Getting a grip on the extra day

There are lots of things I don’t understand. I don’t really understand leap years or the Coronavirus.

Like most people, I pretend I do but in reality these things are probably too big for one little brain to fully understand. Time, in general, is totally incomprehensible. I can never understand why some days last longer than others. Yesterday was really long. I had a cold and in every class I taught children were popping out to wash their hands every time I blew my nose. Small people know how to take advantage of a health panic. Obviously, with a cold my voice was hanging by a thread, which always makes time slow down. I would like to point out that I can categorically state that I couldn’t have Coronavirus because I haven’t been anywhere. I didn’t even go to see my son in Brighton, where Super-spreader Steve is from.

This morning my inbox is full of suggestions of what I could do with this extra leap day. Apparently, I could send flowers, have a spa break or check my dog’s dental hygiene. It reads as though I’ve been given an extra day in my life. I would celebrate but I don’t know how many days I’ve got in my life, so I’m going to continue taking them for granted.

Instead, I thought I might sit here and try to get my head around this Coronavirus thing.

I don’t know much about it but I do know that you don’t catch it from drinking Corona beer corona-beer-loss-£132m-pandemic. I also suspect that if you are now washing your hands enough to make them dry and cracked then you are probably overdoing it but I’ve learnt a lot about hand cream on Twitter. I also think that if you are buying the last pot of hand sanitiser then you probably weren’t washing your hands often enough before, or drinking enough water to prompt the toilet trips that lead to regular hand washing. There is a dystopian novel to be had out of hand sanitiser poisoning.

My instinct is to say, ‘get a grip, it’s just a flu,’ and I’m not sure that’s wrong but I know it’s more complicated than that.

I want to get cross with the press for whipping up panic but I know they are just reporting what they are told and using language creatively to get us to listen (Super-Spreader Steve)

The truth is, this is a new virus, so we can’t really know how people will react to it. We can’t know how many people will be susceptible or what the long term effects will be. We don’t know what morbidity rates it has in different sections of the population. We don’t know if similar viruses will have conferred immunity or increased susceptibility. We don’t know how many people will become asymptomatic carriers. With the unknown there is fear and I hate fear.

After yesterday’s attempt to teach with a cold, I was feeling super snippy about the whole thing. I might have snapped something about it being ridiculous and how this virus is just flu. I feel a bit ashamed of myself for that. Flu is horrible. It can kill and it can nearly kill (which is probably worse). There are vulnerable people everywhere and most would probably rather not have flu, or give it to a sick or elderly relative. However, the panic over this virus is bigger than the fear of flu because it is an unknown. Also, there are risks in life (like driving or using a sharp knife) that we don’t avoid because it would make our lives too small. Avoiding death at all costs could make life not worth living.

We’ve all watched disaster movies or read books where the whole population is wiped out by a new virus and this is probably what we fear. That’s what it looks like when we see it reported. Learning that there have been 2,835 deaths in China and that 79,257 people have contracted the virus feels terrifying. That’s a death rate of 3.5%, which still seems quite scary. However in a population of 1.386 billion, the percentage of the population to catch the virus is 0.057. That’s in China too, where people are living in poverty in unsanitary, close proximity conditions and it’s terrifying to let the government take control of your life. Don’t do the calculations for the cruise ship if that’s your type of holiday, luckily I get seasick on a canal barge so cruising was never high on my list of things to do. (Death rate is much lower - 0.08%, if you want to go and need reassurance).

I do know that I would find it hard to be in isolation, if I wasn’t sick. I believe in staying away from people if you have a temperature and have been secretly fuming about the ‘give them Calpol and don’t spoil their attendance record’ culture for years but to be in isolation if you are well seems like cruel and unusual punishment. I would find it particularly hard because I get a bit claustrophobic. I would find it almost impossible if I ran out of salted peanuts.

So, I’m off to get a grip with my extra day, maybe eat some peanuts and self-isolate my cold with a good book. If I drank beer I might treat myself to a bottle or two of the yellow stuff.

Apples

I love apples. I think that’s the thing that makes me British. It’s our National fruit, or should be. My parents bought me an apple tree for my 500th birthday and I love it. I’ve just noticed the typo but I’ve decided to leave it because, well, it’s funny isn’t it? I often tell the children I teach that I’m 500 when they ask how old I am or when they groan when I ask them to stand up.
“I’m 500 and I can stand up without groaning. You’re only five!”

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yes, apples. It’s a very British thing to love apples and I’m sure those canny business people in California knew that when they named their products. Yes, I know the  Americans are fond of apples too. It gives them comfort and makes them think of ‘Mom’s homemade apple pie’, which probably isn’t homemade at all because the apple filling has come from a can and the pastry from a packet. Not all Americans have the sense of reliability of an apple the way we do here. Their climate varies and the apple tree, not being native, but being imported by the Pilgrim fathers in the 1700s isn’t as reliable as it is here. In my youth my dad taught us about scrumping, which is basically stealing apples that hung over people's fences. That, combined with blackberries from the hedgerow made the perfect September feast when he was a child and the delight of it never quite wore off. Of all the things to have inherited, being enchanted by the prospect of free food is probably better than sticking out ears and knobbly knees.

Maybe my love of apples is why I’m overly attached to my iPhone and iPad.

Another thing I have inherited from my Dad is his MacBook. I thought it would be useful. It’s stylish and already has the music we have arranged for the Youth Orchestra on it. My laptop is at the end of its life and I like apples. It also has his iTunes on and it’s amazing how comforting listening to someone’s playlist can be when you miss them.

I managed to guess his password to get into the machine but his Apple password is more tricky. Now the machine has several icons bouncing at me and pop ups telling me I need to update things. Without the password I’m stuck.

I rang the help desk.
“You are into the machine?” the man with sunshine in his voice said. “That’s good. There’s definitely something we can do for you. It should be easy.”
He walked me through several steps and then said, “Now enter the password.”
“Yep. It’s the password I haven’t got and I can’t ask him because he is dead,” I prickled, causing the Long Suffering Husband to raise his whole eyebrow at me.
He suggested that I ask for a reset password but his email address is also closed because he’s dead.
“Be nice,” the LSH hissed.
The man was completely unfazed. It must be all the sunshine in California.
He recommended trying to guess the security questions or resetting the Apple account.
“Will I lose the music?” I fretted. “I can’t lose the music.”

My dad knew he was going to die. (*whispers* we should all know we are going to die) He’d signed a DNR eleven years before his death. He hadn’t told my mum and only told me four years before (making me promise not to tell her). I’m not sure how he thought it was going to work if there was no one to advocate for him but that’s another story. He also tried to tell me about passwords. He’d made lists of things he thought would be useful to know and left them on his computer.
“Now Ju, let me tell you about the passwords,” he said. “You know the telephone exchange numbers?”
“No Dad, I don’t.”
“Of course you do.”
He then proceeded to rattle off something he’d learnt by heart.
“Now you know them, right?” he said.
“You might as well be asking me to remember the resistor colour code.”
“You know that, right?” He asked starting me off, “Bye...”
“Bye bye Rosie off you go to Birmingham via  Great Western,” I said automatically.
“See! You know it,” he gloated, proud that he had taught me something.
The problem is, I still have no idea what it means.
I wish I had committed those numbers to memory because on his file marked passwords he has, what I think is, an encrypted version of the Apple password and is probably related to the telephone exchanges where he worked. Oh, why didn’t I listen more? I could be an electrical engineer by now, or at least get into the iTunes account.

The nice Californian man brushed off his whiter than white smile and broke the news that I’d probably have to reset everything and could possibly lose all the music.
“I shouldn’t say it but could you guess his memorable questions?”
I tried.
“Why couldn’t he have mother’s maiden name?” the LSH asked, not unreasonably. “Who has first motorised vehicle?”
We found a photo of his first car on the computer but neither of us knew what he called it. I tried car and black car with no luck.
Then Jonny Appleseed directed us in how to put everything we wanted to keep on an external hard drive.
“I can stay on the phone with you until it’s all done,” he reassured.

After half an hour I had lost the will to live and started to worry about how difficult this is all going to be for our children; without our thumbprints they won’t even be able to turn the lights on or unlock the front door of our houses.

Half Term

Half term holidays are great aren’t they? That bonus week, where you can rest, relax and recouperate. Teachers have coffee with friends, stay up past 10.30, read books for pleasure and tidy up that kitchen cupboard that’s been nagging at them for the last five weeks. Some indulge in a spot of DIY or get away on that Nordic river cruise that they’ve been dreaming about ever since they fell asleep in front of Vera, while trying to mark 30 English books (there are only so many times you can correct the word ‘sumfink’ before you lose the will to live). They’re good for parents too. A week isn’t usually long enough to want to kill your firstborn, or bankrupt you with trips out to keep the little darlings entertained.

Everything is fabulous.

Let’s just leave it there, shall we? I want it to be fabulous. I don’t want to moan. I’m sick of moaning. You are sick of my negativity.

Nope. Sorry. I tried but it turns out I’m compelled to tell you about my difficult half term. I don’t know why.

It started with horrible weather. February half term is allotment-digging-over week but it rained every day. Ciara, Dennis and the unnamed Ellen had their fun and my allotment is untouched.

We are also having an en-suite fitted and having dust and men, who leave doors open and then ask if my dog is allowed to wander around at the front of the house, at home has been challenging.

Then, a celebrity died. Social media became a nightmare for me.

People who had previously criticised everything about that celeb posted #BeKind messages. They continued to click on all the stories about her and blamed the press for intrusion. Traffic to headlines that said, “See inside the flat where she took her own life!” was higher than the paper could ever have imagined. Their advertising revenue went up by more than any IPSO fine. Then came the memes and suggestions that people who are struggling should talk about it and everything will be fine. They blamed people who didn’t talk to her. They blamed the courts (she was about to be tried for domestic abuse). They suggested her suicide could have been stopped.  They claimed they knew why.

None of this helped my brain.

It has taken me a while to work out what was so difficult about it.

When someone takes their own life, the only thing we can know is that they felt they couldn’t carry on living how things were. We can’t know if we could have done anything to make it better. It would be nice to think we could but telling people they could have will only make them feel more guilty. I think that’s cruel.

The other thing that bothered me was that people claimed to want to talk. It made me uncomfortable. When I was really struggling, I couldn’t talk. The thought that anyone would make me tell people about what actually happened to cause PTSD  still brings me out in a cold sweat. People didn’t really want to know, either. They want you to be better. They want you to stop moaning (sorry). They want to not feel guilty or responsible. They want to know because it’s human nature to be a bit nosey but they don’t want to deal with the emotion that goes with it. I know this because I am they too.

This week marked the third anniversary of my Dad’s death and although I really don’t feel overly grief-stricken I did notice that on the day I wasn’t quite myself.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” I told the Long Suffering Husband, “I just don’t feel right.”
“The end of February is always hard.” He agreed. “The weather.......”
“End of February? What’s the date?”
I suddenly understood.
Lots of people die at this time of year. In Chinese medicine they talk about the sap rising again in Spring and if the chi isn’t strong enough then a person will die. As you get older there are more death-a-versaries to remember.

You expect that as time goes on grief gets easier. You think that you must miss the person less, that you get on with your life. In truth, you just want to talk about it less. You don’t want to feel like this anymore. Certain dates force you to remember and when you remember, you miss that person. This is normal. It’s normal to feel a bit out of sorts but not really know why.

I realised that I was also miserable because of the weather on that day.  On the first anniversary I saw a heart shaped cloud in the sky and took it as a sign.

I know I’m weak for wanting signs but I’m also human. On the second anniversary I saw a heart (and a polo, when I asked “Is Mum with you?.”). There was going to be no chance of seeing any cloud messages; the Sky was full of grey cloud and rain. I was grumpy all day until, finally, just before sunset, the LSH suggested I walk on my own. I took the dog and stormed out.  After half an hour, I was beginning to feel a bit better and as I walked down the path the clouds lifted and blue sky showed through. I smiled and a heart shaped cloud appeared.
“I really am bonkers,” I told it. “I haven’t even got a camera to prove it.”
An old man walking a bulldog side stepped past me.
I kept walking and five perfect pink cloud hearts appeared.
I have no photographic evidence and am really worried that I am completely mad.

Then you get to the end of a half term holiday and the guilt kicks in. You notice all the papers you shoved in your bag on the last day to deal with when you were less tired. You start to think about the things you have to do in the next six weeks. Goodbye Sunday.

Ciara

Britain didn’t used to name storms. That was just something those stupid Americans did to make hurricanes seem less scary. Now that we’ve totally messed up the planet, periods of high wind and squally rain can be quite devastating to our infrastructure so we’ve decided our US friends weren’t quite so stupid after all. Giving the storm a name seems to help with the fear. Instead of blaming yourself for not looking after the planet or the government for not funding effective flood defences it can be Ciara’s fault.

Ciara has been an interesting choice of name because it stirs up some British/Irish mistrust.

“Why can’t they even be bothered to pronounce our names correctly?”

“Why do they have to use so many extra letters? “

If you are me, then a name will have you writing a story in your head. Ciara will become a flame-haired green-eyed giant with a strong Irish accent and a quick temper. 

In a basement of the Met Office, in a room without windows, sits Preston Peters; a small shallow skinned, bespectacled man, with a constantly worried look on his face. It is his job to monitor Giant activity. His, is quite a lonely job. Luckily, he doesn’t get invited out very often because it’s not acceptable to talk about giants at a dinner party. 

Giants are quite tragic creatures. Most of the time they lie, sleeping and unseen in the hills and mountains. If you have ever climbed a mountain then you will have wondered as you stood on a mossy mound and thought you felt the earth move under your feet if you are actually standing on a giant’s eyebrow. I know I have. They sleep through our warm weather, blissfully happy but as soon as the temperature drops in September they start to get restless and cross. 

Many are trapped in places they don’t want to be. When the earth shifted 335 million years ago, Irish giants like Ciara found themselves in Cornwall and Norwegian giants, such as Erik ended up in Ireland. When they wake they start to feel homesick. Occasionally, one will get so upset that they’ll blow. A giant rage is never pleasant and it is Preston’s job to keep an ear to the ground to give us an early warning. This is why we sometimes get a warning of a storm approaching before they’ve named it. Preston has just noticed a few restless giants in the South Downs. They’ve had a little argument about whose turn it is to pop into Lewes for pain au chocolates from that nice little bakery. Preston, noticed the early warning signs. They were stirred up by Ciara’s rage and although they’re not aware of it they have picked up her restless energy. Preston thought everything was going to blow over, if you’ll excuse the pun, but it turns out that Dennis just can’t let it go. He prefers pain aux raisins anyway and is about to really lose his shit. These little tiffs don’t usually amount to much but Preston thought that with the damage done by Ciara we ought to be informed. So Dennis is named and shamed.

Hold tight everyone. It won’t be much longer. Warmer weather is on its way and by April we should be in for 6 months of sleepy giants. 

Except, that I found Ciara’s hair bobble and took it home. I hope she doesn’t miss it and get cross again.

Ciara’s hair bobble (50p for scale)

Check Your Racism

I have a fear that as I get older I will become racist without realising it.

I hear so many people my age huff and say, “You can’t say anything anymore!” Somehow, I suspect that is the start of becoming unintentionally racist.

In the words of the Avenue Q song, ‘Everyone’s a little bit racist, it’s true.’ As humans we are good at fear. We notice people that aren’t like us. Historically, this otherness has been manipulated by people with power to keep their grip on things. Irish jokes in the Seventies were specifically designed to allow us to see the Irish workers that came here to do the building work we didn’t want to do (or couldn’t do cheap enough to make the powerful richer and even more powerful). We bought into the idea that the Irish were stupid. It helped us make them other. It helped us feel superior. It stopped us noticing that the powerful were getting richer while we were getting poorer. Something similar happened with the Polish workers but then the powerful took it a bit far and we got scared.
“It’s not fair,” we cried. “They can’t come here and have our jobs and our women!” And Brexit happened. This ‘otherness’ can take many forms. Obviously, depending on who you are. My daughter once had a landlord from an Asian background who insisted her flat mate, whose skin was a very dark brown, pay her rent in cash because ‘her people couldn’t be trusted.’

People like me have rarely been disadvantaged by someone noticing my ‘otherness’. There have been Essex girl jokes and Blond jokes but I don’t think they were used to oppress light haired women from East of London.

I’m of the opinion that you can make any joke you like, providing you are happy to deal with the consequences. A joke is probably going to offend someone. If you laugh at someone then they have a right to feel offended. They have a right to tell you that they are offended and you have a choice whether you are happy to continue to offend them. It is possible to repeat a joke that you didn’t realise was offensive because you aren’t in the other group. Then, when it is pointed out, you have a choice to continue making that joke or to stop. You can’t tell them that because you didn’t realised they would be offended that they should not be. It’s not for you to say how they feel.

White Christians in England seem to be running scared at the moment. They fear losing their dominance.

Some of the hymns we have been singing this term have made the children question whether they are actually racist. The BBC Come and Praise Book is full of classics that have stood the test of time. If you go on any social media someone is always reminiscing about the hymns they sang in the ‘good old days.’
“Kids today. No one sings All Things Bright And Beautiful anymore. No wonder the world is as it is,” Bert57 writes.
“You are so right,” replies Carole1970, “It was having oil in my lamp that kept me burning.”
Nostalgia is attractive and it’s very easy to believe that children aren’t having very similar childhoods. When the children I teach now are in their fifties they too will be cleaning the toilet, humming Kum Bah Yah and thinking about the good old days.
Anyway, I digress.

Back to racism.

Hymns like Family of Man , When I Needed a Neighbour and The Ink is Black point out the divisions. They say that the creed, the colour and the name don’t matter. However, some children were laughing during the Black and White hymn because it says, “The child is black, The child is white.”  Just using the word black to describe a person feels racist to them, even though the words are about tolerance and inclusivity. I did remove the line ‘coolie from Peeking’ from Family of Man because I felt the same thing. Language changes over time and I worry that I’m not keeping up.

It would be too easy to become racist but think I wasn’t, just because I hadn’t kept up with the change in language usage.

The Long Suffering Husband and I listened, slack-jawed to an old couple in a coffee shop, congratulating themselves and both agreed that they were, in fact, as racist as they come.

“You and I are unusual for our generation, my dear.”
“Yes. You know I’ve never thought to call someone a deago or whatnot.”
“Wog. Wog is another one.”
“Yes and and that other word. You know it’s interesting that that word was only used in England. It was invented by a Boy Scout in Tasmania.”
“You see I’ve known several Carribeans.”
“Yes, there were loads in our street.”
“I prefer to judge people by who they are, rather than what they look like.”
“There’s Clive.”
“Oh yes, Clive. Clive is the most disgusting human being on earth.”
“Mmm. He is my dear.”
“It’s not because he’s black. He’s just the worst person.”
“Yes. We are unusual for our generation. People our age are racist.”

Please tell me.

If I ever think I’m not racist, when I clearly am. Please tell me.

Most Moovelous Story of the Year

Local newspapers are udderly brilliant. I’m not just saying that because my daughter works for one and the steaks are high. I genuinely think, and I’m not milking this, that having a publication that can get such a variety of moos pasture eyes puts you ahead of the heard.

Seriously though, I do love local newspapers, puns and cows.

I don’t know where my love of cows started. I like to walk, which means you often bump into an odd cow. They are often curious and will come up to a fence and give you a sniff. My mum collected cow creamers, which are milk jugs in the shape of a cow. They are now in my loft until I take my sister on the antiques roadshow (which, if there is an afterlife, will make my parents laugh so hard earthquake prone places should take precautions). This never made sense to me, as she was not so fond of cows. When I was a child, we would walk through fields of cows, with her side stepping, clinging onto my dad and muttering about how they were all going to murder us. We could never go camping in France because the cows would ‘murder us in our beds.’ She probably got this piece of information from a local news story. I used to wonder if she had been a mean dairy farmer in a former life and her fear of cows was because there had been a heard that genuinely wanted to murder her. I thought that the cow creamer collection was, possibly, a way of atoning for her past-life crimes against cows. I was quite a fearful child and while I laughed (encouraged by my Dad) at Mum’s cow related fears I also thought that they were so much bigger than us and if they decided to revolt we wouldn’t stand a chance.

Well, I believe the revolution has begun.

I’ve been watching out for stories about cows in the local papers and yesterday, Leistershire Live reported one that, I’m sure, marks the start of the revomootion.
This is their version of the story.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/cow-loose-peers-windows-heads-3804898?
utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

My version, fills in some of the gaps and gets into the mind of our heroine, who we will call Daisy. Actually, I’ve looked at the picture again and she definitely isn’t a Daisy. That’s such a stereotypical name for a cow. She is actually called Audrey.

Yesterday morning Audrey had been to the milking parlour.
“Oh, the indignity,” she said, as the farmer cleaned her udders and pushed the automatic milkers onto her teats.
Geraldine, standing next to her, spouted the usual rubbish.
“Now, now, Audrey. You know it’s our duty. These poor humans can’t make their own milk. Their babies would die without us. Giles loves us. It’s the least we can do, to let him have some of our milk.”
Audrey shifts uncomfortably. She thinks that she’ll never get used to this feeling.
“But it hurts,” she protests.
“Buck up girl. It doesn’t last long. Just grin and bear it for another four minutes and we’ll be out in the field chewing the cud. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the birds are nesting. We get all that and food in return for ten minutes of this a day.”
Pollyanna was always the most upbeat cow in the heard.
Audrey knew there was no point in continuing to protest. The rest of the girls had bought the lie. They had a bovine version of stock home syndrome.

When they were out in the field Audrey thought more about the situation. The sun was shining but it was quite cold and muddy. Oh, it was so muddy. It had hardly stopped raining for the last three months and they had been out there in that. The ground was all churned up and it was hard to keep your footing. It’s no fun when each of your four legs slip a different way. She took herself off to the edge of the field to think some more. She watched the robin hop from branch to branch singing about worms and eternal freedom. He landed on a bendy blackthorn branch that was just coming into bud. The branch bounced up and down and as Audrey watched it she thought it was pointing to something.
Yes. She was right. A gap. There was a gap in the hedge.
She looked back to check that none of the girls were watching her. She couldn’t risk any of them snitching on her. She had a plan.

Audrey knew exactly where she needed to go. She had overheard humans walking by her field talking about going to Tesco. Tesco, in Audrey’s mind, sounded like heaven: somewhere warm, light, full of food. Especially chocolate. Sometimes a human had sneaked her a square of chocolate and she liked it.

Off she went, down the track and along the footpath until she got there. She was amazed that she had managed to get all the way there unseen. She felt invincible. Pressing her nose up against the window of the store she wondered how to get in.

What did she see? Milk. Rows and rows of milk. Milk in bottles. Milk in cartons. Milk flavoured with coffee or bananas or strawberry.

It was then she realised that she wasn’t invincible or invisible. She had been seen and they’d sent the police to come and get her.
“Giles will be cross,” she thought, “but wait ‘til I tell the girls that they’ve got enough milk to feed their babies. We can just stop. They can get their milk from Tesco.”
She knew Tesco was heaven.

We can’t pretend we haven’t been warned. You only have to look at Audrey’s face to know that a revolution is coming. Thank to Leicestershire Live for the best story of the year.

Beware the ‘Feel Good Movie of the Year’

Beware of any film that subtitles itself as the ‘feel-good movie of the year.’ If you are sad in any way before you go into the theatre then watching this story won’t help.

I have found films difficult to watch since my brain went holey. I suppose you could say that I’m living with PTSD and although mostly things are fine there are still circumstances that make my brain go fizzy. Circumstances like loud noises, flashing lights and being trapped somewhere.

The Long Suffering Husband loves film and because I love stories (of any kind) the cinema has always been the thing we do together. Now, he watches films alone unless he thinks they’ll be safe. 1917 he declared as something I could watch at home but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, although an excellent film, is one I’ll probably never be able to watch. There are films we just decide to risk: I loved JoJo Rabbit.

After a day of sorting photos and a spot of death admin we decided that we needed a ‘nice’ film. The LSH had seen a trailer for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and thought it would be perfect.
“You can’t go wrong with a Tom Hanks’ film,” he assured me. “It’s about a children’s TV host. He’s nice.”
It sounded perfect.
It was supposedly based on this article by Tom Junod in Esquire magazine.  https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero-esq1198/
It would have been great.

Except.

They Hollywoodized it. (I know, not a real word)

In film, you can’t possibly tell a story of someone who is just ‘nice’. There has to be conflict. I understand this. It’s the clash that keeps our interest. In this film, they decided not to trash the dead man’s memory but instead re-wrote the journalist. Tom Junod has written about how they did that here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/what-would-mister-rogers-do/600772/

The story of Mr Rogers is interesting and the contradiction is there because he was nice in a world that isn’t.

In this film, they make the journalist a ‘broken’ man. They give him a backstory full of childhood trauma. His drunken, philandering father had left him to watch his mother die, in a terrible way and the conflict resolution is that he forgives father and watches him die (supposedly peacefully).
“They say you just drift off to sleep when you die,” the journalist explains to Mr Rogers in the film, “but she didn’t. She screamed in pain, passed out, they revived her and she just went right back to it.”

I’ve seen a few ‘feel good movies of the year’ now where a writer re-frames a difficult death. It’s cheaper than therapy, I suppose. None of us want to believe that death can be horrible. We want to believe that it’s painless and just like drifting off to sleep. Any thought otherwise makes us feel less safe for our own death. If you’ve watched someone die a horrible death (you can see thestrals - sorry, distracted there - but JK Rowling is brilliant and a truth teller) then it might be therapeutic to re-imagine it. Instead of sitting at your dying father’s bedside watching them get frailer and frailer, the writer turns a death into a quest story where they complete everything on their bucket list. The sister refuses chemo to take part in a dance competition, which is much nicer than sitting for hours on a chemo ward. The boy stops feeling anger his father because he ran away when his mother screamed in pain and watches his dad slip away peacefully with his family around him, in a party atmosphere. I don’t begrudge these writers their therapy. I’ve done it too but I do wonder if a little more honesty around death would help. It’s fine to be sad, or angry and it’s about time we acknowledged that these things are shit and stopped expecting people to just bounce back from them, unchanged.

The other thing that was wrong with this film is that it was very slow. Tom Hanks couldn’t have spoken any slower if he tried. At one point in the film he has a one minute silence in a restaurant, which also goes silent. The cinema followed suit. I can tell you that a minute is a very long time for nothing to happen in a film.

This kind of thing might be just what you are looking for in a film. If it is then don’t let me stop you. However, if like me, you’d like to know about nice people then just read Tom Junod’s brilliant articles.

I Miss My Parents (but not enough to keep all their photos)

I miss my parents.

I can imagine you now, reading this and thinking, “Well, duh, of course you do, that’s obvious. All you do is talk about death and grief. We know. Isn’t it about time you shut up about it?”
Maybe but it’s not as simple as that. Missing people is only a small part of grief. It is, actually, the nice part. It isn’t something you do all the time and occasionally it catches you when you’re not looking. I remember a colleague telling me that she hardly thought about her mum after she died and then one day her son got an amazing job and it was only when she picked up the phone to tell her that she realised how much she missed her.

The process of death admin is coming to a close. Who knew it could all take this long? There are just a few final accounts to check and then we have an inheritance that makes us feel too many things. We are grateful and proud that they were able to do this for us, and regretful that they weren’t able to live for longer and spend all their money. “Spending your inheritance,” was one of my Dad’s favourite things to say, particularly when he went on holiday. “Spend away,” I’d reply.

I am also trying to sort through their photos.

I like photos. I like the stories they tell. I have been sharing them with people and their replies have been full of happy stories. My parents were nice people and people remember them fondly. Their photos show that they were bloody brilliant at holidays. Mum’s photos are better than Dad’s and so photos of her are often blurred or of only half her face. He is always centre frame, beaming in the limelight. Mum was happy with her blurred hidden image. She was just as brilliant; just as much fun to be around; just as entertaining. She was, however, uncomfortable being noticed. That, an the knobbly knees are the only things I think I inherited from her (although I can take a photo).

I am missing my Dad at the moment because he would have been very happy to deflect some of the limelight. He glowed at praise. It makes me want to run and hide. We started the Youth Orchestra together. It was his retirement project but we he always acknowledged my contribution without ever making me stand up and take praise. When he became too sick to conduct I, reluctantly took over. I knew it would come with a notoriety that would be tricky. Shortly after, I was given an award and he came with me to collect it, doing all the smiling, hand shaking and taking praise that was necessary. Now, I’ve been nominated for another award and he’s not there to deflect for me. 

I know that I have to be grown up and gracious about it but this one, particularly at a time when I’ve, in my own words, “been a bit shit,” has made me want to run and hide even more. My WBC (wonderfully bonkers committee) decided that it would be excellent publicity for the orchestra, particularly in our twentieth year and despite my attempts to hide have written about it.

I do miss my parents but not enough to keep all of their photos. I’m trying to be very Marie Kondo about it. I hold each one in my hands and ask myself if it sparks joy. Surprisingly, even beautiful photographs of scenery that I’ve not seen myself does nothing for me.

The Long Suffering Husband keeps picking photos off the ‘to be discarded’ pile and asking who is in the picture. 

“Haven’t the faintest,” I reply, “It’s why it’s on that pile.”

Or, “someone Dad worked with. I think he was called Tiddler.”

There are some absolutely splendid photos of my Dad.

When I started to look (I’ve not been able to look before, so this is good) some great pictures of Mum, especially when she was young.

Mum’s baby sister cried all the time

But Mum loved her and the dog

There were also funny photos of family that I’ve not seen before.

Then there were photos that spoke to me but I wasn’t sure why.

“I’m keeping this one,” I told the LSH. “I haven’t a scooby who these people are but I think it’s a great photo. It reminds me of childhood parties.”

The LSH took the photo and said, “It is a childhood party.”

“I know but...”

“It’s you!” he interrupted and pointed to the small child at the head of the table, pulling a weird face.

“What? The ugly child? Oh my God, I’m the ugly child!”

Gosh, I miss my parents. They loved that ugly child.