Veronica - a miscellany

Can't think of an appropriate caption

Veronica’s Dad, Vic, was a chef. I indirectly profited from this.

Although Veronica was far better behaved at social events than I ever am or was, she rarely initiated them. A sort of shyness seemed to overtake her. However, there were exceptions. Long before I abruptly decided to learn singing she took up painting. Private lessons at first then, uncharacteristically, she joined a weekly art group and, even less uncharacteristically, made several long-lasting friendships.

In rootling through her drawers (ie, furniture not underclothes) I came upon her earlier paintings and was astonished at their quality. I’m not into tombstones, etc, but I can’t think of a better way of enhancing her memory than getting them framed.

Since moving from Kingston-upon-Thames to Hereford 26 years ago we’ve attended more funerals than we ever did during the previous years of our marriage. Although one or two of these lugubrious events might be described as successful most were abject failures. Brits simply aren’t prepared for public mourning and are compelled to fall back on banality and/or shrinking silence. And Veronica agreed. There’ll be no funeral service for her. nor for me, although in my case I won’t have the final word.

Veronica had tiny feet. Size 2.5 in actuality but these are rare and she made do with Size 3. Given her comparatively straitened upbringing, she spent quite large sums on her clothes once we were comfortably off. To my secret horror, given my sartorial tendencies match those of the homeless. Even so, there’s one scarlet coat of hers I doubt I’ll ever dispose of.

Although Veronica had a well-developed sense of humour she rarely laughed aloud. This used to worry me as we watched such rib-ticklers as Groundhog Day and Some Like It Hot. Eventually I accepted it as an offshoot of her built-in restraint.

I’ve often said that human encounters have greater potential for delight than the prettiest of sceneries, I look back on my married life and realise this belief requires some qualification. In all my most memorable geographical experiences (San Francisco, Port Underwood in New Zealand, the west coast of Scotland, the Verdon Gorge in France) Veronica has always been with me. I now know her presence was an essential element in these emotional explosions.

There’s lots more but this is becoming an indulgence. Except to point out there’s an intentional omission in all this. A four-letter word that is both over-used and used  inappropriately, especially, I fear, in the USA. Sorry about that. Brits can take it as read.

A fond accretion

You've seen it before; I think it shows we "got on"

I need to write about Veronica but I’m under an obligation. I must strive to be interesting, anything less would be a betrayal; she was an interesting woman. Out with clichés and euphemisms.

First, then, she wasn’t playing cards so she didn’t “pass”. She died. Death notices often stress “peacefully” but in her case a better adverbial descriptor would be “in a remote state”. Her final six months were spent in pain from two long-standing sources, angry that she’d lost the fine edge of her articulacy and unimpressed by what she saw around her at the nursing home – to wit, others sharing her ailment. Uncomplainingly, almost casually, over and over, she told me she wanted to die. Three weeks ago her status became “palliative care”. I tried to visit every day, staying for three hours, keen to know if and when the morphine dosage would be increased. In effect she departed from me several days before I got the phone call but I approved of this drawn curtain.

Hers was a close and comfortable family life, unlike my rackety and ungoverned boyhood. Her scores in class were in the inhuman nineties and Oxbridge (that’s OXford followed by CamBRIDGE) beckoned. Misguided parental control prevented this and she settled for three years qualification as a State Registered Nurse, albeit sixty miles away from the family home. At (adopt a sonorous tone) “one of London’s greatest teaching hospitals.” Scores of 90%-plus continued.

When we met – as part of a foursome – I’d been in London a mere three months, a blissful escapee from Bradford, oop North. As to dating I’d had three evenings out with a progressively disenchanted 20-year-old Yorkshire lass who wore highish heels.

What happened that evening in London is irritatingly blurred. Logically I, a proven failure with the opposite sex, should have been overwhelmed at finding myself buying a G&T for an undeniably beautiful woman. I just can’t re-create those feelings. Veronica has always remained shtum on this and I find it hard to believe I managed to keep wraps on my crass Northern-ness.

Quite soon she took a two-week holiday at home and was trustful enough to give me the address. Naturally I wrote a letter (it’s my default state). It's sixty years ago and all I can remember about her reply is she’d acquired the Only The Lonely LP by Frank Sinatra. True I was a Sinatra fan but did I detect something symbolic in that LP title? Surely that only happens in books

A month later we had a fratch (Look it up.) and she left me a note suggesting we break it off. Surely this must have disturbed me but, no. I merely replied by letter and all was well again. Was I in danger of becoming a character in an epistolary novel? How terribly unfashionable.

Too much about me. What about those moments when she demonstrated forms of wisdom that I demonstrably lacked.

In those days it was traditional to buy one’s wedding dress. Veronica explained that hiring one meant oodles more style and one didn’t then have a useless garment cluttering up the wardrobe. I have to admit it looked fabulous

I did contribute initially in a minor way but it was Veronica who brought up our baby daughter. How did she know all that stuff? About bottles and nappies, quietening fits of crying without resorting to strangulation, knitting bibs, weaselling a free pickled cornichon from the Jewish grocery man by telling him our daughter’s name was spelled the Jewish way.

Finding an inexpensive source of asparagus in Dalston market..

MORE FOLLOWS, Time to create something dull and unhealthy while remembering what meals used to be. Ah, eggs mornay.  

On sharing

My bedside mobile rang at about 2.30 in the morning and the dilemma that has dominated me for the last few months was at an end. A gentle Asian voice told me that Veronica, my wife of 66 years, had died during the night at the nursing home.

A dilemma that many must have shared. Such deaths are often described as “a blessing” and certainly even I – a detester of clichés – surely approved of the fact that she was no longer suffering the cruel torments of dementia. That death was something Veronica had desperately sought before, in another cruel twist, coherent speech was denied her.

Well-meaning people had told me that the suffering person whose hand I held was no longer the woman I had married. But I found this hard to take. Physically, at least, she was that woman. Stripped of the abilities of speech, creative thought, and the essence of motherhood she nevertheless radiated memories of a life we had shared. For the first time I recognised that the phrase “my life” was imprecise, that “our life” was the greater truth. For 66 years we had lived in combination, created a family and done the things that families do. Perversely I tell myself “our life” still endures. For a little while

So, here’s one of those shared memories. A salutary occasion if you like.

We were poverty-stricken when we married. A honeymoon is hardly the right word. I borrowed my mother’s Lambretta scooter and on a chilly early-October morning we left London aiming for the mountains of North Wales. Veronica riding pillion. It didn’t get any warmer.

Mid-afternoon we stopped for fuel at a primitive filling station. An elderly Welsh woman emerged and silently did the necessary. This was long before the credit card era and I dug out a pound note. The woman took the note, pointed to the adjacent house, and said sternly, “Now take your wife in there for a cup of tea before she dies of cold.”

We laughed about this over the tea and scones but only now have I become aware of the greater significance of that event. In marriage one becomes two, a mutual two. And I hadn’t yet recognised my responsibilities. I hope to hell I learned quickly.

Credo (Hey, look up the translation)

Music: in the end the only true division is not between categories (Pop. Classical. Folk. Jazz, und so weiter) but by quality. It's either good or bad and you make the decisions, but it does help if you're moderately well informed

You think I'm a hypocrite, wedded to Schubert, Schumann and all those dead old fogies. Perhaps I am but, in my defence, I offer this:

A concert to celebrate Paul Simon's 75th birthday. The Boxer, a moderately complex tune but backed up by words worth listening to. Simon, perfectly on the beat with quite forcefully vigorous strumming, that lightish voice ensuring we hear everything. Joan Baez, as it were playing second fiddle but with great grace, contributing a sort of descant, thus another view of a "good" song. A second guitarist, presumably doing the bass line, allowed a dozen bars of fascinating variations at the end. No essential difference between The Boxer and Gute Nacht which kicks off the Winterreise song cycle.

An emotional choice? But the mind is at work too.

A belated thank-you

Taken only a few days ago, I thought this
 expression shows- quite vividly - the result
of devoting oneself to language; the face of
one who has never seen a Dr Who episode

Time passes, on balance less beneficially. I'm writing better than ever before but life is at its worst ebb as my other half slides into oblivion. Comment if you wish but please, please, even if you feel inclined, don't sympathise. There is nothing neither you nor I can do to help.

Even though the visit to France (qv) proved to be a brief exception

As with all misery, irony is just around the corner. I've always condemned nostalgia on the grounds that I mistrust the Golden Era way of thinking. That things were better decades ago merely because they occurred in the past. For me the past was left wrapped in a shapeless bundle in my birth city as the future brought with it a growing sequence of happy revelations.

Until three years ago. And now I trawl the earlier years of Tone Deaf, plus its predecessor Works Well, for scraps of comfort.

To find something I've only just recognised: a genuine sense of community.

Some background is necessary. Since age 11 I have written continuously. Thousands of letters to my widest family, articles for newspapers and magazines, reports about my confined existence in the Royal Air Force, speeches to restless audiences, eloquent appeals to US editors that they consider me for employment, amateurish attempts at fiction, a blog, rather more professional attempts at fiction, and, most surprisingly of all, verse.

In all these outpourings, over 79 years, I wrestled with language as – later – I wrestled with singing: in both instances to achieve an individual voice. I was very serious about this, to the point where self-centredness got the upper hand. Understand this:  writers deserve not a shred of understanding. Their burden is self-imposed and the great majority becomes insufferable outside what they write. To some extent truly dedicated plumbers end up in the same hole.

On reflection I find I’ve been remarkably lucky. Blogs invite responses and – lo and behold – I enjoyed my own Golden Era. For a few years it seemed there were others out there in cyberspace, all individual voices, all capable of grasping ideas and expanding them according to the true meaning of conversation. Driven by a desire to enrich rather than to dispute.

To them this belated expression of gratitude. My misery continues but it would have been crass of me, having discovered this phenomenon, not to have publicised it.

Unequivocally good news

The above image could be described as a portable hi-fi system with Anker power source. Certainly it qualifies as portable, the detached control unit (encircled in cable) is a mere 8 cm long (2.25 in. for those living in Trunkasia). But the system's minimality is  at odds with the adjectival phrase "high-fidelity"; good quality sound reproduction tends toward bigness.

And big cost. The Marantz amplifier I use - inter alia - to  increase and improve TV sound cost £500, some 15 years ago.

Nevertheless the little darling you see cost about £50, all told, and  has touched my heart.

VR is not happy in the nursing home. This is understandable and her stress is infectious; I visit her most days and I come away heavily saddened. Maintaining any sense of optimism in our conversation is often impossible. So why not swap words for music?

For tedious reasons assembling this mini-system took more time than I expected (VR refused earphones) and although I had willing permission to use it in the nursing home I was never able to arrange reasonable listening conditions. Today I did. And within three or four minutes of play there was confirmation I was on the right track. One of the patients - quiet yet distracted by her awful malady - pointed at the speaker (ie, the white circle) - and said. "That's the fourth piano concerto." Turning, she added, "Beethoven." and wandered off-stage.

She was right. 

VR seemed at rest, a rare occurrence. She remained silent for the piano concerto (it lasts 34 minutes), a favourite of both of us, Bach's Goldberg Variations  (over an hour), and a handful of English songs by Dame Janet Baker (say ten minutes). No gloomy predictions, no complaints. I emerged into the afternoon rush-hour; maintaining my patience via the car's audio system playing Beethoven's Waldstein piano sonata.

Yeah, music.

Boring old stuff; forget it

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools. — Plato

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. — Pericles

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty - Jefferson

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act - Orwell

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men* to do nothing - Burke. (* and women)

It's time for me to become boring. But first let me make one thing clear: you are entitled to ignore me. By any international standard I am without formal education. I left school at 15 and entered journalism because the prospect entertained me. Forty-four and a half years later I retired as a journalist, having influenced no one.

Just this once, I'd like to modify that view of my life.

This decision is a reaction to what has happened within the last 24 hours in the USA. A country of which I may speak with a tiny bit of authority since I worked there  as a journalist, 1965 - 1972. I was drawn there because I'd read a lot of US authors, admired the skilful way US professionals made movies, and, at heart, I believed the USA was a "good" place because of the way it had helped destroy Fascism in WW2. I enjoyed life there, I learnt a lot, and was able to apply what I learnt when I took to writing novels in retirement.

Along the way I ran a blog, starting in 2008. Less so in in the last two years given that the defects of old age have overtaken my family and reduced its energy capacity.

Perhaps not surprisingly, my blog attracted US readers. Articulate types on the whole. And I noticed from their comments those who said they weren't interested in politics or averted their eyes from reports on what was happening to US government. For them I would point to the quotes above

Within the last few hours Trump appears to be making good on a promise he uttered while campaigning. "Get me in this time and you may never have to vote again." His proposed restriction on mailed-in voting is a first giant step towards doing away with the ballot box. Hitler did something similar but forget about him, think what he did for the German people

To those who prefer to shy away from thinking about impending tyranny, the message is brief: forget about yourselves, death will soon bring an end to your worries. Think about your kids.