Can do, might do, do do

Over the decades two people close to me have died of motor neurone disease – horrible deaths. Last night I watched a TV programme about a British scientist suffering from MND and alleviating things with advanced technology. It threw up an important observation.

The scientist spoke to another sufferer, the theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking (Liza Simpson: “The world’s smartest man” – but it’s not that quote.). Hawking advised: “Think about the things you can do, not the things you can’t.”

In infinitely more mundane circumstances I did just that. We’ve had a birthday in the family, whose doesn’t matter. The Plague prevented physical assembly so we Skyped. Nothing new about that, we’ve family-Skyped – three times a week – for several months now.

But you can’t just say we’ll have a good chat and expect it to happen. Fatigue, grumpiness, anxiety to watch qualifying for the Hungarian GP may all undermine that aim. But more often than not someone starts a hare (A metaphorical hare, that is. I’m anti-bloodsports.) and the rest join the chase. Ysabelle and Daniel had just bought a car; they detailed their negotiations and the whole thing became hilarious.

Who’d have thought it? In fact everyone should have done. We’re a family, a group of individuals each with stories to tell. That’s a huge information base for a start. But members of families interact and that multiplies the possibilities n-fold – where n is a large number. Yes we could have got raucous on drink at some watering hole but the hell with that. Instead we created a successful social occasion with what we had.

A trivial achievement compared with the heroic scientist (Peter: The Human Cyborg. Channel 4). But we must all lead our own lives. Consider what you can do. In short, don’t be defeated  

Blest be the ties that bind

Skype is technology (Yawn!), it's all to do with
computers (Boreeng!), it's a cheap way of making
telephone calls (Hey, I'm a skinflint, tell me more.)
Skype puts you where you want to be and is magic

Three times a week the Robinsons foregather virtually, via Skype. Not every member, ‘tis true, but the absentees’ reasons are understood and have our communal blessing. The family is no less a family.

The distances are puny compared with the USA. Newent, Gloucestershire, is only 25 miles from Hereford where VR and I live. Luton, Bedfordshire, on the other side of the country, 64 miles, and Tavistock, way down the south-western peninsula, 207 miles. Anything other than our electronic umbrella would be impractical.

The Tuesday and Thursday Skypes start at 5 pm and may be comparatively short with meals to prepare. But Saturday, at 6 pm, is special, given that drinks are not only allowed but encouraged. Even more so now, since a Grand Project is afoot, of which I may not yet speak.

Skype demands etiquette. When one Skyper talks over another, the system semi-strangles one or both of the voices and I search the sub-screens nervously for signs of a noose. To speak one must first examine other mouths to check whether words are about to burst forth.

VR and I (Little Grannie and Big Grandpa) remain stationary, fixed to our PC’s monitor. Others, freed by the mobility of their smartphones, ramble freely round their residences, as if in the Titanic as it sinks.

The atmosphere is febrile. Gusts of laughter mingle with half-heard insults. Gossip is endemic, though not pandemic. Those who have facts to dispense have a hard time being coherent. All of us hate the present government and near-obscenities are shouted out, never to be heard in layer upon layer of sound.

The affection is always in what we do, rarely in what we say. Family feeling must be implicit not stated. We are separate yet united, invisibly. It is our way.

Big but blank evening

VR and I have been married for a “round” period of years. You’d think I’d remember our first encounter in London since I’d only recently escaped the sexual prison that was the North of England. But with one exception (which I’ll get to) the evening is a blank.

I know we formed a foursome, the other male being my flatmate. VR tells me we went to The Doves, a pub in Hammersmith, west London. But what did we talk about? Did we kiss? I have no idea. At the time VR (then VT) was an SRN (state registered nurse) at Charing Cross Hospital, about 200 yards from the absolute centre of London. Since my conversation – for better or for worse – is to ask questions I’m sure I would have interrogated her about her job. But I recall nothing.

What’s remarkable is that somehow I managed to stumble through those early weeks and we stayed together. I was 25 and my only experience of womanly company consisted of three visits to the cinema with a West Riding girl who grew increasingly puzzled by my flamboyant talk. It was she who suggested we brought this monologue to an end.

VR and I did have one crisis – conveyed by written note – but I don’t think I took it seriously. I conclude this was an expert reaction and yet didn’t realise this at the time.

Here’s the remembrance. My flatmate had use of a van.  VR and I sat on the wooden floor in the back as he drove VR back to her flat. I needed her telephone number but had neither pen nor paper, a shocking admission for a journalist. With an old-fashioned penny piece I scratched the seven-figure number on the van’s interior. Perhaps it’s still there.

The holy estate

Marriage Story is a profoundly witty, Guardian-five-stars movie about a very American couple who get divorced. It has won worldwide applause. I suspect that any couple who saw it, and had been married more than ten years, watched as we did last night, in silence and totally absorbed.

It’s quite long (2hr 16min) and it needs to be since it is intensely detailed yet pacy. The Guardian’s film critic described it as funny but it’s not boffo humour. The laughs come later; yes, you say, that was a wry bit.

Note the title, strange given it’s about divorce. But it makes sense. In splitting up both husband and wife are forced to examine what sort of marriage they had. Relentlessly. What makes this movie terrific is it’s the marriage all of us married folk have. Chances are we may have been lucky to escape divorce, a terrible experience as the movie makes clear. No marriage is end-to-end unalloyed bliss. Or, if it is, then someone is being quiet about the periods of disagreement they endured. For marriage includes delusions.

The plot is too complex to summarise here. But it’s ingeniously contrived to provide both sides with a sequence of dilemmas that cannot be resolved. There is blame and unblame but, make no mistake, you care passionately about this couple. And their eight-year-old Henry.

The wife is played by Scarlet Johansson, whom I’ve always admired. Her facial expressions alone miraculously express the ups and downs of being wife, mother and a talent. Adam Driver, new to me, is yin to Johansson’s yang. Surely, you say, this is what marriage is like behind the scenes. We love each other but are often simultaneously at odds. I know that and so do you. Be honest, as the movie is.

Evolution

Two photos of grandson Zach: Trying on a fireman's helmet at Newent's world-famous onion fair; about to score a try at a rugby game last weekend. Almost a decade has elapsed between the two.

Ten years ago I was Zach's grandpa (Big Grandpa), taking him to the bakery in St-Jean-de-la-Blacquerie and encouraging him to say Bonjour. Now I am wallpaper to his world as computers and playing sport - swimming, soccer, cricket, ski-ing and rugby (where he plays scrum-half) - have absorbed him.

This is as it should be. At Zach's present age I had absolutely no interest in adults other than they were random, inexplicable and a source of fairly mild punishment. I doubt I distinguished between my adult relations and, say, giraffes. Let them be. And to be frank, there is no attraction in my attempting to hang on to the periphery of Zach's newer being. Instead I look forward - possibly! - to the sort of relationship I have with my two other grandchildren, both much older than Zach. Ties based on spirited conversation. That's if I'm spared, as my Grannie (another old person) used to say.

Zach is doing me great service. One of the unpublicised aspects of getting old is a growing risk of becoming a bore. On the whole young people just aren't interested in those who are forever looking backwards. Nor should they be. The life ahead is infinity. Even worse, I might become sentimental, although that possibility is more likely to make me vomit than Zach.

Time passes as quicksilver. One may entrap memory and dwell on it privately. But if you’re tempted to recycle it for others,  it may profit from a modern context. Moaning just doesn’t cut it. There’s a Latin tag… but I’m damned if I’ll use it.

Hot agar

"Grandad," said Ysabelle, "Would you like an egg, a bun and a sausage-meat patty - in effect an Egg McMuffin - or bacon 'n' egg, or scrambled egg?"

I opted for the former, to show I was a man of the world and knew what an Egg McMuffin was. In the meantime, I scratched the ears of one of Y's two cats she got from the cat refuge, saying to Daniel, her partner, "Let's have the two oldest cats to help them forget the time they spent locked up."

The night before VR and I slept in Y/D's bed because it was the nicest in their house. There'd been chat about the cat-door Daniel had fashioned - through the kitchen wall since through the door was impossible.

Ysabelle, as most will know, is my granddaughter. She lives in Tavistock, way down the south-west peninsula, and this was our first visit to their new house. As a house-warming present I'd bought a lavatory brush complete with bamboo container. This complemented the fridge-freezer which didn't really count as a prezzie since it couldn't be "handed over". Oh, plus a litre of gin and two bottles of pinor noir. From Germany of all places.

A family is like a loosely linked collection of petri-dishes with visiting rights. Every so often we take a trip and check out the bacterial action in a neighbouring dish. There may be a lot or a little. For me I felt rather smug: my earlier judgments and expectations appeared to be confirmed.

Fraternally speaking

Guess who's the brother who does the walking

The doctor's receptionist suggested an appointment date not far ahead; without thinking I reacted aloud: My brother's birthday!

The receptionist's eyebrows rose and I explained. "I need these sort of mnemonics." But it wasn't that at all.

My brother, Sir Hugh, runs a blog mainly about walking as a sport. In my youth I walked a bit, faute de mieux, but then took up golf and ski-ing. Sir Hugh's walks got longer and longer. As physical decreptitude overtook me I adopted less demanding activities but Sir Hugh - no less decrepit in certain functions - continued to walk.

You might have thought I nourish a sort of mutual sympathy for Sir Hugh, given he's my only brother now. If I do it doesn't show. Instead I read his blog and use it as a sedentary man's punch-bag, belabouring him with lengthy comments, usually of a critical and/or hortatory nature. This is slightly strange. Since school teachers did very little for me I'm appalled that in Sir Hugh's case I set up as a teacher.

Sir Hugh is remarkably tolerant. He either rides with the punch or admits to being ignorant about what I am trying to do. He also misunderstands other things I say and has made me realise what a powerful tool misunderstanding can be in dialogues.

Frankly I'm ashamed. I'd promise to reform if I thought I could hack it. Silence seems the only sure option but it is also a nuclear option. Instead I intend to recycle some handwritten notes I recently unearthed – my speech at Sir Hugh’s wedding. Since I was in the USA at the time, the speech was given by our late brother Nick. I’ve often wondered how that panned out.

Meanwhile I’m five words short of my limit.

Grannie S

Tone Deaf rarely gets commissions but Colette challenges me to write about my Grannie Stringer, seen here at my wedding - from left: Nick my late brother, Mum, Brother Sir Hugh, Me (The blotted-out face is another story), VR, Grannie S, VR's late sister Diane, Dad. The ghostly face near VR is her Dad, Vic.

Grannie lived to be 96. Here's VERSE I posted in January 2011 to emphasise her great age. And here's another telling detail (June 2011):

Pungent and earthy Vim was a grey powder which came in a cardboard tube. Add water and you could grind lacquered stains off aluminium pans. Perfect for my Gran who loved elbow-grease jobs.

Eventually Grannie came to live with Mum and was present when the first non-BBC, commercial TV channel was opened in Britain. She never lost her marbles but looked confused when we switched off. She'd been trying to work the commercials into the drama we'd been watching.

Grannie was middle-class and never worked for a living. She compensated by devoting herself to domestic drudgery, eschewing labour-saving devices. A giant hand-powered mangle occupied a quarter of her kitchen.

I teased her continuously about her language and her repetitive anecdotes. Strangely she liked this. She died as she had lived. Insisted on cleaning the outdoor cellar steps in January, caught a cold and succumbed, her only concern being that she would meet her pre-deceased husband in heaven, a terrifying authority figure who once caned me for clumsiness. Me, I vowed to steer clear of that sort of heaven

Grown-up talk

When do you finally become an adult? For me it happened yesterday, early evening, as we sipped a glass or two on the patio.

VR said, "Got a call from the GP (General practitioner, otherwise family doctor). Says she couldn't ever do what I asked, couldn't ever bring herself to pull the plug."

Not surprising really.The Hippocratic Oath would forbid it. One daughter refused outright, didn't even want to talk about it. That left me, and the talk lapsed half-heartedly into the definition of certain words.

We're both in our eighties. Death is an out-of-forcus view of the horizon; each waking morning someone tweaks the binoculars and things get a bit clearer. We're organising "a lasting power of attorney", more particularly, who does what when either or both is unable to speak for ourselves - as to whether the plug should be pulled.

VR has a horror of resuscitation when everything points in the other direction. She's had personal experience, made even more poignant in that she wasn't there in person when the decision had to be taken. On the patio I bugger up the discussion making provisos, but it's not an occasion for exactitude, more for understanding and sympathy. I'll try and do better next time.

In Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Death arrives for the Knight who delays the inevitable by offering to play Death at chess. The Knight discusses a clever move with a friend only to find he's been talking to Death. It comes down to this: an ounce of intelligent foresight may outweigh a tsunami of blubbering.

Being adult, in fact. Music may help but I may be wrong.

Nick: Finale

No fault of Nick's, the two awful middle names were rarely used

Emotion has no place when writing about emotion.

It was the same old grind with my piece for Nick's funeral. One word then another, acknowledging that any, or all, might be deleted or replaced. Nouns and verbs preferred to adjectives and adverbs. Jargon words peculiar to these occasions (eg, "condolences") avoided. The aim being to re-establish the ideas behind the jargon and cause them to live again. Clarity beats vagueness but it's harder to write.

Revision was never-ending, practising the stuff aloud within the five-minute limit. Describing myself I replaced "journalist" with "hack" for reasons I don't understand.

I could have used boffo anecdotes. I included two very mild jokes and sensed a response. But parts of Nick's life were troubled and even tragic and had left scars. This was no time to resurrect these matters or make fun. I mentioned a poignant moment and referred to Nick as complex. Hoping the evident goodwill would arrive with an ounce of sympathy. It did.

Emotion overcame me during the final sentence and I started to strangle. Ironically the words weren't mine but by Nick's best friend, living in Australia, paying tribute to the awful burden of support borne by Nick's elder daughter, Kate.

I gargled, was surprised, then appalled. Then thought: why not?

THE HYMN. The organist was a pro and played at a fast clip; no rests between the lines. I was dry from speaking but sang loudly and confidently if not resonantly. The man in the pew in front of me was huge and immobile; a wall of Jericho, perhaps?

Saying goodbye

Funerals take ages in the UK. Nick died on January 9, the formalities are on January 29. I've re-written my piece a dozen times. Reducing it from 8 minutes to 5 minutes initially, latterly turning written prose into speech.

Some call this a eulogy but not I. That word has an earlier specific meaning and is best kept for a recently dead tyrant whose remaining victims still can't quite believe the bastard is actually dead. Nick was a good guy but complex. He deserves my best winnowing.

Once mourners wore black. For various reasons, some legitimate, some specious, this now tends to be the exception. However I'll be speaking in the north which I left for ever in 1959.Things might be different. I have bought black slacks and a black polo-neck to go with black shoes and black socks. Over which a very dark coloured tweed jacket. As a concession to modernity I have not had my hair cut. In another age I might have been typed as bohemian.

There'll be only one communal piece of music, the hymn For Those in Peril on the Sea. Britain is not a churchgoing nation and Brits en masse sing badly: muttering, modulating when forced a couple of tones higher, starting slow and getting slower. I discussed this with V and we did a couple of run-throughs, V singing harmonies against my straight line. V laughed, "You know the hymn well enough to stay in tune."

Should I sing properly or mutter with the rest? "It's your brother," said V meaningfully.

The four-hour drive will skirt Birmingham, England's second biggest city. Occasional Speeder will be my back-up driver. Will those tired, possibly over-rehearsed, words match my aims? Nick, I’m sure, would prefer to be out on the Bay.

Scrapbook day

For complex reasons VR's birthday falls on a diet day and the celebrations are muted as we hang around, feeling the cold invade our bodies deprived of calories. I buy her a bonsai plus a Beatrix Potter owl pendant which I (brilliantly) imagine can be draped round the branches in decoration. But VR says the pendant is "good enough to wear" and I have mixed feelings about that. Instructions accompanying the bonsai suggest the mini-tree will be a demanding companion and we might as well have had a baby (I jest). Seamus Heaney's poetic translation of Aeneid VI represents a less equivocal prezzie.

I reflect on times since 1959, mostly repeats, I fear.

• In London, that year, we both have Thursday off. We take the Metropolitan Line westwards, get off and walk to Amersham. Misty October, the month Britain does incomparably. Decades later I recall the day’s tactility and write a SONNET. Not my best but heartfelt.

• Evening omelettes in Soho. Beyond the restaurant window a lady of the night disappears and reappears, plying her trade. We watch detachedly, unembarrassed by each other.

• Delivery room, Charing Cross hospital, London. I hold VR's hand but heat and an incautious midnight hamburger combine to make me queasy and I'm sent to the viewing window. A nurse says, "It's a girl".

• California: finalising a book for publication (It's about valves.). I drive a hired Dodge Charger between redwoods worried we're running out of gas.

• Linden Crescent, Kingston-upon-Thames, our first owned house, December. The plumber’s finished and switches on the new central heating. To Hell with open fires.

• Anytime. VR makes Eggs Mornay.

• Along the Loire Valley, France, in the newly acquired Scirocco. Beethoven’s Andante Favori playing from a cassette. View and music in harmony.

• Anytime. Me writing, VR fiddling with the Hudl.

Keeping in touch

With granddaughter who became Professional Bleeder

With the dead I attach less importance to dates (those artificial milestones) and more to chance reflection on the dead's living influence. That way there's the rest of the year to play with.

My mother's birthday I remember was August 11 but August this year passed without my marking it. For what it's worth she would have been 110, a meaningless factoid. This morning I woke, vaguely aware - as on many other mornings - of my debt to her. Wondering whether I qualified as a dutiful son.

I have my doubts but I did at least write. Here's part of a letter from Philadelphia, ca. 1968

Dear Mum, I note your suggestion of jewellery for Christmas. By the time I received your letter I had made the supreme effort and bought everybody's gifts. I use the words "supreme effort" not as they apply to the act of buying, but to the act of packaging. All my love and devotion to my parents goes into the business of wrapping my gifts safely. It's an evening's work and involves the use of about £1 worth of paper, string and sticky paper tape. As a matter of fact, even more love and devotion goes into the packaging of the Folkestone parcel (ie, to VR's family). This is usually bigger... Yours is fairly utilitarian I'm afraid but I do know you use one and this one's a little gayer. Father's is experimental. We'll see.

NOTES. Secure packing and insurance were essential for UK-bound parcels; otherwise they were routinely stolen in New York. I have no idea what the "utilitarian" and "experimental" gifts were.

US friends, appalled by the RRs’ disinclination to be emotional, would have approved of "love and devotion". But, see, it is repeated and therefore jocular.

The Rs soldier on

Scenes from domestic life 1. Britain’s future may be bleak but the Robinsons have found comfort; unilaterally VR has acquired new toilet brushes (with porcelain holders) for our three WCs. Foolishly when the brushes were last replaced I retained the old (wooden) holders on aesthetic grounds. They proved too tight; extracting a brush required two hands and this promoted hygienic unease. Now I use the toilets in happy anticipation.

Scenes... 2. “What would you like for Thursday dinner?” asks VR. After fifty-six years of shared life I am well aware this invitation has implicit limits. Neither a cassoulet nor a quail stuffed inside a capon stuffed inside a turkey is on offer. “We haven’t had sausages for ages,” I say, slavering slightly. VR nods assent. “With mash and mushy peas,” I add. VR nods again. What I don’t request is onion gravy. With VR that is a heavenly given.

Scenes... 3. Our Languedoc holidays always include a visit to Les Tilleuls, a remote roadside barbecue grill at St Maurice-de-Navecelles; me for the mutton, VR for the duck breasts. The grill imparts a unique flavour because it is fired by sections of old vine trunk, winnowed from the vineyards when the vine’s grape-growing function comes to an end. I buy a characteristically twisted section for €3, imagining it as chintzy decoration at home. “Il faut le gratter,” says the grill man. Gratter is “to scratch”. But will I have the patience?

Scenes... 4. Cosmos seedlings, bought and planted by me (a most reluctant gardener), have flourished in our holiday absence. A magic and always unexpected event when I do it. Yet I still hate gardening.

Risking being sentimental

This year may be the last we share a French villa with grandson, Zach. We've regularly sneaked him out of school in June when villa rentals cost half of those in July and August, when roads are not choked with French holidaymakers and when the temperatures are not so brutal.

Yes, he's missed two weeks' school but his reports have shown him succeeding to the point where frustrated teachers say he does "just enough" to get good ratings when he could, trying harder, be monarch of all he surveys. However, next year is high school and the long miserable grind towards making himself employable. We can't interfere with that.

Sport dominates his life. He swims far better crawl than I do, even does butterfly. Despite his skimpiness he plays rugby as well as soccer (the latter to a high level). He asked to go karting, did so separated from the adults and bearing the stigma of a baby's flag; now he races with the adults. Last year thunder and lightning kept him off the Arbor-Aventure course of high-level transits between conifers; this time he raced round the progressively more difficult routes and repeated the hard final section out of sheer exuberance.

But it isn't all sport. In restaurants he likes to order his own meal in French, sometimes off the à la carte rather than the limited Menu des Enfants. And he accepts VR's suggestions about books worth reading. He asked me if I knew of a certain string quartet he'd heard at school. No, he didn't like their classical music and I'm glad about that. I'd hate to sicken you.

On Thursday VR and I will vote to remain with the EU in a referendum that will influence the UK for decades to come. I dare say Zach will be in our minds as we do.

Needs must when t'devil drives

Yesterday, VR having banged her bum in a comparatively minor accident, asked if I'd hang out the washing. It was sheets and VR has a method which simplifies retrieving them from the line, reducing the risk of their touching the ground. I followed her instructions which ran counter to my normal practice. Late afternoon the sheets were dry and I unpegged them, brought them in, and put them away.

VR had expected to take in the sheets herself. Was pleasantly surprised and said so. Since this wasn't a calculated gesture on my part I was touched.

Age and infirmity modify married life. VR is a good, inventive cook and occasionally invites my suggestion. These days my default is away from elaboration and towards standards: spaghetti, chilli, fish pie, shepherd's pie, stews that last two days. I love these traditional dishes and I'm uneasy about ordering up things that demand much kitchen time. On top of her voracious appetite for books (well over 200 a year) VR has taken to rendering flowers using some weird medium called (I think) water-colour pencils. I'd rather she read and drew instead of chopped onions.

But good cooks are proud and must exercise their skills. Above is a ham terrine* which involved time, effort and imagination. Note the thin decorative slices of carrot and gherkin chevrons below the enfolding jelly. Note the corner cut off by VR for my delectation.

Meanwhile I handle the accounts, work which denies decoration. I also pick up The Guardian. My contributions to domestic ease are humbler and less skilled.

Oh, I forgot. I choose the wine, cool the whites, open the bottles and pour out the glasses. I do this with a certain amount of panache.

* May be a galantine.

Zach - no longer in sight

The Bear Grylls de nos jours

Grandson Zach is nine, going on ten, and now well beyond my abilities.

He is staying with us for a week or so and today attends his second session of Krafti-Monkeys at the community centre. Just what this involves I am unsure. But I do know (via a message he passed first to VR) that in preparing the ham sandwich for his lunchbox I must not use too much butter as I did two days ago.

On an earlier occasion, this time via a message passed to his mother (Occasional Speeder), thence to VR and thence to me, he complained that I added insufficient milk to his breakfast cornflakes.

I tried to engage him yesterday about soccer.  That there was a certain malicious pleasure to be gained from playing in a defensive position, taking the ball away cleanly from a glamour-boy forward and depriving him of a chance of scoring a goal. He listened attentively then gave me to understand - quite politely - he didn't agree with the malice concept.

At lunch yesterday at Wagamama, one of a chain of Japanese fusion restaurants, he ordered his own main course of noodles, chicken and a mess of vegetables plus a special foaming crushed apple drink. I have no idea what these items are called.

During the day he plays a soccer game on VR's laptop. But kicking the ball seems a minor element; mostly he stares at tables of statistics which he must master as the team's manager. I tell him this looks like office work to me and he smiles faintly.

The days of walking him to the boulangerie in St-Jean-de-la-Blaquière are long gone. Soon he’ll be reading Colette aloud to me in French as I maunder at an old folk’s home.

Slouching near new planting bed chez RR

Two separate score cards

It's been a hard two years for our daughter, Occasional Speeder.
But which is 47-year-old OS, which her 24-year-old daughter, Bella?

My personal ratings for Borderlines Film Festival, just finished.

FIVE STARS
Winter Sleep (Turkey). Masterfully deconstructed ego in wild Anatolia
Birdman (USA) Frenzy behind scenes on Broadway. Ambitious, witty
Ida (Poland). Jewish nun explores her Holocaust history. Austere, eloquent.
Phoenix (Germany). Established actress/director partnership; concentration-camp survivor competes with pre-war self.

FOUR STARS
Wild Tales (Argentina). Dark vengeance played out in six hilarious mini-films.
Mr Turner (UK). Three-dimensional, vivid later-years biog of Britain’s greatest painter.
Still Life (UK). Bureaucracy saves souls in SE London. Touching but very English.

THREE STARS
La Maison de la Radio (France). Day in life of French radio channel
Whiplash (USA). Frankenstein gets to teach jazz drumming. Often a bit too OTT.
Foxcatcher (USA), Wealthy madman manipulates wrestling world. True but unreal.
Cycling with Molière (France). Actors become their parts in classic play, Le Misanthrope.
Lourdes (France). Is it or isn’t it a medical miracle?  Fascinating authentic background.
Black Coal, Thin Ice (China). Cops and murderers in hideously ugly but persuasive modern China
Effie Gray (UK). Why art-critic John Ruskin preferred writing.
Inherent Vice (USA). Early druggy/PI Pynchon novel becomes astonishingly coherent movie. Funny.

TWO STARS
Amour Fou (Austria/Germany). Could Jane Austen accommodate a suicide pact? Perhaps not.
The Duke of Burgundy (UK). Excessive lesbian sado-humiliation among lepidopterists. But beautiful.
A Most Wanted Man (UK/USA). Disappointingly flat end to  Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s career in treacherous spy fest.
Before I Go to Sleep (UK). Promising start explores amnesia; distintegrates into blood-boltered whodunnit.

ONE STAR
Enemy (Canada). Much praised, characterless alter-ego tale. Good camera.
Boyhood (USA). Texan rite of passage: sentimental, setbacks mysteriously overcome.
The Clouds of Cils Maria (France/Switzerland). Out-of-control, shapeless, inferior version of Hollywood classic, All About Eve.
Ex Machina (USA). Inarticulate nerd tests robots for signs of AI. The irony is unacknowledged.

Memento Mori

Gothic's not just architecture
Short story: 1193 words
Note: Initial "dialogue" rewritten for greater coherence

“A great fella, a great salesman. Snowballs to Eskimos - he could have sold anything. Anything…”

Without stilettos I feel naked in front of everyone. Though the front row definitely does help. No one's turning round – facing me.

“… even condoms to Catholics.”

Listen to them snigger. But condoms were his kind of joke!

“Good company too. Showed me the ropes up in Newcastle. Now there was a hard city for our products, but he made it fun.”

How much longer is he going to speak? Christ, I’d kill for a cigarette.

“Anyone who makes Newcastle fun is…”

I never asked: why Newcastle? He was often up there. Was there a bit of fluff?  If so she'd never have been a Geordie. He hated northern accents.

“As you know, our leading rep, three years running…”

And didn't he go on about that!

“Promoted to regional manager. Everyone’s choice.”

See, that’s what I don’t understand. His popularity. No one saw through him. No one recognised the lout. But then they’re all the same, I suppose. It takes a lout to know...

“Our condolences to his gorgeous wife, Megan.”

You should know how gorgeous, laddo. The way you stroked my bum as I came in.

MEGAN had hoped to edge away, her palate yearning for a Marlboro. But the funeral director guided her to the chapel exit where a queue had formed. Mainly men, looking ahead, grinning like wolves.

At least the sixtyish man at the front was no threat.  Tailored three-piece, Barbarians tie and white hair carefully combed, he had to be the MD but the name he gave meant nothing to her. A light kiss on the cheek was more in keeping but then he hung on to her hands: squeeze, slacken, squeeze, slacken.

“I blame myself,” the man whispered. “He worked hard. A third year topping the list deserved something extra. The vote was unanimous but perhaps the car… proved too powerful.”

Powerful or not it had been a high spot in his life. He’d insisted they had dinner at that pricey French place in Oxfordshire and they’d touched a-hundred-and-thirty on the M40. She’d been terrified, then resolutely calm. At that speed dying would be like being switched off. No pain.

Next was Emily. They knew each other over the phone and had spoken many times. “I’ll get him to ring you,” Emily had always said, and she did. Emily, well padded and perfumed with Bourjois, hugged her. “When you’re free here, Megan, we’ll sit in my car and talk about him.”

Megan hesitated.

Emily said, “I liked him, too much for my own good. I did what he asked, I was always loyal. But he was unreliable and I knew you were suffering.  If anything still disturbs you, just ask.”

“I’ll need time.”

Should she rake over her old suspicions? - something to think about tomorrow. But now there were all these men. A sorrowing widow could not, of course, fend them off. She would be in their hands – literally – taking their antics at face value.

Yet it was even worse. The dark suits used their dubious grief to embrace her floridly and kiss her lengthily. With three of them processed a muscular tongue from the fourth levered itself between her lips. She had no defence. Marriage had linked her indirectly to salesmanship and tradition forced her to accept this associate role.

Latecomers tried even harder.  Bodies pressed against her, saliva dissolved her lipstick, and her satin blouse pulled away from her black skirt. Thank God for the funeral director, close by, who cleared his throat to discourage the more ambitious excesses.

And who, when the queueing was at an end, propelled her gently back into the chapel to see to her make-up. A thankful repair as she moved out to the Range Rover containing her father, mother and sister, all po-faced.

Her mother lowered the window. “We came, as promised.”

“So I see,” said Megan.

“Any problems? Money?”

“The mortgage was covered by life insurance.”

“How lucky,” said her mother.

“Unlike my choice of partner,” said Megan. “As you’ve often reminded me.”

“I described what I saw. Unhappily it turned out to be the truth.”

“Unhappily?”

Her mother raised the window and her father drove the tall vehicle away at speed.

Although the funeral director was pear-shaped and his trousers formally striped, he had immense dignity. “My dear, it’s all over now. So much bad behaviour but I thought you coped bravely. I’ll drive you back.”

“Mr Crumple, I know it’s sluttish in a new widow but I desperately need a cigarette.”

“Sluttish? Never in this world, my dear. If you don’t mind I’ll join you.”

Megan leant back against the ridiculously elongated car and inhaled for seconds. A month ago she’d tried to give up. Thank God she’d failed. Mr Crumple moved two discreet steps away leaving her to her thoughts. Except she had no thoughts, only an angry vacancy.  And a mild curiosity about Newcastle. Such a long way to go for a night or two of infidelity.

The car park was empty since hers had been the last funeral of the day. Even Mr Crumple had briefly disappeared into the chapel, called there by a functionary. She dropped the cigarette stub on to the tarmac, treading on it with a hardly elevated court shoe which did nothing for her ankles. They’d been the first thing he’d noticed about her at the charity ball four years ago. Conceivably the last thing he remembered as he succumbed to the car’s multi-function steering wheel. Multi-function: his words.

With perfect timing Mr Crumple walked towards her, his face professionally impassive. “My dear, a small matter. I have made no commitment. You may turn the request down without any guilty feelings. You are entitled to your privacy.”

But Megan agreed the request straight away, perhaps to show solidarity with her own gender, perhaps in reaction to that heartless and humiliating queue. As a result the woman slid unshowily into the limousine to share the back seat with Megan. A woman nearing forty, her brown hair arranged in a timeless – no, old-fashioned – style, wearing a suit that wasn’t even sombre, but then not everyone wore dark fabrics at funerals. A woman who said, “I’m gan the railway station. No distance at all. I’ll not speak. You need your quiet.”

Megan nodded, almost to herself. Trust him; he’d not chosen to make the same mistake twice. An older woman, though. That was surprising.

Now Megan felt the need for another Marlboro, this time to be smoked reflectively. Time to dwell on the failure of her marriage. How she’d mistaken his alertness for intelligence and how he, it seemed, had discovered her prettiness and well-shaped figure weren’t enough. A man who had gone for a trophy rather than a wife and who might well be paying a tortuous price for this as the flames presently reduced his earthly remains to ashes.

But, hey, there was a bright side. There’d be none of Mother’s parchment-flesh turkey this Christmas. Or that revolting  “traditional” bread sauce. She could if she wanted make do with a slice of quiche.

In-law incidentals

Vic, Edna and Grannie at the Constitutional club, 
an organisation that ruined many constitutions

In Autumn 1959 I wrote to Vic, VR's Dad, asking if he minded my marrying his daughter. I mentioned I was earning £725 a year (=$1101, CAD1370) which wasn't much. I wish I could have told him I would retire in 1995 on £31,000 (= $47,089, CAD58,567) but he’d have thought I was fibbing.

He wrote me a jolly reply saying he didn't mind. Which was sporting given that, then and thereafter, he was never entirely sure about my means of support. Didn't think journalism was "a real job". Since Vic was a chef and wore a toque in the kitchen, his employment was never in doubt.

Obviously I was not the sort of son-in-law Vic and his wife Ed expected, especially since an earlier contender was entitled to wear a sword on certain occasions. But I was tolerated and, as the years rolled by, my in-laws’ generosity was unstinting.

VR's Grannie, however, genuinely approved of me because of my regional accent. Born in the Midlands, she had one too.

Just recently I heard a new Grannie anecdote. She came to London to meet VR, then a State Registered Nurse, and asked to walk round London's naughty bit, Soho, to see if the Ladies of the Night existed. Pure curiosity. Not only was it true but several LotNs addressed VR as "Nurse" since her work at Charing Cross Hospital, near Soho, involved patching up said ladies.

In the late fifties, the UK was famed for hypocrisy, with Profumo only a year or two away. I liked Grannie, knew something of her hard life, and feel sure her interest was neither prurient nor hypocritical. But I wish VR had told me earlier so I could have teased Grannie. She was up for being teased and teasing back.