WHEN THE OLD MAN DIED (Part Three : Mushy peas and no gravy!)

The summer of 1969 the whole world was focused on the moon! According to this guy on Public Radio. I wasn’t. I didn’t give a fuck about the moon. If it suddenly dropped out of the sky I might sit up and take notice, otherwise I had more important things to take care of. I can’t remember exactly what, but I know it wasn’t the moon. It’s a grown planet, it can take care of itself! But this guy on the radio is insisting we have to somehow rekindle that sense of excitement about space-exploration. Otherwise he could be out of a job. But apart from that, it is absolutely essential if we’re to know the origins of the universe! Talk about the donkey chasing its’ own tail on top of an ant-hill, crushing lots of ants in the process, who at that moment don’t give a mule’s ass where the donkey came from, just where they’re going to go to escape this bedeviled genocidal burrito!!

But no, we absolutely need to know how the universe was formed.. Believing in some great mystery just doesn’t cut the scientific mustard! We’d be no better than silly asses, no curiosity whatsoever about what’s swatting all the flies off behind our back! Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for Albert Einstein we might never have known our relatives! If it wasn’t for Attila the Hun we might never have known the full potential of firm leadership! Without Henry Ford, we’d still be trudging through the mud to pick up our driver’s license! Wouldn’t even need a driver’s license, nobody would ever know for sure what they were legally entitled to! We’d be lucky if we could assemble a party of six to figure out the right time to plant our broccoli! It would take us ten years to experience the Grand Canyon! Emergency services would have to be severely downsized and there would be no need for I-95 to seem to run on forever, to keep us in touch with the universe! Which is flat.. According to the same guy on the radio…the universe is flat! The Earth is round but the universe is flat! He can prove it, he’s seen the satellite photographs, no curvature at all. The Earth is round but the universe is flat! What does that tell us about the World Cup and the Winter Olympics? How to squeeze a soccer-ball into a Cadbury wafer…???

I was surprised that nobody mentioned me dad’s musical ability at his funeral. Cause he played drums in a band in the Navy. It was never confirmed in Churchill’s memoirs, but I know for a fact he was very good with a fork and spoon at the dinner-table! And I have vivid memories of him playing his accordion. He definitely had rhythm. Never muddied it up with the Blues. Melody and swing, that was his thing! Bing Crosby and Glen Miller. He wasn’t a rock’ n’ roller. And he had a strong pleasant singing voice. I remember him singing once at a family gathering. But nobody seemed to want to stop and listen. I think they thought he took himself a bit too seriously. He could never compete with me Uncle Alan’s drunken parodies of Al Jolson. So he decided to let that one go. Didn’t even hear him singing around the house. Decided to leave it to the “professionals”..And “our Steve”.. Cause you couldn’t stop me singing if you paid me! Which of course nobody ever did, to sing or not to sing.. But I have built a repertoire to buoy me up for a lifetime, keep darkness at bay. I secretly considered singing a Bing Crosby medley at his funeral. But I didn’t think anybody would want to stop and listen..Just wants to show us what a strong pleasant singing voice he has!!??

So I decided not to make an exhibition of myself. That was me mam’s deepest credo : you don’t want to make an exhibition of yourself! I think her own highest aspiration was to be inconspicuously present. Nobody likes a show-off! Unless you’ve really got something to show off, in which case you’d be on tele’ by now and beamed to her from a safe un-embarrassing distance! We have to know our place in this world, somewhere on the outskirts of its’ periphery.. Out of sight out of mind. You don’t want everybody looking at you!

“Why is everybody looking at me????” I’m sitting at me dad’s bedside in Ward B2. Suddenly he’s convinced that everybody is looking at him.. ”Why is everybody looking at me???” Just want to see a man reduced to rubble? Bill Bellwood finally get his come-uppance? I’m looking around, nobody is looking at him.. “Everybody is looking at me!!” And he’s too helpless to put up a good show. O the agony of the inexpressible, the indescribable, the utterly domitable!!

And now me dad’s dead. There will always be an England, but me dad’s dead! And that’s a fact. I kissed his corpse goodbye on the morning of his funeral, in the Chapel of Rest, next door to the fish’ n’ chip shop, planted a sweet memorial on his refrigerated forehead. He didn’t look much like himself anymore. More like some miniature ghoulish mannequin discard from an old Hammer horror movie. The blood-shocked eye-sockets and the preternaturally sealed lips. No hands and feet, his hands and feet had been macabrely folded into the drapes of the coffin. Maybe they’d lost his shoes? Maybe he had holes in his soles? I knew for a fact somebody had mislaid his wedding-ring at the hospital. But I decided this wasn’t the time to make a fuss. His spirit had departed, hopefully passed on to a much better place.. Maybe the fish’ n ‘ chip shop next door? Who knows what awaits us in the next world? Mushy peas, a meat-pie and six penn’orth o’ chips! And no gravy, cause there’s nothing worse than gravy mixed with your mushy peas, not my idea of Paradise!

NB. The missing wedding-ring still haunts me. Are there ties that bind even in the after-life? Assuming there is an after-life, would me dad’s spirit turn up feeling bad to be single again and not knowing who he eternally belonged to? Or that he ever belonged to anybody at all? If shared possessions are nine-tenths of knowing who we belong to, I guess the most of us would finish up in the landfill, the Salvation Army or the pawn-shop..? Not my idea of Paradise…