Himmelschlusselchen…
My favourite word in German
Julia,
your Mutti taught me it
Julia,
and it sounds perfect
Julia,
just like the flower.
Far from me
Julia,
in the silence I see your lettering
Julia,
Mutti ist die Beste,
Julia,
und gute Freunde sind immer da…
In your chair
Julia,
in your bed
Julia,
in your garden
Julia,
my own Himmelschlusselchen…
small and brave and opening hearts to
Luft und Liebe.
Eileen Walke, June 4th 2018
Dear Readers, let me tell you a bit about my Dad. He was one of six children brought up in Jarrow, Co. Durham in the 1920s.
What I remember most about him physically are the freckles on the top of his head – where there used to be black hair. He always said he had ‘lost his hair at sea.’ I like to think that if it had to be anywhere, the sea is the best place…I used to kiss those freckles as he sat on the step in the back garden, reflecting on life, as you do… the last freckle-kiss was in August 1962. I loved his voice – and often still hear it at different times – and whenever I hear a Geordie speak, I have to stop and listen to the detail to work out how far from Jarrow the voice comes. He wasn’t tall – about 5’8″ I should think and he had a sturdy body, with strong hands. I see them clearly on a steering wheel. But he was a big man.
My earliest memory of him is of a photograph – a man called Cyril, a black and white photo of a man in naval uniform, with a cap on his head – smiling at me.
Whenever I had a sweet, I shared it with the photograph. and when I went to bed, the photo got a kiss. There is also the smell of tar and oil on ropes alongside ships in a dockyard which is always the smell of my Dad to me – and a gangplank is a very familiar object to me. I must have been very young when I first walked the plank to him.
I didn’t get to know my Dad until after I was two and he’d come home from the Merchant Navy, but we used to visit him in different ports when the tanker was in. I’m sure I must have been a much-welcomed small person on those visits – sailors are so quick to make you feel part of the ship’s family. My heart still stirs when I’m near ships and I’m sure, from my life with him, that he never really left the sea.
As many children must have done after the war, I was told I used to turn to the photo at the mention of ‘Daddy’ – even when he was in the room. When he came home, then my three brothers started to arrive into our world…and I learned to fit in as a girl.
He loved gardening. How different is working in a garden from working in the engine-room of a tanker? Like the coalminers he had grown up with, he treasured growing things from the darkness of the earth. He planned his garden carefully, built trellises from the branches of trees, built rockeries from the rubble left by builders on our council estate and planted hawthorns, lavender, privet, London Pride, cornflowers, Canterbury bells, lupins, stocks and snow-in-summer. He laid out his lawn. The rectangular middle bed set between two half-moon beds – cared for with great precision. His garden won a local prize – just reward for his quiet devotion and care.
The back garden was full of vegetables – potatoes, carrots, broad beans, runner beans, cabbage – and these made up the parish where Butch the tortoise lived.
My Grandad – ‘Pop’ – spent alot of time in the back garden tending the vegetables and our rabbit, ‘Thumper’, had a palace of a hutch at the back of the house and was never short of hugs or vegetables. I remember standing on the path in the early morning, with sleep in my eyes, watching Pop hoeing.
Some of the happiest times were the Sunday morning walks with my Dad. Wearing our best coats, hats, gloves and scarves we were off on an adventure together, feeling safe with him beside us. Off the estate and over the bridge to Harrowden – along the lane and through the gate to ‘the moors’, as we called the water meadows that draped the old roads and tracks between villages. One of my memories is of tall grasses, buttercups, tiny streams and jumping over cow pats. and Dad with his Kodak Brownie box camera, lining us up to smile at him – marvelling at his magic. Photographs were very precious in those days – and still are, to me.
Or we might turn left after the bridge and the little Methodist chapel, towards Cardington village, gazing at the dark shapes of hangars across the fields in the distance or gazing up at the ‘weather balloons’ tethered from the airfield and floating high above us. I remember tall elms as we passed the little cottages where the farmworkers lived – set amidst the corn, barley and brussels sprout fields.
In Cardington village we would walk past the old church and almshouses to the pub on the corner where the miniature railway ran round the garden. One short ride, with the tiny engine puffing away while my Dad had his pint, then another photograph and a happy, tired walk home. I think he must have loved those rural spots and must have loved to share them with us.
At home though, there was always an elephant in the room: my Dad’s heart.
When I was three going on four I remember him propped up by pillows in bed in the front room, occasionally passing the time with practising the needlepoint embroidery my Mum was teaching him. So we grew up understanding that if we weren’t quiet Daddy’s life would be in danger. No slamming doors, no shouting and no friends to play with us in the house.
I was told it was rheumatic fever wrongly diagnosed as flu that damaged the valve in his heart, but later in my life, Uncle Cyril – Dad’s sister Audrey’s husband, told me that towards the end of the war my Dad’s ship was bombed in the Channel and that he was one of the survivors picked up. This was never discussed at home it seems, but he was certainly a broken man in those early years of my life.
In September 1962, when my first child Maria was four weeks old, my Dad died. He adored my baby girl and brought a pink sleep suit for her on one of the few trips he made from Bedford to Peterborough to visit me. It gave him the chance to have her all to himself, cradled in his arms while I got on with a few jobs. I’ve often thought how hard it must have been to be at sea and have a baby girl you long to cradle so far away at home. Those last days of his life were when I really came to know how much he loved me.
On the morning of September 12th 1962 I pushed my baby Maria in her pram along Park Road and stopped at the phone box to ring Mum at work.
“No, she’s not in today. Didn’t you know? Your dad died last night”, the voice said.
I remember reeling against the phone box, my cheek on the cold glass and trying to catch my breath as I stared at my baby in the pram outside. It’s hard to describe how I felt after hearing those words in that fashion, but I managed to walk back to the little flat with the pram to support me.
Late that morning my parents’ next door neighbour drove in his car to bring Les, my nine year old brother to stay with me. We were both quietly looking after the baby together most of the day, but by the evening, around nine o’clock I felt so alone I ordered a taxi to drive us home to Bedford. I remember sitting in the back of the taxi with my brother asleep cradled in one arm and my baby asleep in the other arm. The taxi driver was quiet and kind. I looked from one sleeping child to the other through my tears and watched the fields as we drove through the night.
It was autumn, early autumn – just moving into that time of year when the stubble is burned after the harvest.”Swaling”, they call it. I love that word.
A dark countryside, a warm night, a gentle breeze and there were small, dark figures moving around crazy, dazzling, dancing tracts of field – shining out at the little cars passing and shining up at the little planes flying over them, where people would peer down and ask “What’s that?”.
It’s funny how unfamiliar swaling seems. Not like the tractor ploughing while Icarus falls from the sky and not like the haymaking in traditional rural scenes. Not like the poppies in the wheat or on all the greetings cards and not like the polythene-wrapped silage for winter grazing.
A clean, quiet, night-time activity this. A soulmate for me.
I think I used to go and search to find it again in later years over in East Anglia. It sterilises the earth – baptism by fire I call it.
The taxi driver carried Les into the house for me and laid him gently on the settee.
A Letter to my Father
Oldham, 19th April 2018
My darling Dad,
Twelve days ago you would have been ninety eight but you died at forty two so you’re forever young to me. I’m just writing a few lines to thank you for being around so close to us while Geoff had his heart operations last month.
Do you remember the morning in April 1962 when we were the only two people in the house before we set off to the church in Elstow? You were standing at the top of the stairs with me at the bottom in my Dorothy Perkins wedding dress and you asked “Am I alright Pet?”. You looked so neat.
“Are you ready?” you asked with a smile. I wonder how you really felt? And off we went.
At the time, you were waiting to hear from St. Thomas’ Hospital in London to say they were ready to fix your heart. I’d spent my whole life with you worrying about the mysteries of your heart, your fatigue, your breathlessness and all the unspoken fears you never shared with me.
Well Dad, what a wonder and a privilege it was to watch our Geoff having his life saved in a London hospital – Royal Brompton. He had your courage. I just want you to know he has lived through all the unspoken fears and found the strength he needed to find his way through each long minute, each procedure and eventually, each small step back into life.
He’s home now and feeding the birds in his garden. The sun’s out today, so he’ll be trying a few more steps with Pat beside him. And Maria is growing Morning Glories from seed for my garden.
I love you to the moon and back.
Eileen x
April 21st 2018
In the bowels
of this London
hospital
I watch you
in the cafe.
Pen in hand,
ear to the phone.
Intent.
Fingers making notes
with the precision
of an accomplished
pianist.
My brother’s heart
recovers.
While your blue
scrubs remind me
of the last surgeons
in Ghouta and Douma.
My gaze moves into
what if
these well-lit
magnolia walls
and stainless steel
counters and multi-coloured innards
of vending machines
and these quiet people
were hit by barrel bombs
and chlorine gas?
These Bluenesses
of skills and knowledge,
of sweat and tears and
hungry sleeplessness
would watch over
hearts
shattered by the
boulders of buildings –
their fingers
feeling for
the fragments
of fragile lives.
I bite my salad
sandwich.
A man will be known
by what he does
And not by what he says.
Eileen Walke April 2018
I watch you, Seagull,
on the pub roof on Manchester Road,
tall, alert and shining
against a metallic morning sky.
Feed the birds…Robin,
Sparrow, Starling, Pigeon,
then we set off up Manchester Road to town.
The traffic stops two cars ahead.
It’s Friday, mosque and prayers day
and there’s a man standing next to his car
in the middle of the road.
Distressed.
I climb out and see the postcard
in his hand.
– Trying to lift a grounded Seagull
with his postcard.
I ask if I can help…
He nods sadly and the traffic waits…
Reach down and lift the beauty
into my arms…
– White, shining, heavy, dazed,
A pitiable limpness.
Warm, downy, eyes-glazed.
Lifting limpness I climb into our car
and the traffic moves
up Manchester Road to the vet.
The eye gazes at me in stillness.
Tiny feathers layered on strong muscles
and a whiteness – a softness – a strength
– something like Angelic.
I cradle the long neck carefully
– content to rest –
a bit like kissing Dom’s cheek.
I remember my son dying.
“Shock”, says the gentle young vet.
“It must have died in your arms from shock”.
Thank you for the gift.
I should like to die like that.
Suddenly, without thinking.
Leigh Cook, April 2018
“Those men that in their writings are most wise
Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.”
In ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, Mr. Yeats begins to remove his embroidery-covered coat, although at times it feels never to be completely out of reach. The phase of social ‘Responsibilities’ has passed and the poems have become more reflective and nourished by notions of fundamental truths.This book has a variety of characteristics of theme, but the style is stamped with Yeats’ personal belief – expressed in “The Letters of W. B. Yeats” :
” I believe more strongly every day that the element of strength in poetic language is common idiom.”
From the variety of themes in this book, there emerge some of those symbols with which Yeats bridges, in later poems, vast expanses of human experience and all those things which lie beyond this life. In 1901, Yeats wrote: “Anyone who has any experience of any mystical state of the soul knows that there float up in the mind profound symbols, whose meaning, if indeed they do not delude one into the dream that they are meaningless, one does not perhaps understand for years. Nor, I think, has anyone who has known that experience with any constancy, failed to find some day, in some old book or on some old monument, a strange or intricate image, that has floated up before him, and to grow perhaps dizzy with the sudden conviction that our little memories are but a part of some great memory, that renews the world and men’s thoughts age after age, and that our thoughts are not, as we suppose, the deep – but a little foam upon the deep.”
In the title poem, the wild swans in Coole Park represent for Yeats a timelessness. After nineteen years in which he has heard and observed them:
“…Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will
Attend upon them still.”
Later, the swan comes to be the image Yeats uses to represent the solitary soul – and there is something other-worldly suggested here when he combines “cold” with “companionable” and says they “climb the air”, whilst repeating images of flight and movement with words like “wings”, “flown”, “scatter”, “wander” and “drift”.
‘In Memory of Major Robert Gregory’ is where Yeats remembers Robert Gregory, son of Lady Gregory, whose estate was Coole Park and he also brings to mind other friends who have died. John Synge, George Pollexfen and others become symbols to Yeats, of those qualities for which he and other men most admired them – but Robert Gregory means more than this. The poem is a formal structure with twelve stanzas of eight lines and a regular rhyme scheme. It has a meditative flavour to it and closes abruptly:
“…I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind
That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind
All those that mankind tried or childhood loved
Or boyish intellect approved,
With some appropriate commentary on each;
Until imagination brought
A fitter welcome; but a thought
Of that late death took all my heart for speech.”
If he intended to write more, the suggestion contrasts strongly with his refusal to do so. The last lines are both sign and symbol, for by removing his personal part as poet from the elegy, Yeats elevates Robert Gregory to a symbol of the dignity of man. He represents all that life or ‘living’ should mean to the poet. (Yeats’ word is “labour” – which he uses in ‘Among Schoolchildren’).
Later in the book, in “Shepherd and Goatherd”, the poet continues the process of ennobling in the same simple manner:
Goatherd: “How does she bear her grief? There is not a shepherd
But grows more gentle when he speaks her name,
Remembering kindness done, and how can I,
That found when I had neither goat nor grazing
New welcome and old wisdom at her fire
Till winter blasts were gone, but speak of her
Even before his children and his wife?”
Shepherd: “She goes about her house erect and calm
Between the pantry and the linen-chest,
Or else at meadow or at grazing overlooks
Her labouring men, as though her darling lived,
But for her grandson now; there is no change
But such as I have seen upon her face
Watching our shepherd sports at harvest time
When her son’s turn was over!”
In the poem entitled “Her Praise” the poet speaks of how he longs to hear other men praising a woman he loves – her place in cyclic and historic time is drawn by him:
“…If there be rags enough he will know her name
And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days
Though she had young men’s praise and old men’s blame,
Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.”
In “The Collarbone of a Hare” there is a distinct return to the folklore and mythology of the earlier poems. Here, Yeats as a spirit, recognising the need for self-realisation and individual fulfilment, laughs “…at all who marry in churches…”. Marriage raises some threats and is so trivial.
Another spirit, this time in the form of Billy Byrne the beggar, discovers near the ancient Round Tower at Glendalough that being rich does not bring peace of mind. Yeats’ musical repetition enhances the “prancing” of the “golden king and silver lady” who, in spirit form, sing like “blackbirds”. Byrne, the beggar, human and poverty-stricken, Yeats calls “jailbird” – and no less musical is this repetition in “Under the Round Tower”.
The everyday round, the tread of the mill can be heard in “Solomon to Sheba” where the repetition of “round and pound” and “ground” and “pound” culminate in the lines
“…there’s not a thing but love can make
the world a narrow pound.”
It is in “The Wild Swans at Coole” that many of the poems give the listener a glimpse of Yeats the man growing old. The succinct bitterness of “The Living Beauty”, the lyrical repetition of the lines:
“Oh who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?”
in “A Song” and “To a Young Girl” are all poems about a man reflecting upon his youth. Some of the poems in this vein deal specifically with old age and his personal love, such as “His Phoenix”, “Broken Dreams” and “Presences” – this last one full of uncanny chill and the solitary state of the poet contrasted with his company. Two in particular are also linked to this, for they introduce the idea of the physical and the spiritual forces at work – “Men Improve with the Years” and “A Deep-Sworn Vow”:
” Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine
Suddenly I meet your face.”
Yeats uses Tom O’Roughley in this book of poems to express his intense need to feel the joy of living:
‘… “An aimless joy is a pure joy”
Or so did Tom O’Roughley say
That saw the surges running by.
“And wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey”…’
The marvellous continuity of Yeats’ writing begins to be felt, for it is in living in “zigzag wantonness”, says Yeats, that will make death no more than a second wind. In “The Dawn” there is something of the same butterfly.
In “Shepherd and Goatherd” where he uses elaborate pastoral images to show a simple grief, Yeats demonstrates his understanding:
‘Goatherd: “You have put the thought in rhyme.”
Shepherd: ” …I worked all day,
And when ’twas done so little had I done
That maybe ‘I am sorry’ in plain
Had sounded better to your mountain fancy”…’
The two characters achieve a conversation late in the poem about the nature of life and death and here is the mystical Yeats revealed again:
‘Shepherd: “Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have plucked
Some medicable herb to make a grief
Less bitter…”
Goatherd: “They have brought me from that ridge
Seed pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy…”‘
Yeats himself had “…measured out the road that the soul treads…” and had “… …talked with apparitions.”
In the three short poems “The Balloon of the Mind”, “To a Squirrel at Kyle Na No” and “On Being Asked for a War Poem”, we seem to have short statements by Yeats the social-poet, nature-poet and mystic. These feel like three short exercises which flex the muscles – one metaphysical, one natural and the third political – complete in themselves and as powerful as any of the longer poetry of the book.
The variation between a measured and light metre in the poem “Upon a Dying Lady” reflects the fluctuating emotions of those who watch when an old lady dies and also the fluctuating nature so often shown to the world by old ladies as they die. Yeats admires this lady who is not afraid of death. He uses a stately measured metre to speak of her with courtesy:
“With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace
She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair…”
Here is a glimpse of Yeats’ treasured values of tradition and order – arrived at over centuries in a nation’s lifetime and over many decades for the individual. The metre changes to a light dancing structure when the toys are brought in – and back to the measured one when the priest conducts Mass. Yeats is counting the days. When she receives Absolution, the metre is again light:
‘She is playing like a child
And penance is the play,
Fantastical and wild
Because the end of day
Shows her that some one soon
Will come from the house, and say –
“Come in and leave the play.”‘
And when she has the Christmas tree brought in to her by her friends, there is an echo of an earlier grief in Yeats’ words:
“…What if a laughing eye
Have looked into your face?
It is about to die.”
Mr.Yeats’ grief is so full of joy.
In this book of poems Yeats begins to introduce into his poetry the themes of his prose piece “A Vision” where he describes his theory of the phases of the moon. In “The Dawn” he speaks of the balance he longs to find and his imagery is of a state removed from a worldly imbalance:
“…I would be ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses.
I would be – for no knowledge is worth a straw –
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.”
This lack of knowledge (of the intellect), lack of inhibitions which results in a vast ‘ceremony of innocence’ is what he echoes in his poem “The Fisherman”. This is the man Yeats writes for. He is “wise and simple” – not one of “the withered men.” In a poem written in a simple tri-metrical style, Yeats calls to mind “…A man who is but a dream…” and who is close to the meaning of life and death. A freckled man, in grey clothes, who moves to grey places at dawn and fishes in streams where stones lie dark “under the froth.” A Connemara man who fishes with skill and
” ………….Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.”
The poem begins pensively – and ends on a bold and determined note.
In the closing poems of “The Wild Swans at Coole”, Yeats demonstrates further his phases of the moon theory. He says that the poet, in creating, is trying to demonstrate his own antithesis. He wears the mask of himself which is his other self. In the book of poems “The Green Helmet”, he actually writes of this mask in “The Mask.” The conflict with the world and with oneself, says Yeats, creates poetry and in so doing the poet shares something with the Saint and the Hero. These two also seek ‘the mask’ in their lives. The former through renunciation of the world and the latter through being broken by the world.
In “The Phases of the Moon” the listener meets Michael Robartes – Yeats’ symbolic figure who knows all. He is walking with Owen Aherne. They are old Connemara men going about their business at dawn with muddy boots, in the vicinity of Yeats’ home and the tower where he is reading. Robartes explains the theory of the phases of the moon to Aherne. It is a theory of psychological types which can be symbolised by the twenty eight phases of the moon. The type of man who grows more beautiful and becomes perfect beauty at the full moon (death) is the man who remains constantly involved with nature and in perpetual struggle with himself. The other types or phases:
“The soul remembering its loneliness
Shudders in many cradles; all is changed
It would be the world’s servant, and as it serves,
Choosing whatever task’s most difficult
Among tasks not impossible….
Reformer, merchant, statesman,learned man,
Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn,
Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and all
Deformed because there is no deformity
But saves us from a dream…”
Yeats speaks of man’s search for his antithesis in “Ego Dominus Tuus”:
‘Hic: “…Why should you leave the lamp
Burning alone beside an open book,
And trace these characters upon the sands?”
Ille: “Because I seek an image, not a book…”‘
The metaphysical nature of the man who quarrels with the world is the result of the completion of these twenty eight reincarnations, or one cycle of being. A continuous rhythm is the essence of what Yeats came to call the “Great Wheel” and in the last poem of the book “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes”, he explains what makes a man:
” Under blank eyes and fingers never still
The particular is pounded ’til it is man…”
A girl has brought her body to perfection by dancing – the “pounding” has been of her own will (here is an echo of “Solomon to Sheba”) and she has danced herself to death. Now she dances under the gaze of a Sphinx (representing the intellect) and the Buddha (representing universal love), but neither of them can see her, for she has reached beyond both. Here is the introduction of a very important symbol – the Dancer. Yeats will combine Michael Robartes with the Dancer in his next poems.
The poet recognises the dancing girl as one of the “images he seeks”, which is why the poem was written:
“… being caught between the pull
Of the dark moon and the full…”
The contemplative nature of “The Wild Swans at Coole” extends across the themes of the passing of human life, the eternal quality of nature, the transience of human life, the poet’s old age, his love, the death of his friends and those poems which introduce the mystical, philosophical system he is building to explain the nature of life and death. At the end of this book, Mr. Yeats, who has come to recognise wisdom as a butterfly, continues to acknowledge the “…blind and stupefied” state of his heart.
Eileen Walke 1977
The oncologist
(who likes my shirt)
tells me that
my tumours are shrinking.
Well, I’d invited them
into the ballroom
of my body
to try a Quickstep.
They flunked it.
Now they’d better
kick some ass and
go for a Complete Response
and learn the Bossa Nova…
Eileen Walke 8.8.2017
Howard died yesterday, May 2nd 2017.
It was sad news. We weren’t in touch regularly – we’d both moved on years ago, but at Christmas there was always a beautiful card from him. Last Christmas our card was a reproduction of one of his paintings, ‘Forest at Sundown’, with browns and gold and wispy autumnal shapes…
We met in a folk club. He loved folk music and played a cool guitar but always thought others were better at it. He loved the theatre and ran a Drama Club when he was a teacher. Chris would scoot about the school hall in his wheelie baby walker while serious things like ‘Son of Man’ were being rehearsed…and Dom would be watching it all.
Howie was a potter by trade. In the garden I still have the dinosaur and the hedgehog the children made with him. He was my closest friend through one of the darkest times in my life when I was trying to live a life separated from my children. I think it would be fair to say he saved my life. Thank you Howie, for all you did.
He was the father of ‘Our Kid’ – you can see him in one of my earlier pieces – and it was Christian who phoned me yesterday with the sad news.
I shall always remember How’s courage and optimism and how he loved and cared for Dom when he was restored to me. He was a loving and caring stepfather to all my children and a beloved father to Chris.
Rest in Peace my dear friend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf6URVJpOYI&t=55c
My dear stargazer readers, I want you to know that I love this woman with all my heart.
I love her courage, her insight and outsight, her skill as an astonishing photographer and her love for others.
I dedicate this piece to my beloved photographer friends, who also know how to make film… to Hena Begum, to Mike Losban and to Pete Yankowski – and also to Raja Miah, cos I’m beside you still on the road to Damascus.
With my unfailing love.
On a morning in late September 1973, my blue-eyed boy was born… Chris didn’t have an easy entry to the world. He had been ‘turned’ several times during my pregnancy and was born with the umbilical cord around his neck. The sweet midwife worked hard to get him to breathe and I watched through a haze as his little face started to change colour.
“What’s his name?” she asked, “I have to christen him!”
The student midwife, who was helping, ran out of the room and never came back. It was all I could muster in response to the word ‘christen’ to say quietly, ‘Christian’. And so it was that Our Kid got his name, although his family name is Prune, following from his wrinkled little face after the ordeal of taking a breath. It was the doctor who confirmed he was breathing after mouth-to-mouth and early exercises for the wee man. How and I breathed a sigh of relief too.
Dom came home from school to find his brother had moved in. Their life together had started.
I think. on the whole, it has been a happy life they shared.
Here’s your big sister Ria holding you on one of our visits to your Nana and Grandi Claydon in Great Barford.
And here you are, forty-two years ago, rehearsing the nautical theme for Chow and Julie’s wedding…
And here’s your big brother Dom holding on to you, with your elephant matching his socks. He still holds on. 
I wonder if you remember when we moved from Ellesmere Port to Middleton, with Duch, the black Labrador? Mischa the cat wasn’t too happy and decided to run away as soon as I opened the boot.
It was a new place and a time to explore the lovely places around Manchester – like Malham Cove.
I was terrified on the top with my two fearless boys!
You were only eight but you settled and seemed to like your new school. You were never one who needed to be told twice – and if I told you off for something, tears would well up in your blue eyes so I could never be cross for long.
Your favourite position on the football field was goalkeeper and the more mud the better! Sometimes we’d have a visit from Cookie down the hill from Oldham – always a happy time!
You spent hours with John and Dom preparing the flowers for Ria’s marriage to Keith. A happy time with music and your big brother home. On the day you were the official distributor…
When Hinnie was born, you came into our bedroom with Amy – your sister, eight months old, steadying her as she tried her early steps. Sisters around you can only be a good thing…
The guitar became your great comforter – and later you were to learn how to make one for yourself – and a mandolin.
We all piled off down to London to march against the invasion of Iraq – and then we did it again in Manchester, meeting Dom on the way in Piccadilly. 
Or we’d all pile off to London to see Dom in an opera in Covent Garden – with careful preparations all round and Susan walking back barefoot.
And so to your own marriage to Susan in August 2010. Dom was dead chuffed when you asked him to read a passage for you both. Susan, your bride, was beautiful and we’d all had a hand in the flowers again! You were both so happy and we share in the glow of your love.
You built your happy home for your three children and your beautiful grandson.
Then you lost Dom to cancer the following year, having helped care for him all through 2011. Grief challenged you with new adjustments and you rose to it.
“D’you think Our Kid will call in this evening?” Dom would ask me… always looking forward to seeing you in your work clothes after a heavy day on the construction of Manchester’s Metro! (They should put your name on all the trams!) Your shared language was beautiful and mysterious: a language full of secrets and playfulness and always intent on laughter. It was a language which had grown from birth, filling a gaping hole in Dom’s life and one which sustained him in his last days. Now I know that he lives on in you.
As Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant would say, ‘There are many beautiful flowers in my garden, but the children are the most beautiful flowers of all’.
Our children are our blessings.
Thank you for reminding me to place my bet last Saturday for the Grand National Chris. My horse, Rogue Angel, tried so hard up to the last fence. ‘Bloody hell”, I thought, “I’m in for a £160 win here – and £80 for Our Kid.”
Here’s your song, my beautiful boy …
And then in June 1967 came the pure joy of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band.
It was definitely getting better all the time…
I love the poetry of “now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall…”
George Martin said it was a big mistake not to include Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields on this magical album.
The good news is that when they release the fifty years anniversary album on June 1st 2017, those songs will be included.
I can’t believe it’s fifty years since this music helped me to catch the bus and fix the holes…