In Memoriam

Joe Farrar

1913 – Sept 9^th, 1968

As befitted, my father died at the time of night most streets are empty. He’d driven past Withington hospital (an old workhouse), parked his car at the side of the road, just outside a pub, and dropped dead of a coronary thrombosis.

I was thirteen at the time, and just starting my second year at secondary school. If he had lived I am sure I would have had a very different life – but the combination of late nights, alcohol, cigarette smoke (although he never smoked himself, he spent a lot of time in pubs playing darts – the doctor had told him to give up smoking only a few weeks before – he had been amused at the suggestion he give up something he didn’t do) had worn through the tubes already weakened by a hard war and did for him.

Although I can’t remember his birthday, I remember his death day … this year it is the 40^th anniversary.

We had a good funeral – my brother, mother and I sitting in the car which followed the coffin – having a good laugh at the thought of the old man sitting on the coffin, childhood-rickets bowed legs (wide enough to let a pig through) dangling over the edge, contemptuous of all the fuss and desperate for a pint.

The body was cremated and although his name (not, as it turned out, his baptismal ‘official’ name – all his life though, he’d been called Joe) was entered in the ‘roll of honour’ no memorial marks where his ashes were scattered. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the place – and someone else, a brother-in-law I think, did the same office, in the same place, for my mother when she died 30 years after.

There are fewer and fewer memories now – like the final ripples on a river after a fish has jumped and sunk back in to the deep flowing stream.

Eurovision

I have a habit of starting the day with music.

Next to the pillow, apart from the book I'll have been reading before going to sleep, and the glasses I no longer can see close distances with, is a portable disc player (and nowadays, an mp3 player too).

This morning I put the earplugs in of the portable - and pressed the 'go' button.

I'd forgotten what was in the machine - I've been using the mp3 exclusively recently.

It turned out to be Charpentier's 'Te Deum': Good loud and distinctly irreligious.

Being half asleep, a strange thing happened - i had visions of the screen of an old Black-and-White TV screen with the Eurovision logo.

The 'Prelude' from the piece was the music used to introduce all Eurovision broadcasts (still is I think).

And there was a distinct feel a pyjamas and warmth and sitting on the settee.

It was a fleeting feeling - the screen being predominant.

That space - when the mind is totally free to wander - between waking and sleeping, had thrown up something from deep in my past - the feeling as much as anything else.

Now, I wonder why I like that tune so much?

Oh Brave New World (2)

What I don't believe is that I am blogging away here on a new download which enables me to drop a comment any time I want - just with a click on the bottom of the page.

Scribefire! - a Firefox add-on.

Something I wanted to mention but hadn't got around to doing so was my finally getting to transfer the images from my mobile phone to the computer.

Seems the system can't handle the photo though!

Added it after -

a lovely picture of my hand just after the operation.

Barking!

Etymology:

Middle English berken, from Old English beorcan; akin to Old Norse berkja to bark, Lithuanian burgėti to growl

And more growl than bark I must admit: Babel to berken.

Delivered a booster unit to some B1 students and ended up growling and barking at them. Now, Craig over in the comments of Shakespeare Experience suggests I will go mad if .... sorry old bean, too late, milk spilt, cat licked it and now had kittens.

I wonder sometimes at my antics in the classroom - and M&M still pay me.

But, to be colloquial, "Bugger that!"

Doctored again :- re-scanned and the waters are receding, but have not yet de-parted. More weeks on Ibuprofen.
However, my poor weak frame has decided to whimper a little. Bit of poor drumming on behalf of the 'old ticker' (isn't English a colourful language?).

Been Beta-blockered!

Ah HA! Real illness at last - says my vanity (and all is).

'Half a tablet of the lowest dose purchasable,' declares the doctor from Bran (talk about ego demolition jobs).

My mother's chastity is in question - did she milk the milkman and bastardise me? Am I not a true Farrar? Is it any wonder i go rabid in front of the jetsam and flotsam washed into the classrooms I prowl?

Anyone who Had a Heart!

Thud-ub ... thud-ub .... thud - u...b

No - not quite gone 60s ga-ga: Just had 'one of those weeks'! (and I'll allow myself that exclamation mark - I am on an exclamation mark diet - noticed a tendency to exclaim a lot - so restrictions apply.)

First the medical bits - did a run around on Thursday and Friday after several weeks of really under-performing - dizziness, low energy and breath shortage.

Went to the Doc - she twiddled a bit, sent me to the Doc next door, a heart specialist - beauty of being with a clinic - he twiddled a bit and sent me off to another, bigger specialist - and she charged me a lot of money to put a sonic thingamajig (technical English for something or other) on me, after making me lie on my LEFT side - seems sort of ritualistic to me.

Pretty pictures made - just like having a baby I suppose - and the result (apart from sclerosis of the aorterial (?) valve - nothing to worry about - and the expected, considering I'm English and have that awful English breakfast at least three times a day - talk about stereotyping! (allowed) fatty deposits on the tubes - how is your cholesterol level by the way?) ... is Pericarditis - instant reference to every medical source on line.

Not going to die today. Might in a week or two if the damn thing doesn't go away - so, what is the fantastic treatment - nurofen.

I ask you (deleted !)

Nurofen (Another deleted two !)

For those who don't realise, nurofen is the sort of thing you take for a headache the morning after. How degrading - I've a hangover of an illness.

Not impressed either with my body, or with the Doctor's obvious lack of theatrical sense - how can a Farrar only have nurofen?

She did throw in a need for an x-ray (in case of TB) but that was poor compensation for the damage done with such a piddling treatment.

And, NO, I didn't even show anything wrong with the x-ray.

Overall, a most unsatisfactory encounter - to be repeated in two weeks when this Daughter of Dracula extracts another wapping great fee to see if the waters have departed.

(Actually she was brilliant but that is nowhere near good copy.)

Shortly before the Doc I met up with Sebastian - who is a modern man and has changed his totally unreasonable Romanian surname into a really, really, totally unreasonable Romanian surname by adding his wife's to his own.

He's also got a baby - and talks about it.

And sends pictures over the internet - of the baby.

(Notice - not an exclamation mark in sight! - damn, delete that.)

Anyway, he paid for the strong coffee I had just before going off to have my heart examined (one has to help along the diagnosis some how).

He also mentioned his wife had been chatting away to Tudor Cretu - an old Shakespearian (as in former pupil of Shakespeare High School, Timisoara). His wife does something in television. Tudor Cretu?

Why? - Tall kid, went to be a teacher (deserved all he got in that line) bit 'head in the clouds' - journalist?).

OOOOhhhhhh - apparently he's turned poet and novelist! (! allowed.)

Instantly I remembered what a sensitive and civilised child he was - and then readjusted and re-remembered I'd have kicked him quite happily on several occasions.

If the child is father to the man - he has just the right personality to make a good novelist - it's never the really nice ones who make it - you need to have been a bit of a pain in the first place.

Good luck to him - especially if he can write.

(And he mentions me in his television interview - so can't be all bad, can he?)

White and Working Class

Two responses to the BBC:

Has the Sun stopped publication?

Is the media not dominated by sports coverage?

Is the high street emptied of pubs?


Do the conservative party still not promote 'traditional' values?


Goodness - maybe time to come back to a more mature and civilised England!

and:

Born in Wythenshawe - in Deepest White Working Class Manchester - I got an education (state - local comprehensive onto provincial university) so that my voice and opinions were worth listening to: They have been.

So too have the opinions of a lot of school colleagues who followed a less 'exalted' route (eg the girl who worked at two jobs and studied at night school).

Learn to articulate, do something for yourself, get opinions not prejudices and maybe such a silly discussion wouldn't happen.

Moaning Minnie

Meaning

A habitual grumbler.

In origin an item connected with war - and my body certainly seems to have declared war on me at the moanment!

I've spent the last week with the foulest of doses of tonsillitis: Bad enough to give me the impression I am perpetually drunk - without the alcohol. Not the nice bit of drunk - the, bit where you go - Oh, bugger it - too much ...

Was waking every hour, had to drink to ease the dryness of the tonsil which was burning, but which burnt wetter after the drink!

One stage there was blood!

And to top it all - the local schop (was a typing error - but that's what it has become, a Schop!) had no ice cream!

I ask you: What on earth is the point of having tonsils if you can't have icecream when they declare war on the rest of the body?

Bum Bite!

What was that about two glasses of wine?

Just been 'ecg'd and the doc said something wrong - stop drinking more that two glasses of wine (a week).

Going to France for a re-diagnosis - just know they'll prescribe wine as part of my daily diet!

Let me make this clear - death before dishonour!

(I have to compete with a father who dropped dead in a parked car just outside a pub.)

ME

You will, of course, notice the the T-Shirt!

(The Thin Man)

The demolition job one is able to do with those wine glasses is amazing - and lets you say you only had a couple of glasses of wine the night before with perfect honesty.

Do think I am in training to play Falstaff though.

Falling illusions

Whether it was an intended, "stick it in and twist", or just accidental, I wouldn't like to say -

from someone who I don't particularly like, who I haven't seen for several years, and who i never want to see outside of a coffin again:

"Alan, aren't you getting fat! Don't worry, it comes with old age."

I am going into denial immediately.