someday I will have to face the prospect of the death of someone close to me. I just hope that I can meet such an occasion with less awkwardness and allow myself to grieve any way that I feel is natural.
The last week has been a bit tumultuous. I am in a rather uncertain position at work. I may be promoted, but it is all still up in the air and I must wait a little while to see where I stand and what will become of my role. As with most things: 'good things come to those who wait.' I think I used to be a patient person, but over the last few years, my ability to wait for things to happen seems to have been eroded. I like to 'make' things happen now. So when I can do nothing to further the course of a particular path, I often feel frustrated. However, I have decided to be patient with my job and to wait it out, live with uncertainty for a while and see what happens.Once you decide to accept that some things may always remain uncertain in life, you actually feel a lot freer.
Apart from the uncertainty surrounding my career, there was also the uncomfortable and sad occasion of a funeral. An old work colleague and friend of my husband died suddenly two weeks ago and we attended his funeral on Friday. I have been very fortunate not to lose too many people in my life so far and so I have not attended many funerals. My mother assures me that when I reach her stage of life, I will be attending one every month. Any funerals I have attended have almost always been in the UK. Except of course for my grandfather's memorial service which took place in America and was very small and only attended by my family. Funerals are odd events, especially in the UK. People often seem very stoical and reserved. They may show emotion, but they seem to keep a lid on any outpouring of grief. I suppose it must differ depending on the bereaved family and on the cultural background of the community, but I have never yet seen such outward displays of grief in England as I have seen in other countries, such as funerals on the news or in documentaries. This intrigues me, as I wonder if people grieve more in private after or before a funeral and then put on a brave face of others. I wonder, if when the occasion arises, it would be healthier for myself to just simply bawl my eyes out, even if I am doing so, very publicly. Perhaps the wailing and crying done in other parts of the world is actually cathartic. I suspect I am too English now, after growing up in the UK, as the idea of big public displays of emotion (especially crying) fills me with embarrassment.
I am often unsure how to feel, how to act and what to say at a funeral. I did not know my husband's friend at all, I went to the service to support my husband, but I could see how the deceased was much loved and how many people turned up. As usual, my husband and I got lost in the car on the way to the crematorium, ended up at the wrong end of the cemetery and we had to run to the service like two characters from Four Weddings and a Funeral. We almost always get lost on the way to a big occasion: weddings, funerals, birthdays, Christmas gatherings etc. We only just made it into a pew seconds before the casket was brought in and carried down the aisle. A rather unprepared priest said some prayers and random things that I thought were a little strange and inappropriate (including commenting on the choice of casket, which was a wicker basket and referencing Fifty Shades of Grey). My husband assured me that his friend would have probably thought the whole scene was hilarious. We sang a few hymns, a poem was read and two wonderful speeches were given by the brother of the deceased and his boss. The deceased was partially-sighted so his guide dog was brought to the ceremony too and everyone attended a wake in the local pub afterwards. People wept quietly, talked about their absent friend and work colleague, exchanged pleasantries and offered each other cups of tea and mini sandwiches from a nearby buffet. It was very civilised.
My husband later remarked that it did not feel real. That he could not believe his friend was truly gone. I wondered if this is how we process death now. Clinical, private, quiet and removed. As if the person you knew just walked away one day and disappeared. My husband described it as feeling like the deceased could just pop into the pub unexpectedly and have a drink with you. I don't think the average person in the UK experiences death regularly. Unless of course your job is somehow related to death and the dying, you are very removed from what people must have had experienced knowledge of in the past, when death was more regular and seeing dead bodies was more common. I've never seen a dead person. My husband saw is grandparents' bodies after they died and he describes it as a very disconcerting experience but that it was also helpful in saying goodbye to them. He felt that they had truly gone and not in some sort of theoretical sense, but in a very real and organic way. They had physically died and although it was very upsetting, it allowed him to grieve and to understand that this was a natural cycle and nothing to be frightened of. It gave him closure. In a way, it helped him to move beyond the event of their deaths and to remember their lives as well. When I think of my grandfathers, I cannot remember even the last time I saw them alive. I can't remember what my last words to them were. They simply existed and then they didn't. It is like they floated away off into some other reality. There was no finality in their passing. I heard of it like I heard the news on TV of some famous person dying, albeit more upsetting of course. I was across an expansive ocean in a different country when both my grandfathers died and somehow that makes me sadder than the idea of witnessing either of their deaths.
Everyone is different and what feels right to one person or one culture, will feel wrong to another, But personally for me, hiding away death, makes it more frightening and mythical. I don't want to be frightened or embarrassed or even reserved. If an idea is difficult or disturbing I want to look it in the face and confront it directly. I may be young and in good health and lucky because those around me are alive and prospering, but someday I will have to face the prospect of the death of someone close to me. I just hope that I can meet such an occasion with less awkwardness and allow myself to grieve any way that I feel is natural.
Thursday, 26 November 2015
Monday, 2 November 2015
A Foggy Night in London Town
For three days now London has been shrouded in fog. I am loving it. My city has become a new landscape. I know it will not last but it reminds me of a hazy impressionistic painting. I imagine this is what London must have looked like in the Victorian period when there was smog from coal fires.
On the way home this evening as I was walking away from work and down Aldwych in the misty fog, I heard the sound of church bells and realised they were coming from St. Clement Danes, one of the many famous churches on The Strand and along Fleet Street. Remember that famous tune 'Oranges and Lemons?'
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.
You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
The bells were all muffled in the fog, but they got louder as I approached and I recorded it all, as I am doing occasionally now. Capturing the sights of London life with my camera and the sounds of everyday life with my recorder....
https://soundcloud.com/clara-jean-jelly-bean/the-bells-of-st-clements-dane
On the way home this evening as I was walking away from work and down Aldwych in the misty fog, I heard the sound of church bells and realised they were coming from St. Clement Danes, one of the many famous churches on The Strand and along Fleet Street. Remember that famous tune 'Oranges and Lemons?'
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.
You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
The bells were all muffled in the fog, but they got louder as I approached and I recorded it all, as I am doing occasionally now. Capturing the sights of London life with my camera and the sounds of everyday life with my recorder....
https://soundcloud.com/clara-jean-jelly-bean/the-bells-of-st-clements-dane
Saturday, 31 October 2015
Happy Halloween!
It is Halloween! Or as I like to say it (in my spooky voice) 'All Hallooooooow's Eve!' London is especially spooky tonight. It is shrouded in at thick fog and since I did not pay enough attention in Geography class, I have no idea what science / weather combination-thingy would cause such a phenomenon. But I can say it has been quite a while since I have seen such white and dense fog in my hometown. And makes my familiar streets and parks look creepy as hell.
Today we spent the afternoon and evening watching the Rugby World Cup final (well done New Zealand All Blacks!) with my parents. Mr C deftly explained the finer points of rugby to my father, who exclaimed repeatedly, 'It just looks like chaos to me!' After talking up a storm about every subject known to man (as we usually do with my family) and consuming chicken kiev with rice and a bowl of impossibly large grapes, we embarked on the short drive home and out into the night of spooky fog. Fog has a strange effect. It seems to elongate all the light from the street lamps, the sidewalks look soft and the trees appear fuzzy. The night seems darker, velvet black and more rich and even more frightening. Perfect for Halloween. It did not help that at every bus stop, young people in terrifying costumes and painted in fake blood congregated, drunk and merry, waiting for a bus to take them home. Any costume you can think of, we saw as we drove past. Dead nurses, several werewolves, a couple of suave Draculas and even, what appeared to be, a version of the Disney character Maleficent. They stepped out into traffic, caught in the beams of foggy headlights like terrifying and malevolent local wildlife. One drunk teenager dressed as a dead Power Ranger stumbled across a zebra crossing. 'I hope he gets home safe.' I thought, like the concerned adult that I am. I think my dressing up and getting drunk days may be over.
We have a local fox. In fact it is probably more than one, since the fox I saw tonight looks larger than the one I saw a few months ago. Our living room window looks directly out on to the street outside and over a small area of shrubs and bushes that is fenced off. It is land that belongs to the council but is extremely overgrown and no one goes in it or does anything with it. The local cats often go in there, mooch about and sometimes fight over it. In recent years I been observing the local foxes travel through it in the direction of the bins outside our apartment block. They love to investigate our rubbish, tear open our bin bags and drag our garbage all down the street and across the pavements. As annoying as this is, I still cannot get over the thrill of seeing such a beautiful and large wild animal so up close. The foxes never look up at our window, so they never see me starring at them and because this little patch of wilderness is blocked off from the street, people are always walking by in the dark and not looking over the hedge. They have no idea that less than a metre away a massive fox is just behind a fence starring out at them with dark glittering eyes in the shrouded shadows. The only times I have ever seen any humans behind this fence, was when a local council employee came to dump some rubbish in a big wheelie bin and then also when a few years ago, one sunny afternoon, a teenage boy took a teenage girl behind the bins to kiss her repeatedly.
Watching the foxes at night is magical. You rarely ever see a fox in London during the day. I have seen foxes in daylight only twice in 28 years and then it was from a long distance away (one fox was trotting beside some train tracks and the other time, I was in a car in traffic and the fox appeared in the upstairs window of an abandoned building beside the road). Urban foxes seem so large, but they move so lightly and quickly. They make very little sound as they trot through the streets. They don't seem to frightened of us, just a little wary. The bigger ones have thick coats and long bushy tails. The younger ones look lean and hungry and skittish. They live in the same city as us, all around us, but they are like pale orange ghosts that we only glimpse at briefly during the night. My lovely local fox felt like more like the real spirit of Halloween than a hundred Draculas or skeletons.
Wednesday, 28 October 2015
Mid-Week Video: Monthly Bleeding is a Luxury
It is that time again! Time for the Mid-Week Video. This week it is MP Stella Creasy (British Labour Co-operative politician who has been Member of Parliament for the London constituency of Walthamstow since 2010) speaking out against Tampons and sanitary towels being classed as 'luxury' items and so are not applicable to a zero tax rating.
Because of course, bleeding each month is a luxury for every woman and we enjoy spending our hard-earned cash (which can be less than the hard-earned cash of our male colleagues according to gender pay gap statistics in the UK) on material to staunch the flow. And talking about this is confusing for everyone. Because periods and menstruation are an embarrassing and dirty subject that all women should keep quiet about. We should all talk about our boobs instead, Boobs never offended anyone. They used to be displayed on Page 3 of one our national newspapers for a better part of 30 years. Boobs are fine. Unless they are being used to feed babies in public places. Then they must be put away.
Enough sarcasm for one day? Watch the video and let me know what YOU think.
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| http://veronicadearly.bigcartel.com/ |
Wednesday, 21 October 2015
Mid-Week Video: The Future is Now!
So today is the day that Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled Back to the Future (in the second movie of the franchise)! To mark the occasion, Doc Brown delivered this sweet little motivational video. The future is what you make it folks, the crazy-haired Doc is right!
Tonight, Mr C and I traveled back in time (probably to the 1950s or 60s) by having a very retro dinner of Fish Pie and Peas and Jelly and Custard for desert.
Happy Mid-Week everyone!
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