It is morning, and whilst lying in bed, awake waiting for my tablets to kick in, I hear my youngest son in the bathroom (next door) going through his daily gargling routine, This lasts for about 4 minutes:
“scruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushashushscruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushas hushscruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushashushscruckshelishelcquerlupwas chushashushscruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushashushscruckshelishelcquer
lupwaschushas hushscruckshelishelcquerlupwaschushashushscruckshelishe
lcquerlupwaschushashush …..aaaahhhhgglllleee aaaahhhhgglllleee
aaaahhhhgglllleee (this is the back of the throat bit)
Wuwwulllmmnllleeeaaaahhhhggwuwwulllmmnlllleeeaaaahhhhgglwuwwulllmmnlll
Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!…………..pwryyyrrtt! (this is the spit)
……………….Heeeeeeeuuuugh! …. pwryyyrrtt!” (another spit)
I am thinking, I’ve got a drum and bass line that would go perfectly with that!
He’s got a routine for everything: a brushing teeth routine, the mouthwash routine (as you now know) the anti-perspirant spray routine (not one to be caught in the middle of !) The ‘don’t care hair’ routine. You know, I never knew it took so long to perfect that ‘Just dragged through a hedge’ look. Still, …. He is worth it!
Meanwhile, back in bed, I practise my rigorous exercise routine. I open and close my right eye five times, then repeat with the left. As they say: No pain, no gain. That done, I cast one of the aforesaid eyes (the left – as it happens) to the other side of the room and it alights on my walking frame. Okay, it’s a zimmer frame, but it has got ‘Go Faster’ stripes, metallic paint and polished chrome. I don’t use it much; as you can see by all the washing hanging off it.
I can just imagine it: The Harrow and Hillingdon Area Health Authority enquiry:
“Mr Daly, would you care to explain to us once again, exactly how you came to break your hip. On the day in question you didn’t use the walking frame that The Health Authority provide you with, because it was (He refers to his notes) ‘Full of washing’ “
“Yes Sir, that is correct, Sir, I …………”
© Andy Daly 2010
I have this dream.
I am on an ugly, filthy, rusty ship with a vile crew of criminals and murderers. These aren’t comic-book or movie characters, these are the real deal. They bristle with aggression and violence and you know they would cut your throat as soon as look at you and feel no remorse.
There are no friends on this ship.
I am standing on deck looking back at the shore where I can just about make out my wife, with our two boys: standing together looking out towards the ship, and occasionally waving (although it is clear that while the ship may still be in view, no longer can they see me)
For my part, I am frantically waving, trying to get their attention. The story is that I’ve been press-ganged. Sitting innocently in a dockside bar I have been attacked and kidnapped, forced aboard this putrid vessel and put to work as a cabin-hand by day, chained to the deck rails by night. Forced against my will to work and fight as a member of this pirate crew.
But my family don’t know this. As far as they are aware, I have just taken myself off, possibly in search of some kind of adventure. Never to return. I will disappear. Missing – presumed dead.
As she and the boys begin to slip out of sight, I realise that for some strange reason, I can still clearly hear them, although when I try shouting out. It has no effect.
“Where’s Dad gone?” The Boys keep asking
“Why has he left us?”
“Is he coming back?
“Are we going to go too?”
She sighs “I don’t know, I don’t know … Come on … we had better get back …”
I shout and I shout “I love you, I’ll be back, don’t give up on me …”
But it’s of no use. They can’t hear me.
They become ever smaller dots on the shore until finally they disappear from sight and my ship of horrors slips into the inky blackness.
I am still waving and shouting.
Cry? No. If I started I’d never stop.
© Andy Daly 2010
I have spoken elsewhere about how I’m continually fascinated at how the brain reacts and adapts to the collection of miseries that is Parkinson’s. Of particular interest and importance in my case is the role that Music plays in my daily life. Not as mere ‘background noise’ but as ‘brainfood.’
I believe that music, something I consider (and I speak as a Visual Artist) the highest, purest artform engages in a subtle and sophisticated dynamic with the brain that we are often unaware of.
“We listen to music with our muscles” Nietzche. Sacks (2007) p. xi
Indeed as I write this, I am coming out of an ‘off’ spell.* I am coaxing this return to a state of relative fluidity by swinging my good right leg in time with the off-beat accentuation of Reggae and Dub music. As it happens today, big favourites Aswad.
Of course, you could say all that is happening here is that the drugs are finally kicking in, bringing an increased feeling of well-being, CD happens to be playing and so I’m swinging along to it: End of story.
But how does that explain many occasions I have been able to fight away, or bring myself out of a particularly deep ‘off’ spell by listening and dancing to music.? (Okay, ‘dancing’ may be stretching it a bit … Let’s call it ‘moving’) when in theory I shouldn’t have been able to walk? No, something far more profound is happening here. I have a confidence, a freedom and range of movement normally absent. Plus I am able to dance – sorry ‘move’ – for longer periods than my medication would normally allow.
I’m not the only one of course:
“Some of them could not initiate a single step, but could be drawn into dancing and could dance fluidly” Oliver Sacks in his book ‘Musicophelia’ (2007) on post-encephalitic/Parkinson’s patients encountered in 1960s.
And what about the task I am hopefully about to accomplish? Which is insert the needle of a Graseby Winged Infusion set into my leg. The needle, which is 2cm in length (doesn’t sound much does it?) is attached by a short tube to a syringe, set in a battery-powered pump which I wear round my waist and gives me a constant, measured dose of the Dopamine Agonist drug, Apomorphine. The needle has to go up to the hilt into the sub-cutaneous (Fatty layer) beneath the skin at a 45 degree angle. It’s something I have to steel myself to do every morning, and is a task which is always accompanied by music: Music of power, dignity, self-belief: hence Aswad.
* ‘Off’ (or in our house ‘offline’) describes the periods (between 4 and 6 times a day, 30 minutes to 3 hours in duration when my anti-Parkinson’s drugs are not effective for whatever reason.
© Andy Daly 2010
Quotations from Sacks, O: ‘Musicophelia’ (Picador) 2007 by kind permission of the author.
Well, thank goodness Diff was awake – I knew he’d get it, and first too.
He did.
Dear reader, let me introduce you to Mr. Douglas Futers, Popular Music aficionado extraordinaire. He knows everything about everything and has been to more gigs than we’ve had collective hot dinners. He’s seen Hawkwind (‘Silver Machine’ Remember?) 742 times and is now deaf as a post.
Of course! It was Noddy Holder, the band was Slade and the record, the evergreen ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ a hit for the band first time around, Christmas 1973 (Flares, Strikes, ‘For mash say Smash’ and Advocaat)
If you didn’t know, and although you probably really couldn’t give a shit, I’m going to tell you anyway; the story is that this seasonal ditty which has etched its way into our national consciousness, along with Turkey, old St. Nick and Dicken’s ‘Christmas Carol’ was in fact recorded over a blistering hot week in New York, late summer of that year. Apparently, Lennon (that’s John, Liverpool, musician not Aaron, Spurs, winger) was in the next studio recording ‘Mind Games’ at the time.
The song was a hotch-potch of snippets that Nod and Jim Lee had lying around. They were given the final touch, it is reported when (I love this …) Nod “After an evening out drinking worked through the night at his mother’s house in Walsall to write the lyrics, which he completed in one draft.” You see? a genuine slice of British Popular Culture. Bowie, meantime, earnestly doing his Willliam Burroughs’ ‘cut-ups’ must have been wondering where he went wrong.
Anyway, it just so happens that last week I had occasion to be in Birmingham. We took our eldest up there so he could attend an Open Day at Aston University, which is, in case you don’t know slap-bang in the centre of town. Wouldn’t have been my choice personally, it has to be said. To me, Brum has always been where people speak with a speech impediment rather than an accent; A place to be avoided at all costs, using one of the myriad motorways which appear designed expressly for such a purpose.
Anyway, we drop Laddo off, and from where, when we’ve turned the corner, he makes for the lecture theatre to hear all about International Business with Spanish. Or, if he were more like me at that age, make for the nearest pub, to really start ‘getting the taste’ for the West Midlands and the good folk therein.
We’re left with a couple of hours to kill, and as we’re over the road from the ‘Bullring’ Birmingham’s infamous shopping centre we decide to nip in and take a look. Well: pleasantly surprised is the reaction. They’ve made a damned fine job of re-inventing the ‘old’ Bullring which I last saw in about 1979, and was, let’s face it not only an eyesore, but an earsore, armsore and legsore it was so bad. Not so today. In fact it looks like every other modern shopping centre in whatever city or town you care to mention.
I was still pondering this transformation in the Bullring gents toilets, whilst drying my hands. I was using one of these new-fangled blown air hand driers. Similar to, but not the Dyson airblade, it looked like an open letterbox in the wall. And, it was pretty pathetic: a brief vision passed before my eyes of the Facia of this thing being removed to reveal two wheezing old men blowing through it from behind. This nightmarish thought was soon banished by an awareness that someone was standing behind me…
I turned and looked. It was only Noddy Holder! The owner of the best pair of lungs this side of the Mississippi Delta!
What to say? I can’t come over all fawning fan – I’m nearly 50: No, no, no that won’t do. What about a ‘cooler’ approach? Drop in a ‘Blokey’ comment which might initiate a conversation.
That’s it! I figured.
Of all the things I could have said or asked him – such as ‘What was it really like to work with Dave Hill?’
‘Why the Mirror Hat, Nod? and how did you keep it on?’
Failing that, ”Ere Noddy, you know when Don Powell lost his memory, were there ever things you told him that hadn’t happened, just for a laugh?
No, of all the things … What do I venture forth with?
“These hand driers are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard”
He looked at me and snorted a snort which was somewhere half way between ‘Yeah’ and ‘What the **** are you talking about?’ – I’m still analysing it.
….and made his way out.
Moral of the story: Be prepared! Get a notebook, list everyone famous you would like to meet. Add 2 or 3 questions for each and carry it round with you at all times!
© Andy Daly 2010
Who’s biggest hit single was recorded at the Record Plant in New York, late summer 1973. Unhappy with the first recording, they re-did the choruses in the corridor outside because of its more favourable acoustics.
I need lead singer/guitarist’s name…. No looking it up on Wikipedia!
Answers please by the end of play Monday and I’ll tell you a little story …
On this day during the course of the 1960s (No, I’m not going to tell you which year) a little girl was born in an imposing ‘finca’ close to the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (or town hall square) in Valencia, that glittering jewel in the Spanish crown. The youngest of five children, born into the family of a hardworking and respected couple, from Alcoy near Alicante. She grew up resilient and resourceful: hardly surprising considering the competition – three brothers, the eldest of which was 15 when she was born.
To have an apartment in such a sought-after area of the city was a measure of how far her parents had come as individuals, and then as a family since the end of the unbearably bitter Civil War. They had known hardship, privation, hunger, internment, forced labour, the pain of loss, not least, a brother commited to the opposition in the miserable frozen wastes of Teruel. Yes, this is Spain, everybody’s sunny summer playground. We tend to forget …
Of course, I knew none of this, when I made my first hapless attempts to get to know her better in the staffroom of a West London school. In contrast, yours truly was born later that same year in a particularly grim area of the industrial North of England. Our respective environments could not have been more different. Around the corner from the ‘finca’ the graceful Plaza with its palm trees and fountains, site of the ‘mascleta’ (You have to see and feel this. Calling it a ‘display of firecrackers’ or somesuch really doesn’t do it justice. It is immense) You don’t need to walk too far before you come upon the old dry river course, its bridges and boat moorings still intact. Quite different from the ribbon of brown slurry that passed for a river and was such a feature of my journey to school as a child. Then there is the ‘Micalet’ and the handsome central market and the smells! Of sea, the earth, the orange blossom.
The smells which characterised 1960s Huddersfield? I think we’ll draw a graceful curtain over that.
I could go on (and on)
And the point of all this? I just wanted to say that despite everything, I never forget, and
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
© Andy Daly 2010
In which a family of kingfishers manage to trick a former Art teacher into rejecting a process-led model as a metanarrative of a discredited Modernist formal orthodoxy. It also features some spectacular stunt flying, courtesy of the Red Sparrows.
It has slowly become apparent to me that I’ve been had. Done over. Hook, line and sinker, I have been stitched up like a kipper by … a family of kingfishers
Why? Because I have failed to listen to my own best advice and have allowed myself to be seduced by Product at the expense of Process. I know! … Me! The Process Kid! ….Me! who has spent a lifetime teaching a process-based model (I’m getting more and more angry as I write this) Me! a signed and fully paid up champion of a process-led aesthetic. I can’t believe it. Tricked, out-witted and out-manouvered … by a family of bloody kingfishers. I mean, they’re only 6 inches tall with a brain the size of a pea!
The Readers Digest Book of British Birds describes them as ‘mainly sedentary’ and confines the bulk of its entry to an almost obsessive interest in the spectacular colouring, superlative flying, and dramatic diving. Ha! Where are the warnings that this orange and blue – alright – ‘turquoise’ critter will quite happily lead the unwary out onto one of the most treacherous visual arts battlefields of the Modernist era and leave you beaten and bloodied for your troubles? Where does it suggest that it might be wise to re-aquaint yourself with Walter Benjamin before you go birdwatching?
Here is my story.
I take my bike from out of the shed and leave the house I share with my wife and two children, at work and school respectively. And why do I do this? … well … it’s because we’ve got the bloody builders in. They have just ‘knocked through’. Any sign of a dustsheet? No! Any respect for personal space? No! Any interest in the fact that I too may have some objectives I’d like to acomplish – preferably before sunset and so therefore really cannot spare the time to make another cup of tea and listen to another ‘Clumsy Tony’ anecdote. No!
So I’m going for a bike ride to escape, because if I hear that fucking dopey roofer sing ‘Karma bloody Chameleon’ one more time I swear I’m going to pound his brains to mush with one of his own roofing tiles.
And so to the park (tip) at the end of our road.
Just listen to that … Silence! … (Well silence that is if you filter out the playground noise from the school, the trains passing on the Met. line, the plane landing at Northolt, the coarse chatter of the jackhammer from … Oh gawd!.. Our house by the sound of it)
And so I’m off. A quick three lap burn up of the ‘Nature Reserve’ This presents a major test of skill and nerve as you try to avoid the dog crap everywhere, and today? … well, let’s head off down past the park and along the brook (sewer) and back again.
I’ve got to say, all joking apart, that in the dappled sunlight under a flaming canopy of Horse Chestnut, Ash, Hazel and a couple of Oak and Beech, it is extraordinarily beautiful down here … and quiet. The Parrots look a bit out of place though. There’s a … (collective noun for parrots? a squawk? – sounds alright) There’s a squawk of parrots, about 6 in total who divide their time between the park and the big old tree behind our house. Escapees, I guess. A novelty at first, they are now right up there with the dopey roofer on my hate list courtesy of the bloody awful racket they make: that’s all seven of them.
I am just imagining what roast parrot might taste like and indeed how it might compare with roast roofer (I suspect a parrot, no matter how well fed might present a challenge in feeding a family of four. The roofer, on the other hand has been nicely looked after and …)
Bloody Hell! See that? A kingfisher! Brilliant!
Wonderful! One of my favourite birds as a child. Not that I ever saw more than about three. Seeing a kingfisher gave me an electric thrill (and still does) as the streak of sapphire and orange flashed past, seemingly unconcerned, but busy nevertheless.
Who would have thought it? On smelly Yeading Brook. I saw it again the following day and again and again. I was surprised talking to local dogwalkers, regulars along the brookside path, that although ‘vaguely aware’ of the bird’s existence at some time or other, no-one had seen it (or them) this season. Yet I, having begun to observe the bird’s pattern of behaviour and favourite branches on which to perch, saw it two, sometimes three times a visit.
I resolved to bring my camera, which I did (oh how I rue the day!) There was a lot of activity that morning: I’d seen it two or three times – It had of course occurred to me that there could be more than one: a pair? I was on the verge of leaving when right out of the blue/turquoise/saphhire whatever you want to call it, close by the lower entrance to the park it landed on a branch overlooking a bend in the brook. It was about 70 yards away. Against all odds, which included a standard 50mm lens – no telephoto and uncontrollable shaking as I tried to focus (In fact, if the truth be known, I had a quite incomplete grasp of the procedures for focussing my Canon 450D for having had it for two months, I was too lazy to have read the instruction manual) The shot was an accident: I was pressing the button for a meter reading and overdid it. I got another one in, but with a shutter sound like a skoda car door slamming – that was it. The kingfisher was off!
Can you spot it?
But I had it! After thoroughly testing the image manipulation giant that is Photoshop CS3 (Extended) I had it! Okay, it wasn’t exactly David Attenborough: but then I wasn’t on his kind of money.You had to look hard deep into a mess of trees, riverbank, undergrowth but there it was the unmistakeable shape of a kingfisher. Ha! I was about to prove to everyone that this was no fig roll of my imagination…
But it was also to prove my undoing … My dissatisfaction with the quality of my kingfisher picture, which despite all the power of Photoshop was still grainy and fuzzy, began to be replaced by a growing conviction that here was an opportunity to extend my range as a budding photographer. Yes! It was time to move on from those interminable artsy ‘coffee table book’ guitar pictures( http://www.andydalyphotography.co.uk/ in case you’re interested. I accept Pay Pal and all major credit cards) Let’s face it, any clot with a serviceable camera and a spotlamp could do them – you just had to remember, Do ‘em in black and white and don’t forget: Loads of shadows! No: this was real photography: wildlife photography.
And here, dear reader is where the wheels began to come off. I can hear myself thinking, althoughI never actually uttered the words, but sure enough, like so many of my wayward students over the years I thought them. Words which are enough plunge even the most experienced, hard-bitten, battle-scarred Art teacher into a trough of despair:
“But I know exactly what it’s going to look like”
I know, I know …. Me, the Process Kid! As I sit now staring at words on the screen I can barely believe it. But there I was, a week later, armed with a telephoto lens (courtesy of E Bay. Incidentally, I picked up a delightful plaster cast of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and a complete Morris Marina workhop manual at the same time. Who says it’s a Global Car Boot Sale eh?) and assorted camouflage garments, more usually associated with members of fanatical paramilitary active service cells: ready to do battle with the kingfishers for the ultimate Kingfisher photograph ….
[A small hollow in a sandy bank overlooking Yeading Brook and a family of Kingfishers are sitting around, reading the morning papers and childrens’ comic supplements]
Oh God! Here he is again!
Who’s here again, Darling?
That idiot. You know, the one with the camera.
The one with the wooly hat? You’re too hard on him. You should stop teasing him and leave him in peace.
Leave him in peace? What about us? What about him leaving us in peace? I’ll leave him alone when he stops invading our privacy. Three times last week…three times. You know what I’m like about my fishing –
[The children pipe up] Oh yes! We all know what you’re like about your fishing. We’re not allowed to talk..
We’re not even allowed to breathe!
Now, you two, come on…What your father is saying is that he just enjoys his privacy..
Exactly! Alone. So I can think and unwind and relax. Without having some half-baked would-be ‘wildlife photographer’ sticking his zoom lenses into my beak. And anyway, where do you think your meals would come from if I weren’t allowed to ‘dip this beak’ unhindered?
I caught one yesterday!
That was not a Minnow.
What was it then?
Well, it wasn’t a fish … Now let’s leave it at that … Oh God!
What is it now? You’re ever so tetchy these days…
It’s those bloody parrots, again. I wish someone would sort them out…send them back to where they came from.
But Dear, you can’t say that…
I just did. Okay! So who’s coming to have a bit of fun with old ‘David Attenborough’ then?
Me!
Me!
Me!
Daaad?
Yes, sunshine?
Do you think he knows there’s five of us?
Hmmmmm…Difficult to say… I think he knows there are at least two.
Remember yesterday, when you and Mum had already gone up to bend in the river with the wooden platform, but when I flew past, he went in the opposite direction?
Yes, that was odd. I just don’t think he’s very observant.
…He’s always half asleep
Yes, I’ve noticed that, Dear. I don’t think he gets enough rest…
Rest?! Oh for pity’s sake woman, we need to get rid of him, not mother him. I want my peace and quiet back.
Dad! Let’s try and get him to drop his big camera into the river
Yeeeaah!
And how are you going to do that?
Oh it’ll be well easy … Did you see when he dropped his hat in the river?
That’s right: So far …Let’s see … His gloves went in….
… his hat …
… (Twice) …
… His lens cap …
… and he got bitten by a dog! …
[Together] Twice!
It is easy! All you’ve got to do is make him wait till he starts to get tired…
It’s best to sit quite high up
… and behind him. He still thinks we only ever fly or perch low along the course of the river.
Watch him. Watch his shoulders. After a while he starts to go into this position and his shoulders hunch over.
What’s ‘hunch’?
Y’know, go all rounded
Then it’s time to fly… Straight at him if you can
Yeaaaah!
He goes all shaky! It’s dead funny.
Okay? We all ready? You staying here, Love? Oh! Before I forget, I’ve left an article out for you… might like to read it. I thought it was quite good. It’s a frank new appraisal of Benjamin’s ‘Work of Art In An Age Of Mechanical Reproduction’ In fact, I think it will throw more light onto the near polarisation of the visual arts and the acendency of a Post Modern, pluralist aesthetic for the end of the twentieth century. See what you think. Okay kids? We off?
Chocks away!
[Some weeks later. The Builders have now gone]
…. ready to do battle with the kingfishers for the ultimate Kingfisher photograph.
[Reader]: So?
What?
[Reader]: So where is it?
What?
[Reader]: The ‘Ultimate Kingfisher Photograph’?
You see, people don’t realise just how difficult wildlife photography is. They just think that the photographer turns up, whips out their camera, Click! Click! Home in time for tea and crumpets. No way! It requires methodical planning, deep knowledge of the habits and environment of the subject and consumate camera skills. Never mind thinking … aperture?… exposure?… focus? … ooops, lens cap off … when there’s a kingfisher flying at you. It needs to be instinctive … it’s raw!…It’s man versus beast in an extreme and hostile environment.
[Reader]: ‘Extreme and hostile’? What? Yeading Brook? In Roxborne Park?
Yeah … err … it’s pretty hostile. I came close to losing my hat in the drink on one occasion.
*** Kingfishers 1 ‘David Attenborough’ 0 ***
[Reader]: So how long have you been waiting for this ‘ultimate photograph?
Let’s see, where are we now? March .. That will make it uhmm … Five months … it’ll be five months
*** Kingfishers 2 ‘David Attenborough’ 0 ***
[Reader]: And how many pictures have you taken?
Oooooohhhh loads!
[Reader]: Of kingfishers?
Two
*** Kingfishers 3 ‘David Attenborough’ 0 ***
[Reader]: So your original image and two new ones?
Ahhh .. No. My … errr…original shot and one new one.
*** Kingfishers 4 ‘David Attenborough’ 0 ***
[Reader]: It must be spectacular … the other one? It must be if it’s your ‘ultmate kingfisher photo’ Can you describe it? I’m fascinated by the notion of it being a battle between man and nature in order to wrest the image you want exactly as you thought it was going to look. That must be some result eh? The suspense is killing me … Thanks … No, don’t see it. Ahhh! That’s because I’ve got it upside down … no wait …. No, Still don’t see it ……..what the hell am I looking at?
Well … can you just see behind that branch…?
[Reader]: You mean that blurry brown line?
Hmmmmm…It’s that spot of blue …. Juuuusssssst ……. there!
*** Game Set and Match: Kingfishers ***
Epilogue
Never has the pursuit of artistic endeavour so exausted me. Never has so much time been invested for such little reward. How could I let myself walk into such an obvious trap? One which, because of my training and experience I should have spotted from the outset.
My ‘Ultimate Kingfisher Photograph’ hangs on the chimney breast (I tell people it’s one of a series of abstract paintings I’m working on – sort of diffused spatial enquiries … ‘Yes, they can sometimes look like out of focus photographs. I’m glad you spotted that’) My misery is complete when the Dopey Roofer decides he likes it and offers to buy it. It reminds him of the lighting effects used at last year’s Ministry of Sound New Year Party. ‘It was sick man, I’m tellin’ yah I was well out of it’.
I let it go for £5:49 with which I buy a new wooly hat. The house is cold and lonely, the wind whistles through the gap in the front door, making a sound like a maddened wailing banshee. I’m beginning to miss the builders … they weren’t that bad after all.
Cause of all the trouble
‘The Ultimate Kingfisher Photograph’
HELPLINE
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this post, call 0800 4746 4746 to talk in confidence
© Andy Daly 2010
Thomas Townson (‘Nandy’) was born in 1875 and Ethel Dawson (‘Tomt’) the same year as Picasso, 1881. Yet my memories of them and the times I spent in their house are as vivid – if not even more so – than when I was a child.
I don’t believe in a God and I don’t believe in an afterlife; at least not in the array of forms in which it is most commonly presented. But I do feel sure, somehow that I’ll see Thomas and Ethel again … One day…
And with that in mind, I would like to take the opportunity to admit to the both of you the years of pilfering the Everton Mints, stored in your dark corner cupboard, and respectfully ask that two other offences (location – Larder) be taken into consideration.
© Andy Daly 2010
Coming up:
So who thinks Wildlife Photography is a doddle? Photographer turns up, whips out their camera, Click! Click! Home in time for tea and crumpets.
Think again. Especially when you’re up against kingfishers whose sole aim is to confront the metanarrative myths of a discredited Modernism … On Yeading Brook.
Miss it at your peril!
Sitting Comfortably? 