Storyteller’s World

Just like Oxford, this vicarage will be quite a nice place when it’s finished. Just at the moment it’s a building site again, with two men and a boy out there rebuilding the garage. The noisy bit was last week while they drilled and dug up the old, fire-damaged concrete floor. This week they’re laying bricks, and the noise is different: they sing. Not hymns, I note.

Today they laid the new concrete floor. An enormous cement mixer lorry turned up and with great difficulty reversed onto our drive (probably new tarmac will be the next project, now I come to think of it). The driver of this behemoth turned out to be a young blonde woman who then supervised the pouring of sufficient cement for the men to spread and smooth and level and cover with blue polythene to protect it from the elements until it dries.

Meanwhile I continue to be pretty slow at making decisions or planning anything, and can’t tell whether it’s mourning, or just November.

Woo-hoo! Thanks to a good few hours today to write in, and a gripping bit of the story to play with, I’ve now clocked up 28,000 words.

All this sex and violence, madness and death, conspiracy and slaughter, are getting me quite over-heated. I love this story of Saul, it’s got everything! How come no one’s ever made a Hollywood blockbuster out of it?

Too bad it turns out to be another part of the Bible I will probably Never Be Able To Preach On, since all the supposed heroes and good guys of the story, aren’t coming out of it any too well.

Today’s final word count: 30,152.

* Or, Blood and Foreskins, actually. (1 Samuel 18.25-27)

10.15 a.m. on the 15th day - fortunately my day off so I have a few more hours to make up for the days the locust has eaten (mmm, days) - and I reach the 25K mark. This doesn’t put me ahead, but at least means I’m not falling any further behind.

Here’s the great thing about the biblical epic. Most of the words are words of one syllable, or not much more. Less typing for a higher word-count. Give me this any day: plain speaking, rather than the polysyllabic, philosophical, existential masterpiece!

Three missing days, in spite of my note-to-self to try and write something for the blog every day; and here’s why:

Friday: Sister came to stay the night, so she could take an exam at the John Radcliffe on Saturday (she passed!)

Saturday: Went to London to visit Tom and Annie in their new flat, and have a look round Canary Wharf and ride on the DLR. Photos to follow some time?

Yesterday: Remembrance Sunday, so four services, and an obligatory evening visit to the Royal British Legion.

So any spare minutes had to be used to try and not fall too far behind with the NaNoWriMo word count. As it is, I only added about 2,200 words in those three days; well below the average you need to reach that 50K target by the end of the month.

Just passed the 20K word barrier, with Dark Messiah. I’m really enjoying this and getting into it, sometimes even thinking it’s actually quite good.

It’s telling the story of King Saul, the first king of Israel (First Book of Samuel), from the viewpoint of some of his friends and supporters, rather than from that of the victors (the supporters of David who supplanted and succeeded him). It’s a fascinating thing to find yourself getting ‘under the skin’ of these narrators, and feeling the story take on a life of its own and go off at a run. “Wow, yes! That’s what it must have been like,” is how these flashes of insight and understanding feel.

My stories may not be as good as the ones David Kossoff told, when he was retelling Bible stories; but whatever it was he had that made him able to do it, I think I’ve got the same thing.

Here’s another reason why (if you can) it’s a good idea to allow comments even on very old posts.

I just got a new comment on my old post about how we order the cutlery in our cutlery drawers.

Still no definitive answer to Why? - though I’d be interested to hear from anyone who arranges things differently from How Mother Did It, or the way it was done in the place they grew up.

Li drops by on her way to her driving lesson; and also to pick up a few more of the many possessions left behind yesterday.

They were cold in the new flat last night. After being used to central heating coming on automatically before you get up in the morning, they haven’t mastered the controls of the electric storage heaters (or could it be they’re not working?) And you want to make it all right for them, for them to be snug and warm; but you know you can’t. They just have to do this for themselves, this getting used to something less comfortable, less homely until they make it a home.

Night comes, and Alison and I settle down for the first time, alone in the nest. It never seemed like it when there were six of us here; but now we truly are rattling around in the Big House.

Li has lived at home since she graduated, and has been working as a biomedical scientist at the John Radcliffe, on an NHS salary. There wasn’t much chance of her moving into a flat of her own, though she has wanted to for ages, until she got her recent promotion to a Grade 2 post, and the extra money that goes with it.

Today she moved out, into a flat over a shop in Headington, where she’s setting up her own new home with Alex. It’s not unlike the first home Alison and I had, over the chemist’s shop in East Barnet, although this one has got a fridge and a washing machine, which we never had there. (I tell a lie: when we found the fridge in the flat didn’t work, we bought a second-hand fridge without a door to the ice box, for £10, and it lasted us about 10 years.)

It’s another milestone in our family’s life; and I hate it already. As well as being really pleased for her and Alex, and thinking it’s great that they’ll have this excitement and happiness of setting up home together.

Sometimes those inspirational posters speak true.

I have always remembered one I saw years and years ago when I was a young dad, which read:

The best thing a man can do for his children, is love their mother.

At Evening Prayer today I was saying Kaddish for Dad, and praying for him, praying that God will forgive all the things I regret about our relationship (not bad things - but in every relationship there are things you wish had been different). And I thought: Dad wasn’t perfect. But he did, for us, the best thing a man can do for his children.

Grief takes funny forms, as I’m finding to my surprise - though it should be no surprise. Though it’s entertaining that a “professional” who advises other people about grief, is so bad at following his own prescriptions. What else should anyone expect, after all?

This morning turns out to be a succession of those Victor Meldrew moments.

I come home from Morning Prayer to find the builders on the doorstep, come to rebuild the garage. First reaction: it would have been nice to be told about this. But of course, they probably did try to contact me last week and will have got the answering machine saying, “Because of a family bereavement, I’m not answering the phone.”

Alison also has the day off, so we spend the first half of the morning moaning about the fact that there are two men sitting outside in the car, doing nothing: “It’s a wonder anything ever gets built in this country; if builders spent as much time working as they do sitting around … etc. etc.” Then whatever it was they were waiting for happened. Naturally it then got worse: the pneumatic drill started breaking up the old concrete base that was all that was left after the fire, and I couldn’t hear myself think, let alone speak on the phone.

Then there was the note from Parcel Force, left last week (naturally!) when they had been unable to deliver something. The latest wheeze is that they leave it at your nearest post office - but our village post office has closed so the nearest one is now in the next parish - and you have to go there to collect it. For this inconvenience, you then have to pay 50p. (All together now: “I DO NOT BELIEVE IT!”)

Then there was the call to the house contents insurers, to renew the policy by credit card. As it’s not new business, you don’t get a freephone number to call, so you’re having to pay full call price. Then, after the obligatory recorded message about how they are regulated, and that calls may be recorded for snooping purposes (I’m sure it said), and the menu (Press 1, 2, or 3), you get the appalling music and two, yes two, recorded women’s voices apologising, quite often simultaneously, for keeping you hanging on. This, not when they are doing me a favour, but when I am trying to pay them more than £200 for what purports to be a service! After nearly 3 minutes I rang off. Perhaps I will try again when the pneumatic drill next stops, but don’t hold your breath.

This is not to mention the funeral directors phoning up to arrange new funerals here, which makes me feel like saying, No, I’ve given up funerals for the time being; go and die some other time. And mounting panic about the mounting pile of post in the in tray.

Grief is shit.

One or two readers have commented with questions about how Welsh I really am? The answer is, probably, not a lot. As far as true Welshness goes, I have to own up to being more or less a complete sham, a phoney or wannabe Welshman. (Why would you?)

I suppose, with a name like Price, we can assume some Welsh connection back down the line, but as far as we know, it’s a very long way back. My family always lived in London, in living memory and for as far back as we’ve been able to trace them. Dad was born in Thornhill Square in Islington, and his father and grandfather were Londoners too.

It’s the merest accident that because Sally married a real Welshman, who actually came from a sheep farm as far up in the hills above Aberystwyth as you can get, without being on a low-flying RAF practice flight, we have any current connection with the Principality. When Owen gave up his job in London publishing, they all moved back home so that he could pursue his dream of painting for a living. Then, when Mum and Dad retired and wanted to move out of London, the natural choice was for them to move to Wales so as to be nearer to Sally and her family. (I was still moving around quite frequently, as a junior clergyman, and Jan was newly off to the States.) So Dad spent the last 20 years of his life in the idyllic setting (if you like that kind of thing) of rural Wales; which is all very well until you have to give up driving and become more or less housebound. Then the fact that the village shop is a 40 minute walk away, and by the time you’ve stopped driving has closed down anyway, can be a bit of a disadvantage.

One of the consequences of this for me, is that whenever I have talked about “going home”, or to visit my parents, or going to Wales, people have jumped to the conclusion that it is the Land of my Fathers, rather than the Land of my Ever-so-many-great-grandfathers (probably). I don’t mind this too much. I do feel a bit Welsh - especially when vertically challenged as I was at some recent Cathedral event, as a little Celt administering the chalice to all these tall fair (middle-class) Saxons who live around these parts of Wessex.

For some people, being Welsh is no doubt a genetic or social construct. For others, it may be all in the mind. For others, it may just be an embarrassment. 3-41 against the All Blacks? Oy, vey!

Daily average flagging a bit, with the funeral having to be arranged and done.

Now that I’m back home, I’ve spent some time this evening trying to catch up again. Just broke the 10K barrier: current total 10,041 words.

I’m so grateful to many readers and blogfriends for all the good wishes and thoughts and prayers. They really helped.

It had always seemed it would be the expectation of the family that I would conduct the service for Dad, and I was pretty sure that even if it turned out to be hard, it was infinitely preferable to getting anyone else to do it, who probably wouldn’t know him. But yesterday morning, when I read over what I had prepared to say about him, I felt so emotional I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it.

In the event, it was all more than OK, it was brilliant. Once I’d got into the costume and the role, it all happened. The odd little lump in the throat and tear in the eye; but that was all.

The thing is, you see, that all the stuff I talk about in my Dad - the showmanship, the dramatic flair, the singing and the acting, the gift of being able to stand up and perform - are all there in me. And nearly everyone who was there commented on it. The extraordinary thing, is what a different form it has taken in this generation. And all the times I swore till I was blue in the face that I would never act, or do what Dad did: and lo and behold! I’m doing it for a living.

This is Dad at the last big family event he was able to get to, Tom and Annie’s wedding in June. For my children, this was the last time they saw him, at a genuinely joyful occasion.

It’s a real education to be on the other side of the funeral for a change. I have the highest respect for funeral directors - in fact, the good old word undertaker is more than acceptable to me, because it’s times like this you need someone who will just undertake all the stuff you can’t do for yourself, make all the arrangements, arrange bodies and coffins and cars and flowers and organists and all. In fact, I tried to encourage my own children, when they were looking for a future career, to consider going into the funeral business. “You’ll never be out of a job”, I told them; but they weren’t convinced.

Still, it was a very different experience standing on the other side of this relationship, and doing it with someone I haven’t worked with in a professional capacity. Part of our talking was sizing each other up, as well as recognising each other’s experience. Mum and sisters were glad to have someone with them who knew the kind of questions to ask, and things we might need to think about.

When I found out that the fee for the crematorium is the same, whether or not you have the ashes interred there as well (and we want to scatter Dad’s ashes up on the mountain, some time next spring), I told him that though I was family, I would require a cheque for the minister’s fee, at the crematorium. I figured that if I waived the fee, or didn’t ask for it, it might not actually get deducted from the final account. (Not out of malice: there might just be no mechanism for doing it ) This way I can make sure it actually gets back to Mum.

It seems my Welsh blood - or something - will out.

I wanted to put on a collar and tie (yes, I do possess a tie or two) so as to look smart and even slightly professional for our visit to the undertaker this morning. Then realised that the clothes I had packed to bring with me were not any that had been approved for colour co-ordination. I had a hunch that the shirt and tie I knew belonged together (because they were bought as a set), might not go with the jacket I was proposing to wear with them. Usually it is Alison who is the Final Arbiter of all such affairs of my wardrobe, but Alison isn’t here till tomorrow. So I had to make do with Jan instead; who either isn’t ever asked to do this kind of thing for Mike, or else was too polite to be completely frank with her older brother about his appearance. On being pressed, she did venture the opinion that the jacket would look fine if the tie had a bit more red in it (or some such stuff which means very little to me), which I interpreted as code, that most people seeing me would probably be overcome by nausea in the street. So I wore my suit, instead, profoundly grateful that I could actually button up the waistband of the trousers that I haven’t worn for some months.

I am the kind of person who has to memorise what combinations of clothes I am allowed to wear together, because I can’t work it out for myself. I’m not sure what you call that kind of a person. A man, probably.

Bereavement involves quite a lot of just sitting around. Some of it is waiting for phone calls or for things to happen. Some of it is telling stories, or the story, of the loved one and their passing, over and over again, making it your own, fixing it in memories so that it will never be lost. Most of it is just being with the other people around you, so that you are together for each other in your sorrow.

So between the intervals of just sitting around, there is a lot of spare time. On the first day of NaNoWriMo, I’m determined I am going to make a start on Dark Messiah. I sit down with my iBook and the words begin, with some initial reluctance, to flow. By the time the evening meal is ready, I’ve clocked up 3,393 words.

I’m mighty pleased with this beginning. At this rate it will be a doddle. Too bad that for the next 29 days I will probably have to work, and there won’t be all those empty spaces of spare time between the sitting around.