Our thoughts on our death bed

I know, not exactly a topic to cheer the soul, but one day it will be us on that bed thinking back over our lives. Of course, the 'death bed' is just a useful metaphor to focus the mind on the end of life and what our assessment of our own lives will be.

It's only in recent years that I've thought about this, but naturally, when more time is behind you than is in front, there appears an urgency as to what needs to be done to make your life count, for it to have been worthwhile and for it to have some value. In writing about the end of life I find that there is a paucity of vocabulary; or at least a real lack of words which are not cliches. The word 'worthwhile' smacks of good deeds; the very words 'good deeds' returning me to the Baptist church I was semi-forced to attend as a child, where a very narrow-minded Sunday school teacher was forever telling the children in her class to do good deeds and worthwhile acts, when what we witnessed weekly from her was cruelty, as she told various children that they were disgusting, that Jesus certainly wouldn't be shining his light on the children who she personally took a dislike to, or, as in one girl's case, was told that she shouldn't be in Sunday school at all as her mother was a ....wait for it....divorcee! Fair enough, times were different in the 1960s and society altogether harsher, but the child being the daughter of a divorcee would carry sufficient stigma as she grew up, without Eileen H. doling out the pitiless treatment. Not quite what Jesus meant by, 'Suffer little children...'

With no real choice then other than to employ these hackneyed words and phrases, it's very interesting to consider what we mean by worthwhile and how we feel we have (or haven't) accomplished or achieved something deserving of the worthwhile stamp.

If you would like to share your views on what you consider a worthwhile life, please do. I have some thoughts about the topic but wouldn't presume to impose them on others.

Just for the record, I am an atheist, but if there were a hell, I know of a certain Sunday school teacher who may well be already there.
        

It's in the Detail

I'm not really interested in where people go on holiday, what car they drive, what sort of house they live in or even what their job is, though to be truthful, I'm much more interested in a person's job than in other aspects of their lives. 

What really arrests my attention is the seemingly trivial details of their lives, the minutiae, if you will. For instance, do you and your family eat breakfast together each morning, all scrubbed and ready for the day? Are the cereal bowls, plates,cups and cutlery all set out the night before? Or does each individual grab what they want, no forward planning involved, and dash out of the door, slice of toast in hand? Who clears up? Who puts the washing in the machine, who takes it out and where does it go to dry? Who irons the clothes and does anyone return them to their owners' wardrobes.Do they put their clothes out ready to slip into the following morning or do they wait until the morning? How many clothes do they own? How many pairs of shoes and handbags? Do people feel any guilt about excesses of clothes, bags or shoes?  Hard to say because  one person's excess may be another's barely adequate.

What people eat is a further source of deep interest to me. If you meet someone you know in the supermarket and they have crisps or chocolate in their trolley, you can guarantee they will, due to embarrassment at having been 'found out' make an excuse as to why the bad foods are in the trolley. So much emphasis is placed on healthy eating nowadays, and obviously the science proves the wisdom of healthy eating, that most people at least claim to eat healthily. So then, where did those sweet wrappers come from, the empty Doritos packet, the ice cream carton? And when do people eat? The women I know are on permanent diets. They skip lunch, but at 4 pm they eat a Crunchie, a Mars bar or a Twix, thereby increasing calorie intake dramatically and defeating the object entirely of the missed lunch.. Do you know anyone who is a secret night eater, that person who gets out of bed in the early hours to munch their way through the contents of the fridge? No, of course you don't because who would confess to this unseemly detail of their life?       

The minutiae of how people spend their money is, to me at least, endlessly fascinating. I have a friend who will spend literally hundreds of pounds on her hair but refuses to buy clothes from anywhere but Primark, except when the sales are in their final stages and there is  at least 70% off. Please be assured that I make no judgement here, none at all. There are some people who will kit themselves out in very expensive clothing when the paint is peeling in their living rooms, the fridge doesn't work and they are defaulting on their mortgage repayments. Again, no judgement.

Fascinating is the way in which people organise their rooms. Late October  November and December, is the best time to see, completely inconspicuously  into people's homes;  homes which you would never otherwise have access to.To pinpoint the time more precisely, it is between 5 and 6 in the afternoon which is best for spying, the reason being that people are coming home from work, school and college and the light goes on, but as yet, the curtains have not been drawn. Perfect to see inside when those inside cannot see you. Walking slowly by is the way to do it, in order to maximise viewing possibilities. Of course, having a dog helps this because in the most unlikely circumstances of anyone spotting you,or even challenging you, you can always blame the dog's need to sniff or do its business. The joy of this is that you can observe people, unobserved, and witness their unobserved behaviour. And for me that is utterly fascinating.

What's in a name?

Many people will recognise this question, and some may know that it comes from Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet. On discovering that Romeo is a Montague, Juliet attempts to convince herself that names are unimportant, as her family, the Capulets, are involved in an 'ancient feud'  with the Montagues.

Despite Juliet's attempts to deny the significance of names, she knows, and so do we, that names are central to a person's identity. I live bang opposite a children's nursery and every day I hear the names of the children. There is an interesting retro choice of names currently. There's a  Mabel, a Martha and an Edith. For the boys, not to be outdone, there's an Arthur, a Humphrey and an Archibald.

Names, like fashion, follow trends and so along with the retro names, there are other very modern names; modern to my ear anyway. Uncertain as to its correct spelling, I notice nevertheless that Diyora attends nursery each day, along with Joshene, whose genders are not apparent, by their names. There are some names which just continue, never fall foul of fashion and in addition succeed in crossing all class boundaries. For girls, the name Sarah fulfils this role. For boys I would suggest that Jack is the one. My father, who was born in November 1918, as The Great War came to a close, was called Jack. In truth. he was christened John, but everybody called him Jack. So congratulations to the Sarahs and the Jacks, whose timelessness and classlessness are unequalled.

As a teacher for thirty years, I can remember when I first started that classes were populated by Dawns, Traceys, Darrens and Waynes. Shockingly, those people will be in their mid thirties now. They are still a way off old age, even middle age, but now that the social commentators are  telling us that fifty is the new  thirty and sixty is the new forty, all very cheering if a little unconvincing, it will be perhaps as much as half a century until those Darrens and Traceys will be occupying  the seats in the old people's homes. But they will be, one day, and it seems odd to my mind that Wayne and Dawn will be occupying the seats as some well-meaning middle class girl or boy, maybe Sarah or Jack, will volunteer to sing on a Wednesday afternoon in a bid to improve their curriculum vitae, in one of the care homes.

Before that though, along will come my generation. There will be Peter, Andrew, Steven, Graham, Roy, John, Colin, Dennis, David and Ian. Their female counterparts will be Mary, Margaret, Susan, Jean, Yvonne, Jacqueline and Valerie. We will oust Edith, Gladys, Rita, Elsie and Evelyn, Albert, Fred, Earnest, Harold and Cyril. They will all have gone to glory and in we'll come, aided by sticks, zimmer-frames or an impatient relative. Then we, in our turn, will be replaced by... well, you get the idea.

Ask any parent how they came to the decision to call their child the name they have attached to him or her and you will, I suspect, receive a huge variety of reasons. That said, it is doubtful that many or even any will say they put no thought at all into their choice. You carry a name with you throughout your life. It is a part of you and though the name you have may suggest your age, it will not wither and wrinkle like the outer-casing, about which we are unable to do very much to prevent. Even Joan Collins and Joan Rivers must know they (both Joans!) are ultimately going to lose the battle they are fighting with such vigour. What's in a name? An awful lot, I'd say.        

     

Time

The other day I tuned in, by chance, to a rather high-brow radio programme in which several philosophers were discussing the concept of time. One philosopher put forward the thesis that there's no such thing as time. I thought about this for a while but couldn't really get a grasp on the idea of time being non-existent. What I am able to get a grip on though, is that time, as I understand it, marked by birthdays, Christmases, fashions, music and improving technology is very much a part of life.

I know this too; the older you get the faster time passes. According to the Bible, we are granted three score and ten years, a mere seventy multiplied by three hundred and sixty five - and that is the number of days due to you - a mere 25,550 days. Terrifying in its brevity! Of course the average lifespan has significantly improved but even so, there are not that many days available to us.

So common place, but nevertheless it bears repeating, that given so few days on this earth, we should value them more than we do. That said, it would be odd and unnatural  to spend our days in a state of gratitude and wonder. Instead it might be an idea to decide what we want to achieve and formulate a plan to work towards that aim.

Whatever the philosophers say as to whether time exists, or what time is, it is an absolute certainty that 'our time is but a shadow' and that it is important that we do something with our time, because it is finite and there's no escaping that. It is  indeed a short trip from the cradle to the grave.

Wigs and Hair

Ever since childhood I have been fascinated by wigs. My first wig was homemade. It consisted of long strands of green wool, crudely held together by a rubber hand and gripped onto my head. I was about nine years old at the time, the late sixties, and forced by my parents to have short hair so that I wouldn't be distracted from my schoolwork. It seems barely credible to me today that they should give that as a reason to have short hair; short hair which I detested.

About a year later, one of my aunts gave me her pony tail attachment. It was dark brown, a good bit darker than my own mid-brown hair, but I didn't mind in the least. The ponytail was gripped securely onto my head. My school beret, turned inside out so as not to reveal the school badge, was strategically placed to hide the rather clumsy join.

Out I went, swishing my ponytail. I was so involved in being a girl with a ponytail that I almost forgot that I was wearing my older brother's coat, which he'd outgrown, the buttons fastening the wrong way.

Where were the wig shops then? I didn't know of any, even in my teens and living in a big city. By then I had grown my hair and there were plenty of other things by then to distract me from my schoolwork, real distractions this time, long hair on me, being the least of their worries. It was long hair on boys that began to worry them greatly. I loved long hair on boys and men. Led Zeppelin, Free, Yes, The Faces, The Small Faces and The Herd - all long-haired and to my mind, brilliant.

There aren't many young men today who have long hair, but there will be again, some time. It's just fashion. It was The Beatles who introduced long hair for men, in the early sixties, causing outrage among the conventional. Looking back it seems ridiculous that The Beatles' hair was classed as long. It just wasn't army short.

I particularly like, on women, long, thick, straight hair, especially dark hair, but I like all colours, apart from some really yellowy blonde hair. I've had lots of different coloured hair, red perhaps for the majority of the time, though currently it's dark brown, I think.

I wish my hair was straighter, though people say to me how lucky I am to have a wave in my hair and how much money they have spent just to get their hair to curl or wave a little. But as numerous people have told me, and as I have told numerous people, you don't want what you've got.  If only there had been hair straighteners when I was younger! It would have saved me loads of time and money spent on sellotape and would have saved me from pain too, removing the sellotape from facial skin.

For a while now I have been looking on the internet at wigs. If only I could have done that in my teens! There are some sensational wigs: full wigs, three quarter wigs, half wigs, hair pieces and extensions. In addition there are clip on fringes in real or artificial hair, just like the wigs, and I have bought three of these. On YouTube there are plenty of instructional videos on fixing them. The prices for all wigs and hair pieces are very reasonable, but I think I prefer the artificial hair as I don't want to think about some poor woman somewhere, having to give her hair away to feed her family.

Tonight I think I will order the three quarter wig that I have had my eye on. But will I be brave enough to wear it, as I was brave enough to wear the pony tail under a beret when I was a child?

   

Sexism - but against men

During  the course of the last few years, or maybe long before, it seems that it is considered perfectly reasonable by most women, to make offensive remarks about men, with absolute impunity. How has this situation come about? My perception is that many women feel that they and their  women friends and colleagues are superior in every way to men, except for brute strength. Men are mocked and derided to such a shocking degree that if for one moment someone attacked women with the same venom, there would be an outcry.

The Nobel prize winner for literature, Doris Lessing, at the start of this new millennium, pointed out that it had somehow become acceptable for the most  stupid and arrogant of women to say the most derogatory, savage and unkind things about the most sensitive, intelligent and kind men. This thought of Lessing's is particularly worthy of contemplation as Lessing for years has been praised for her work in which she argues for women to be treated as and regarded as equal to men. The irony, of course, is that now it seems women are doing exactly what men used to do in saying how useless women are, how their true arena is the domestic one and their only role is to look after men and children. It used to be OK to say how  women were out of their depths driving cars, sitting on boards, being politicians and even going to university. It is certainly not OK now, and rightly so.

Men, it seems, right now, cannot win. If a man doesn't express his emotions he's emotionally retarded. If he does express his emotions, he's weak, pathetic, needs to grow a pair, to man up and to stop being so pathetic. What women want are 'real men'; men with leather tool kits strapped to their chests, chests with no hint of a man-boob who are capable and can fix anything, anywhere. When they get a 'real man' women set about emasculating them. To take as an example people I know in heterosexual relationships, it is the case that the women are the ones who are the bosses. I suspect that is the case in the majority of  these relationships throughout the UK and beyond.



       

Breeding and Feeding

I've been following a programme on television called 'Skint'.It is set in Scunthorpe on a rundown estate. The people the programme focuses on are as you might expect. In some ways I dislike myself for watching these people who have no money, living out their lives, interacting with family and friends, eating, drinking and breeding; which they do at an alarmingly early age. Yes, it's the old cliche, children having children. One girl in particular deeply affected me. She was sixteen and had had her baby daughter taken away from her. The baby-snatchers' as they are known on the estate, are the ones who have taken her baby. - the social workers in other words. This sixteen year old mother dresses as smartly as she can for her court appearance. She reasons that the judge will be persuaded by her smart apparel and will think that if the mother can do herself up nicely then she will  be able to dress her baby well and  so will rule that the sixteen year old mother should be trusted to take care of her baby and the two of them will restart their lives together. It was very hard not to feel sorry for her; really sorry for her.

The main family the programme features are strangely likeable.  There are two adults and seven children living in quite a small house. One of the children is a very young baby. Despite the rows and tensions, which are present in  most families, this family seem to genuinely care about each other.

The patriarch says that after working for more than twenty years at the steel factory which he can see from his house, which shut down and consequently made him redundant, he deserves a hand-out from the state. Nooooo! Not so! The truth is though, that a significant proportion of the population think this way.

If a person needs help from the state then they should have it. But this guy is quite young still, has his health and yet he has no intention of finding a job. It's exactly that attitude that annoys people. It is this sense of entitlement to take that to which you are not entitled that so angers people. This does not mean that you'll be voting for Nigel Farage and his UKIP gang, it just shows that you think taxpayers' money should be reserved for those who can't work.and for those who may not currently be in work but are trying to get a job. That's all.