Cycling the Length of Britain - It's like a Saga Holiday but without the bus

Last September I cycled from Land's End to John o' Groats.  The longer ago I did it, the more unreal it seems.  As I recall, I didn't enjoy it much at the time, at least I didn't enjoy the cycling part.  It was more of a war of attrition 'don't waste time turning your neck to look at things at the side of the road' mile-crunching how-far-till-the-next-hotel-a-thon.  I often think it's one of those things where it's more about the satisfaction of having done it, than it is about the actual doing.

I wrote about the trip here.

And this is the bunch of total strangers I did it with...

I have to say though, the parts aside from the cycling were great, helped no end by the lovely group of fellow cyclists who I met on the trip, none of whom I knew in advance.  Many of them were decades older than me, but they were all deceptively young looking and generally much fitter and faster cyclists than I was.  Some of them were English but there were also Canadians and Americans as well as a Frenchman, a Malaysian, someone from Scotland, and worst of all some people from Lancashire... That last line is meant to be a joke...sort of.

Actually Land's End to John o' Groats was pretty easy.  I just followed this massive purple line

As well as being thrown together for 17 or 18 days with 17 or 18 people I'd never met, I also got randomly allocated a room-mate who I'd never met as well.  I could have paid extra to have a single room, but I was prepared to play twin room roulette in order to save a bit of money.  I got lucky.  I got paired with Erwan, a man who I assumed was from his name was Welsh but who turned out to be Malaysian.  He was a 5th year medical student at the time, and he wasn't just riding with us, he was studying us as well.  As part of some research he was doing into what happens to old people on long and exhausting cycle trips where they eat mountains of fat and fall off their bikes into nettles and crash into walls.  He must have thought he'd signed up for a Saga Holiday.  I ended up sharing a room with him because I was the next youngest in age, even though I was twice as old as him.

Hey! Look what I won in the room-mate Lottery

Throughout the trip Erwan would have to weigh us all and pinch bits of us with callipers and measure the circumference of parts of us with a tape measure.  All in the name of research.  Most people lost fat during the trip, I was the anomaly.  I put fat on.  This can easily be explained by the number of apple pies, Victoria Sponges, scones, cooked breakfasts, Boost bars, biscuits and other 5 meals a day that I ate.  I didn't eat because I was hungry.  It was 'just in case' eating.  I ate out of fear, fear of running out of energy.  I tried and failed to eat a range of energy bars too, but they were either like the stuff you hang in a budgie cage, too dry to swallow, or they were so chewy you couldn't detach the part you were trying to eat, it would envelope you like a lasso as you tried to bite a bit off.

Hey! This apple pie isn't fattening enough.  Can I please have a teapot full of double cream to pour over it?

I'd like to think that before the trip I made an honest assessment of my strengths and weaknesses.  Strengths: strong legs and ability to ride a bike.  Weaknesses: No sense of direction or ability to read maps and with a brain that has a tendency to go to scrambled eggs when I'm tired.  For me the planning of the trip alone would have been a headache I didn't need, so I paid Chris Ellison of CTC Holidays to take all the stress out of the equation.  And for me it worked.  It was great value for money too.

Thanks to Chris I made it to John o' Groats.  Without his help I would probably have gone the wrong way and ridden into the sea somewhere in Cornwall

Some people I know who've done the journey before me preferred to slog it out solo, getting up at 5 in the morning and doing 120 miles a day and carrying their own luggage and living on nuts and berries, but not me.  I did it the easiest way possible and still I mostly didn't enjoy it.

I may have fallen out of love with cycling, but I'm still capable of eating 7 meals a day

Anyway, last week I went to meet up with Erwan again, to do a reunion bike ride.  He lives in Aberdeen and I live in Wakefield, so we decided to meet on the Isle of Arran.

I've cycled round the island once before but it didn't go too well.  Amongst other things I got slightly electrocuted.  I've been told by people who are very keen on semantics that I didn't get electrocuted at all, as this often results in death or at the very least serious injury, and all I got was a small electric shock.  But electrocuted sounds better.

When I was 7 I wrote a story called 'Martian Maroons' about some people who were marooned on Mars, and my teacher crossed out the title and called it 'Marooned on Mars' and I went mental.  She said there was no such thing as a Maroon.  I said yes there is, it's someone who's been marooned, and I also told her 'Marooned on Mars' was a shit title that even a 7 year old would be embarrassed by.  Actually I made the last part up, but I was just making the point that language isn't just about meaning, it's also about creativity and how things sound, and that's why I love certain words and phrases.  Because they sound good.  And although I always try to write with the truth, sometimes I'll just pick a word or phrase because I like how it sounds.  This is not a test, I'm doing this for fun!  We only learn to read and write when we're 5 and up till then language is entirely aural anyway.  If language wasn't about sound Peter Kay would never be able to make a living.  Repeating 'Garlic Bread' over and over is only funny because he's from Bolton.  If he sounded like the Queen he wouldn't have an act.  But I digress....

Which way are we going again?

The Isle of Arran has a road round the outside and to do a full circuit of the island is 56 miles.  I thought this was a good distance to do with Erwan as it wasn't far off the length of one of our Lejog days, it's just that it's going round in circles rather than in a line.

No purple line this time!  We followed this red one instead

There's a saying that you can't jump into the same river twice.  I don't think you can ride round the same island twice either.  The wind was blowing in the opposite direction to last time I did it, and all the bits that were hard last time were easy, and all the bits that were easy last time were hard.

Choice is Hell

On a long day's bike ride, it's tiring to have to think, to have to make choices.  Even choices about where to stop and what to eat.  On the trip we did last September, all choices were taken care of by Chris.  A Garmin on your handlebars with a little purple line to show you the way, a pack of notes in your pocket with all the food stops on, so you knew where you were stopping and when.

In September I even started ordering the same thing in every cafe, so I wouldn't have to waste time choosing.

Meeting Erwan this week, having to think for ourselves, even choosing when to stop and what to eat was a pain.  Also, our day of riding round Arran was less mileage than almost any day on the Lejog, but yet we still managed to be out until nearly 7.  Most days on Lejog we were finished and eating biscuits by 5.

Some of the extra time it took was because we had no-one to give us the hurry-up.  We spent quite a bit of time setting up Erwan's tripod to take some pictures of us with Pladda and Ailsa Craig in the background.  Not sure Chris would have approved.  With hindsight it's probably a good thing he was keeping an eye on the time for us every day on Lejog, otherwise we could have had some very late nights.

Is this a good enough place for this scenic shot or do we need to move the tripod 100 metres to the left?

Erwan and I finished our reunion ride with some Pot Noodles.  Erwan cracked an egg into his after amazingly dropping all 6 eggs on the floor without breaking any of them.  And then we went out for some unnecessary burgers...

These binoculars are rubbish - I can't see a thing....

Earlier in the day I'd had some fruit and yoghurt, and coffee.  And a full Scottish, and some Whisky cake at Lochranza Distillery, and some cullen skink and chips at the Lagg Hotel, and half a Snickers, and a Picnic and a Boost bar and a big bag of Cheese and Onion McCoys.  And so after my burger I laid down on my bed with a full stomach and aching legs and passed out.... Just like last year.

This time I was in a slow group of One...

It was strange for the two of us to be together, but without the rest of the group from last year.  And it made me think of them all.

When I look back now at that picture of us all at Land's End, those people who hardly knew each other, I think about what we went through together, and how much we'd bonded by the time we reached John o' Groats.

Here's a picture Ray took at JoG.  Which came out better than the one taken by the man there who supposedly takes pictures for a living

We didn't all have the same stories, we didn't all ride together, but we were riding all those same roads on the same days, and eating all those meals at the same hotels.  Very rarely on the actual ride last year did I ride with Erwan, but so often in the evenings we would stay up late wasting valuable sleep time laughing about our very different days.

And so last week, despite the absence of everyone else, Erwan and I once again sat up remembering the funny bits of our trip.  In the absence of being able to reassemble the whole gang again from Canada and America and various parts of the UK, this was good enough.

This time we only spent one day riding a bike, and eating ourselves stupid and then lying around our twin bedroom hardly able to move with leg knack, but it made us reflect on how amazing it was that  we managed to do this for 17 days in a row last year.  This year one day in a row seemed enough.

Abington Motorway Service Station - quite far down the list of best hotels on the trip

On Wednesday on my journey back from Arran, just before I got stuck in a massive traffic jam, I stopped at the services at Abington in Scotland.  Which gave me some further reminiscences.  And not good ones.  Abington I think was the worst day and night of Lejog.  We got the World's worst custard at the Abington Hotel and Cathy got offered an omelette as the veggie option and then the next day we had to take laminated tickets into the motorway service station to get our breakfasts.  Sitting in the traffic for several hours on the M74 was only marginally worse than cycling up National Cycle Route 74 in the opposite direction last year, when the surface was so bad the whole day that all my teeth nearly fell out.

Here's Erwan and me on the cobbles

But if that evoked a bad memory, I had some much better ones on Sunday when I went to Haworth, and I spent some more time on the cobbled street that I had been in such a rush to ride up and not look at in September last year.

Chris is just about to break it to us that we have to cycle over some massive hills before we can go to bed

On that occasion all I saw were a few cobbles and the outside of Emma's Cafe.

Better get a move on!  The clock is running!

It was lovely to go back there this Sunday with Joy and spend a very different day eating cakes and pancakes from different cafes, and visiting the Bronte Parsonage Museum, where I saw the actual desk where the Bronte sisters wrote their novels...

This time I wasn't in such a rush to get up those cobbles

We also went on an unexpected steam train ride to Oxenhope and back, which was great except the steam engine almost shattered my eardrums by blowing out some steam right next to my head.

Who knew that Haworth had steam trains?

It makes you realise how many places you miss when you go on a trip where the point is just to get to the end.  So many lovely places we stopped in only for long enough to eat a toasted sandwich, like Haworth or Ludlow or Ironbridge.  And so many other places we didn't stop in at all, and so I don't even remember their names.  Probably hundreds of places that you could easily spend a week's holiday in each.  But on Lejog you don't get the opportunity to immerse yourself fully in the places you visit, you have to keep moving and you can't hold on to things.  All you get are snapshots.  It's a metaphor for life!    

But sometimes in life you do get the chance to go back, and take a bit more time, and see what you missed and I did this week.  

And since last year's trip, as well as Haworth and Abington, I've been to Huddersfield and Carlisle and some other places that crossed the route we did last year, and each time I'm glad.  Glad that I did it, but also a bit glad that I'm not in the middle of doing it all again.  

The World Snooker Championships - It's Political Correctness gone Missing in Action

The World Snooker Championship is on at the moment in Sheffield.  Although I'm still quite interested in it these days, my interest is as nothing compared to how I used to feel about it in the 80s.  It helped that there were only 3 channels on TV then, and two of them had the news on and the other one had either Laurel and Hardy re-runs or westerns on, so a big sporting event was a really big deal.  To illustrate how little worth watching there was on, I used to even watch the boat race in those days.

Weren't glasses mental in the 80s?

And I remember watching the snooker being a big family thing in the 80s.  A family consisting of me, my mum, step dad Terry and my brother Phil.  We didn't spend a lot of real quality time together, but we always enjoyed shouting at the telly together during the snooker.

There are lots of pointless things in life, and shouting at the telly is just one of them.  No need to tell me it has no effect whatsoever.  I know this because we always shouted the loudest for Jimmy White, always willing him to win it, although he never did, and we always shouted for Steve Davis to lose, and that didn't work either.

Hey Phil, it's only taken us 30 years to make it to the snooker!  Happy Birthday! And to me too!

One of the few times Steve Davis did lose was in the famous 1985 black ball final against Dennis Taylor.  That one seemed to finish around 2 in the morning, and by the end it wasn't so much edge of the seat stuff, we'd all abandoned the sofa hours earlier, and we were on our hands and knees on the floor screaming at the telly.  And we were all desperate for Dennis Taylor to win, which he did.  Along with Botham at Headingley in 1981 and England vs Germany in the semi final at Italia 90, this might be up there in my top 3 most memorable sporting events I've ever seen.

After about 20 years of relative apathy, in recent years I got back into watching the snooker again, mostly because it was something I could do with my mum.  As her legs and lungs didn't really work for about the last 10 years, sitting and watching TV together was one of our main activities.  And because she was capable of hating certain sportsmen just because she didn't like the expression on their faces when they were concentrating, or because they did a fist pump to the crowd when they won, it gave us something to talk about too.  And when Phil and I used to watch it with her, and listening to her often quite arbitrary reasons for hating and loving certain players, we always said we should really get tickets and go to the Crucible to see it for real.  But we never did.

You can't tell, but we're both really annoyed in this picture at having to share 50 pence

I think that was why after she died in November, I thought it would be a good idea to buy Phil Crucible tickets for his birthday in December, so that we could finally do that thing we said we always would.  By some absolute fluke, the tickets I bought for him were for the day before my birthday in April, so if I got him to take me with him, it was like my present too.  This seemed appropriate to me, because when we were children, we would always get 50 pence sellotaped to the inside of a birthday card from my grandma, and she would always write 'Don't forget to share it with your brother'.  And we used to go mental trying to explain to mum that we shouldn't have to share our birthday money, but we always had to, because that was what grandma wanted.

Unfortunately, the two matches we were scheduled to see at the Crucible on Monday night were so one-sided that they were finished within an hour of the start, so we thought we might get very little for my money, but then they decided to wheel out some former stars to do a bit of 'entertainment'.

Look who we met at the snooker... Actually it just felt like we did

And that was where the evening started to get very strange indeed.  A so-called exhibition match started between Ken Doherty and Stephen Hendry and out came Dennis Taylor to commentate, the first time ever I'd seen him in real life, 30 years almost since I was screaming through the TV screen for him to beat Steve Davis.

And it was as if Phil and I had got in a time machine and gone back to the mid-80s to watch an episode of 'The Comedians'.  Ken and Dennis started cracking jokes and one-liners the likes of which haven't been seen on TV since the days of Bernard Manning.  Mick and Paddy jokes, and jokes about the Chinese and a few borderline homophobic remarks, and of course many of the audience were lapping this up, the big wide blokes with tattooed heads who we'd seen necking pints in the bar were delighted and started shouting out unfunny and drunken things to get their own piece of the action.

And the Chinese people who were there, who may have been relatives of the Chinese players or the Chinese referee didn't seem to know what to make of it.  And you could tell we were no longer going out live on the BBC, or they'd have been shut down.

And some of Ken's and Dennis's act was in parts quite 'entertaining' but it also left me quite glad that we've moved on from laughing at racial stereotypes, and people who are gay.

I found out this week that Terry died in 1999.  We lost touch with him in about 1990 when he and my mum split up.  He was in a bad way then, so in a way I'm surprised he lasted another decade.  Lots of things went wrong for him during the 80s, and as the decade went on, he just kept drinking more and more to try and deal with it until his life went out of control.  Just after mum died, Phil and I were wondering if he was still alive, and if he was, whether he would come to the funeral, and that was what prompted me to find out this week.  Although it's a long time ago, because I've only just found out, it's like it only just happened.

I'm not blaming myself for what went wrong in his life, because there were lots of factors at work, but I'm sure living with the 3 of us can't have been easy.  The 3 of us were very close, and I'm sure that was hard to break into and live alongside.  I know, because I've tried it myself, adding myself into an established family of 3, and apart from the not descending into alcoholism part, I'm not sure I was any better at it than him.  At the time of his leaving in 1990, it had become 'him or us'.  I wish things had ended better.  For all of us.  But often things just end, sometimes messily, and we don't control the ending.

Me and my mum - sometimes things just end, often when you're not expecting it

Thinking back now to that evening shouting at the telly in 1985, it's strange to know that two of the three people I watched it with are now dead.  And it's a vulnerable feeling.  When I see Phil now, I talk to him sometimes about how there are entire passages of my life that, aside from my own memories, he is the only living witness to.  Stories from the past that I would talk endlessly to my mum about, he is now the only link to.

I was reading a book recently about mental health, and it said in there that the thing we're all most afraid of is the obliteration of the self, that the person we are will one day be completely lost.    One day no-one will remember these memories that are so pivotal to my life, not just the 1985 snooker final, but a million other things too, and if no-one can remember things, where will the evidence be that they really happened?  Maybe that's why I write about things, to try not to lose them.

If mum was still alive, I'm pretty sure we would never have got round to going to the Crucible, and that's a weird feeling too, knowing that I was provoked to finally do something by her demise.

It's very easy to simplify things in life and for the sake of narrative to think in terms of heroes and villains, especially when you're young.  It used to be very black and white in the 80s.  Love Dennis Taylor and Jimmy White, hate Steve Davis.

Sorry Steve Davis.  If only I'd been more supportive in the 80s.  You actually seem very nice.

30 years is a long time, and I think in that time, if I've learned nothing else, it's that Steve Davis is a lot more likeable than I thought, and as of Monday, I discovered that Dennis Taylor is a bit less so, and that he needs to move with the times and get some new jokes.

In 1985 I was an arrogant 17 year old who thought he had all the answers.  And sometimes I would talk to Terry with that arrogance and I wasn't above pointing out to him where he was going wrong in life.  I'm 47 now, and having had almost 30 years of being an adult, and trying to manage homes, jobs, relationships etc, I realise now, that being a grown up is much harder than it looks when you're 17.  It's a shame I'll never get to tell him that.

But I have finally solved the age old problem of what to do about mine and Phil's birthdays.  It's always been a struggle to think of what to get each other.  Now I know I just need to buy us both a present for his birthday in December, and we can go and enjoy it together on mine in April.

I think grandma would approve, and I'm sure mum would too.

Sheep Farming for Beginners - The perks of doing voluntary work

Yesterday I was trying to explain to a group of young people what the point of voluntary work is.  It can be a shocking concept to some people the idea of working without getting paid.  Don't get me wrong, I like money as much as the next person, but sometimes it's just not a good enough reason to do things.

I gave up paid work last year, so that I could move back to Leeds.  Mostly this was so I could be some support to my mum, who'd been seriously ill for the last year or so.  Unfortunately, she died in November, and she doesn't need my help any more.  So I thought I'd better find some people who do....

Catching Lambs - easy once you know how

For the last 6 months or so I've been volunteering in Leeds at a charity called St Vincent's Support Centre.  They do lots of things to support people, but one of the main things they do is provide free English classes to speakers of other languages.  And that's the area that I help with.  I've always loved language and English in particular, so I thought I might like to try and explain what I like about it to other people. 

Because I'm sort of an expert in English, what with being a native speaker and all, I thought I'd be really good at this type of work, but what I didn't realise is how hard it can be to pass my knowledge on, especially to people with very little English.

The people I meet are from all over the world.  Some are asylum seekers and refugees, some are here for other reasons.  Some are recent arrivals, and some have been here for ages.  I often ask them how long they've been here, but I don't ask them why they came.  It's none of my business, and there's always the possibility it's not a very happy reason.  Thankfully I don't work border patrol so I didn't have to decide whether they could come in or not, but now they're in, I just try to make them feel welcome in my home town.  

I haven't got the space or the time to write here about all the brilliant people I've met since I started volunteering, but one thing I figured out is that they're saving me a fortune in travelling expenses and airfares.  I've never been to Eritrea, or Sudan, or Syria, or Kurdistan, or Hungary, of the Czech Republic, or Congo, or Cameroon, or Poland, or Argentina, or Brazil or Morocco, or Portugal but I've managed to get a snapshot of what all those countries' people are like, by having them come to me.  I hate airports anyway, all that queuing up in funnels to be strip searched and not being able to carry liquids, and my favourite TV programme is Air Crash Investigation so probably as well I don't fly much.

Matt and Julie - the real stars of the show

What's all this got to do with Sheep Farming, you may ask?  Well, one of the perks of being a volunteer is that I sometimes get invited along on away-days that are organised by the Centre.  In March we went on a guided tour of Malham Cove, and last week I went on a lambing trip to a farm near Horton-in-Ribblesdale.  The trips are organised by Matt and Julie, two managers from the Centre, and it's a privilege to be able to go on them, as well as being great fun.  They're organised in partnership with Judy, a lady who works for another brilliant organisation called People and the Dales.  The farmer we met was called Rodney, and he was our guide and inspiration for the day.  Instead of just telling us stuff, he gave us a much more hands-on role, by taking us out into the fields and getting us to round up and catch some lambs.  

This was so that they could be tagged with an electronic tag in their ears, and have their tails docked, and then they got painted green (just a bit), and got castrated if they were boys.  This sounds pretty nasty but it just seemed to involve having a small elastic band put round their newly born testicles, so that in a couple of weeks they'll just drop off.  No knives were involved.  Some of the lambs looked a bit stressed for a few minutes after having this done, but there seemed to be no lasting damage (if you don't include the lack of future testicles).

I was easily able to outsmart this newborn lamb - I just used my massive human brain.

Lambs are actually pretty easy to catch, especially if they're in a pen that they can't get out of, and if there's a few of you.  I've never caught any before, but I have caught pigeons before in shops I've worked in (that's another story) and I've picked my dog up before and put him in the bath.  Also, I used to play in goals, and although I'm not as good at bending down as I used to be, I do have some basic handling skills.  

The first thing to mention about Rodney was his Jedi-like calmness.  He was the epitome of leading by doing things and being really good at stuff, rather than speaking.  Also, he noticed everything.  One of his greatest assets was the much underrated skill of just paying attention.  He was aware of individual sheep and he noticed whether the new lambs were getting milk or not, or if any of them were not being cared for by their mums, and any that were looking like they needed a bit of extra care were brought inside so he could keep a closer eye on them.  

As far as times and places to be born go, this takes some beating....

At first I didn't understand why he was Baa-ing at them, but when one answered that had fallen down a ditch, and then when a mother went to look for her lamb because he told her to, I started to get it.  He was so in tune with the work he was doing, and so expert at it without being a show-off, there's a lesson there for all of us.  

I thought in advance that a trip to a sheep farm might put me off eating meat, seeing lambs been born, and knowing that in a few months they'd be slaughtered for food, but it didn't.  Maybe it was because of the care with which they were being treated, and I reflected that even if it's a short life, it's still a good life out there in the Dales.  If I had to be born as a sheep, there are worse places for it to happen.  All of us have comparatively short lifespans in any case, that we don't know the when and the where of the ending of, so we're not all that different from sheep anyway.

Here's me trying to impersonate a sheep farmer

The weather certainly helped, in that it was a beautiful day, and we saw the Dales at their best, but the highlight for me had to be delivering a lamb, at the end of the day, just before we got back in the bus.  Rodney offered to let one of us pull the lamb out of its mother, and no-one else volunteered, and I thought 'Why not?, I may never get the chance again'.  It didn't actually need all that much pulling, because it was pretty slimy and it came out easily.  I found I didn't mind the slime, because I was on a high just from being there at a new birth, and when the new lamb tried to walk after only a couple of minutes I really wanted it to succeed, as if it really was my own child, but then like other real-life fathers who've done the easy bit, I went off in a minibus and let the mum get on with bringing it up.

Here's a lamb I made earlier - to be fair the mother and Rodney did most of the work

I think that 'high' has lasted all week, and for a whole week I've told anyone who'll listen about how I delivered a baby lamb.  

Sometimes I feel completely clueless in the classroom when I'm trying to help people learn English (I hesitate to use the term teacher, since I'm not trained as one yet), but I have to remember that Rodney didn't become a Jedi overnight.  He's been sheep farming all his life, it's second nature to him now.  Sometimes I think I'm getting absolutely nowhere in my English classes, especially when I do things like trying to explain English humour to a class of 17 beginners by trying to tell jokes (they were a tough crowd, silence, tumbleweed etc etc) but I figure that currently, despite my regular uselessness, I occasionally touch on absolute brilliance.  

Julie and Brenda standing a really long way in front of the tiny Ribblehead Viaduct.  I often amaze Brenda in the class we teach together with the amount of rubbish I can speak in perfect English.... 

It's only for the briefest of moments, maybe less than 5% of the time, but I hope one day to be brilliant for at least 15% of the time, so I intend to keep going.  A lot of the time in class I feel about as composed as one of those small newborn lambs, who's just been elastic banded, but on the odd occasion when I think I've truly connected with a stranger from a strange land and communicated something worthwhile about my native language, I feel amazing.  And the high I feel then is similar to the high I felt when that lamb popped out last week.  I forget about myself, and all my petty worries and problems, and in that moment I know what I'm here for.  

And so that's the point of voluntary work I think.  Not only are you doing something useful to help others, but sometimes alongside the thing that you're volunteering at, you get other opportunities, and really amazing and accidental things can happen, which make you feel really, really good, and you realise that you're a part of something special.  

Don't look at the Sun - you could die! - How not to watch a Solar Eclipse

I went to look at a solar eclipse today.  Although strictly speaking you're not allowed to look at a solar eclipse because you can go blind.  Anyway, because there was one today and I'm not blind, I must not have really looked at it.

I decided to go to Garforth not to look at it.  Not looking at solar eclipses is pretty memorable (I can still remember where I was when I didn't look at the last one in 1999, ie on a river bank on Teesside).  Because I don't like it much where I live, I decided I didn't want to have to remember it here, but I'm okay with Garforth, so I went there.

Is this Heaven?  - No, it's Craighouse on the Isle of Jura

I wasn't sure exactly when the eclipse was but I thought it would happen around 9.20 am so I walked around randomly either side of that time, trying to keep the sun side on, so that at worst, if I did look at it, I might only lose the sight in one eye.

I'd heard that it was going to be a 90% eclipse, so I was expecting it to go 90% dark, but I hadn't factored in the fact that the other 10% of the sun is still really bright, so it only went a bit dark.

I'm just going behind the Moon for a bit, I won't be long

I saw some schoolchildren and they were all huddled round with their backs to the sun, and they were trying to capture some light from it through pinholes onto pieces of paper.  The kids were all really excited but the teachers seemed more nervous than anything.  They were probably all looking forward to it being over in case they got sued by the parents of some child who'd burned his own eyes out.  

When the sky was at its darkest, I was in a graveyard.  I didn't plan to go there, it was just where my sideways walking led me.  The graveyard is next to Glebelands playing fields where I used to play football when I was a child.  One particular corner of the field, where I used to play regularly, is now full of graves.  I guess the churchyard got full, so they had to expand.  It's a sobering thought, to realise not just how much time has passed since I used to play there, but how many people have died since then, and how many of them are now under my old football pitch.  

I wasn't trying to do it in a voyeuristic way, but I couldn't help look at some of the names on the graves, to see if I recognised anyone.  I didn't find anyone I definitely knew, although I think a dinnerlady from my junior school might have been there, but a lot of the surnames were familiar.  These could have been the mums and dad or the brothers and sisters of people I knew but I wasn't sure.  

I've been getting ready to move house again this week.  I usually like to move around every 11 months.  It keeps me on my toes.  Because I don't want to have to move stuff that I don't use or need, I've been sorting through all my drawers and cupboards this week.  Including looking in some which boxes I don't normally look in, except for on weeks when I'm moving house.  Amongst other things I've been sorting through old photos and papers, including going through the remainder of things I acquired from my mum, when she died last year.  

It can be a jarring process looking through documents and photos which span my entire lifetime, but a real highlight of the week was having another look through my mum's holiday photos.  Many of them were taken on package holidays in the sun that she went on over the years.  If there was a competition for the worst photos ever taken, these would surely win.  They all seem to have been taken in the dark, with thumbs over the lenses, mostly of drunk people with no heads who are very, very far away and who are looking at the camera in the style of a surprised cavemen who is astounded at the novelty of the experience.  Sometimes there is just a dot of a head at the front and the rest is just ocean.  Sometimes there is only ocean.  Even the pictures of my brother's graduation that she took appeared to have been taken in a tunnel at night.  In terms of sheer badness, they are unsurpassed.

In amongst them though I did find a team photo from of a British Army football team which was taken in Seoul in Korea in 1954.  The names of the 11 players are written on the back of the photo, and they all have typical fifties army nicknames like Taffy, Smudge, Spider, Grasshopper and Ginger.  I had to look a few times but I'm pretty sure the one called Ginger is my dad.  I didn't even know till yesterday that my dad ever played football, although I knew he'd been to Korea.  I think he made mashed potato during the Korean War.  I was told recently at a family reunion that I look like him but less Ginger, so I guess I should be glad that didn't make it through the genetic selection process.  

As well as the photos, I also came across my collection of death certificates this week.  So far I've got  ones belonging to a wife, a mum and dad and two grandparents.  If I get any more I'm going to need a bigger envelope.  My two other grandparents had the good manners to die before I was even born, so thankfully that was someone else's admin burden.   

Another person who may or may not be dead is my former alcoholic step dad Terry.  When he was around the age I am now, and shortly after his own brother and dad had died, he said to me that he wasn't afraid of dying, because he knew lots of people that were already on the other side.  I used to think that he wanted to die too, but he didn't have the nerve to commit suicide in one go, so he was just trying to do it in instalments by drinking and smoking himself to death.  

Although I could already relate to what he was saying, because my dad and grandparents were already dead by then, I've got a lot more idea now, because lots of other people I know have died too.  As well as Beverley and my mum, there's Joy who I used to work with at the bank, who was so supportive when Beverley was ill, and who then ended up getting the same thing.  There's Matthew who I used to play rugby with and who I shared a room with in Italy, but who had a faulty heart.  There's also Bob who drove the backup truck to many of my crazy cycling expeditions.... And lots of others, both old and young.

So what has all this got to do with the eclipse?  I don't know, except walking around in a graveyard not looking at the sun during an eclipse is as good a time as any to start idly wondering about the meaning of life.

This is my room at the Jura Hotel

And one of the thoughts I wondered was this:  I wondered if the people we've lost are like the sun during an eclipse.  They're not really gone, they're just hiding round the back of the Moon for a bit.  Like I was when I was behind the Paps of Jura on holiday.  Unfindable by any mobile phone signal in the technological desert of the Jura Hotel, I was still existing but just out of range for a while.

And if so, like the Sun come back from its temporary excursion, will I see them again?  I hope so.  

I'm not too sure what the afterlife will be like, but if, at the end of the big while tunnel that some people get halfway down and then come back, there's a much bigger version of the Jura Hotel where all my dead friends and relatives are staying, I think that would be pretty good.  

I guess I'll find out when I get there....



Postscript - A few months after writing this, I found out that my step dad Terry is also dead. He died in 1999 aged 54.  Eventually he did manage to smoke and drink himself to death.  I wish I'd been a bit more understanding towards him when he was the age I am now.  I didn't agree with the way he handled things, but I could at least have been a bit more sympathetic.  He used to say that I was arrogant when I was 18.  He was probably right.  It's easy when you're 18 to think that you've got all the answers, but in fairness you haven't had to test those answers out against adult life yet.

International Women's Day - Bringing out my Inner Woman (or How Not to Run a 10K)

The last time I ran for 10 kilometres without stopping was 29 years ago.  It was an organised event and I ran it with my friend Fraser Maclennon-Pike somewhere in the North of Leeds.  Probably around Horsforth area where he was living at the time (he lives in Australia now).  We both ran it in our school rugby shirts which didn't work out too well for me, since the shirt should have been handed back to the school a couple of weeks before at the end of term.  By sheer coincidence on the run we ran past our Rugby Master Jim Collard's house, and he spotted me out of his window wearing the shirt and asked me for it back the following Monday.  I might have been wanting to keep it as a souvenir.

Here's me running at top speed in the Park!

At the time of that run I was nearly 18 and from memory I ran the 10K in around 47 minutes, although I no longer have the medal or certificate to prove it.

I'm now almost 47 years old, a fact which astounds me on a regular basis, because being 18 seems like it happened only a couple of weeks ago.  For some reason, this morning when I woke up, my current age seemed even more unbelievable than normal.

I've been running 5K at my local Parkrun pretty regularly since last May (I've done 26 so far), and since I started my PB has dropped by over 11 minutes from almost 36 on my first attempt to under 25 now.

Until recently I thought that 5K was probably as far as I could run in one go, but that was because I usually finish feeling like death, after trying to beat my PB every week.  Anyway, I recently discovered, that if I just slowed down a bit, I could potentially run further.

It's International Women's Day today, and some ladies I know (one in particular, Joy) are running either a Marathon or 10K today in Palma, Mallorca.  Not only that but they're being followed round and filmed on the event by some documentary makers from Channel 5.  I guess Channel 5 must be moving away from its reliance on stories about people who can't leave their house without being winched out through the windows.

Anyway, I can't be there, but I hit upon the idea of coming out in sympathy by running a 10K myself on the same day.  Because I'm not 18 anymore, I thought trying to run 10K in 47 minutes might result in my sudden death, so I thought I'd aim for about an hour.

As I've got to go to a child's birthday party at lunchtime, I thought I'd better start early and go out at 6.30 am.  I planned a route of exactly 10K which would see me finish by running along the drive to Temple Newsam House, and so I was all set.  Except I didn't have anything in for breakfast, so I didn't have any, and then I decided to ignore the route I'd planned and improvise a new one instead.

Around the time I ran my last 10K in 1986, I was studying Italian Unification as part of my History A Level.  Apart from the fact that biscuits were invented during that period in History (See Garibaldi) I only remember one thing from that time, and it was a quotation from Camillo, Count of Cavour which said that 'All plans, all projects are useless, everything depends on an accident'.  He was saying it to suggest that he wasn't unifying Italy on purpose, it was all just happening accidentally.  Well, in the spirit of that, as soon as I started running this morning, I threw my plan out the window and just started running in all directions.

I ran past all my childhood houses (well ages 3 to 22, I don't remember much before 3), including the shop where my dad died and my brother was born, I ran past my first two schools, I ran past Joyce Charlton's house (she's dead now, like my mum) where I watched the 1975 European Cup Final (Bayern Munich 2 Leeds United 0) on a colour TV.  I ran past the tennis courts I used to play on as a teenager, I ran through most of the streets of my paper round, I ran past the Working Mens' Club where the awards night used to be for the football team I played for, and past lots of other places which had childhood memories associated with them.  Then, after I'd done about 3 and a half miles of nostalgia I ran out of Garforth completely, and started following a bridleway in the direction of Cross Gates, where I had my first job, and where I almost got arrested once for being the kingpin in a strategic shoplifting operation (which was only true in a policeman's head, who added 2 and 2 and got 47).

At around the 5 mile or 8 kilometre mark I was blocked from continuing on the bridleway I was running on and diverted into an industrial estate where I got a bit lost for 10 minutes (I don't think this happens on the organised events).  This and the fact that I'd discarded my planned route and already ran around in some extra circles meant I was never going to get to Temple Newsam within 10K.  Just as I was nearing the 10K mark, I managed to stumble out of the industrial estate, and into a retail park, where amongst other things, there was a Sainsbury's and a McDonalds.

I'd planned to run my 10K within an hour, but my Garmin works in miles and I wasn't sure of the exact conversion, so I thought I'd better run at least 6.4 miles to be sure.  6.4 miles and exactly one hour's running took me to McDonald's front door, and as I hadn't had any breakfast (please note Lisa Vercelli, I didn't warm up either, all very bad form) I thought I'd better stop there.

here's what Strava had to say on the matter!

I only really wanted a coffee and some orange juice, but I thought I'd better eat some food in case I fell over later from malnutrition, so after queuing up behind a load of builder men, who didn't look like they were doing anything connected with International Womens' Day, I asked the very pleasant girl behind the counter if she had any of that rubber food that they use to decorate dining tables in Ikea, and she said that luckily they did.  So she gave me some food made of rubber (officially it was called a McMuffin), which in turn reminded me of my racist boss at TSB, who used to regularly act out the following conversation between waiter and customer at a Chinese restaurant:

Customer:  Excuse me waiter, this chicken's rubbery...
Waiter: Oh, thank you velly much...

I used to like playing with those really bouncy little rubber balls when I was younger, and I did think about slamming the McMuffin into the tiled floor to see how high it would bounce, but there was a man mopping the floor and I didn't want to upset him, so I just ate it.

After I'd eaten the rubber food, and drunk my orange juice, I then had to have my coffee to go, so that I could get to Cross Gates station in order to catch the 08:22 train back to Garforth where I'd left my car, so I tried to drink it while walking, out of one of those tops with the hole in, which was a bit burny.

So that's the story of my tribute to International Womens' Day, and in particular to the women who are running either a Marathon or a 10K in Palma today, and it's also the story of my first 10K run for 29 years.

The preparation wasn't ideal, running a flat out 25:22 5K yesterday, and then having no breakfast, and doing it solo and then disregarding the route, and then getting lost in an industrial park, and then finishing at a shop that sells rubber food instead of on the leafy drive of a stately home.

But that's what you get for being a total amateur, which is what I am!  I hope the ladies in Palma not only succeed but also do it with a bit more style!!

I'm not even the best writer in my own family - and this is why

It was my mum's funeral yesterday.  I read out a eulogy during the service which took me about 97 hours to write and which took around 7 minutes to read out.  On the whole I thought it was pretty good, but my brother had done his just before me, and I thought his was better.

I've always been proud of my brother, and in many ways I wish I was more like him, but I've never been more proud of him than I have in the last two weeks since mum died.  The way he's helped me to organise the funeral arrangements without any fuss, and always with a sense of perspective but also a sense of fun.

But if there's ever been a high point in terms of how proud I feel of him it was during that 7-10 minutes yesterday when he spoke about my mum at her funeral.  I don't think it's even possible to describe how proud I was seeing him do what he did.  And it wasn't just hearing him speak, it was the words too.

He's given me permission to guest publish his words on here, because I thought they were so good that other people should be able to read them.  Anyway, this is what he said.  It won't be as good written down, but it's good enough.

Early Memories of Mum

Being mum's shopping partner and helping her make decisions (something she was terrible at).

Sometimes on Garforth Main Street, sometimes Leeds.

I must of spent at least a complete month of my life in the two chemists on Main Street looking and helping to choose hair dyes - I could tell you the exact location and layout of these sections of both shops and the little loops of hair that I'd run my finger back and forth along for what seemed like an eternity.

'I liked this one but I thought it was Auburn but it says it's chestnut and I don't want chestnut'.

So I'd find one 'This one's Auburn'

'No I don't like that'

'Which of these two ash blondes is the most ash blonde?'

I should of said 'Mum, I'm 6 I have no idea what that even means' but I remained patient in the hope she'd take me to Sparks Hardware shop and buy me a screw driver.

Mum's bag was always full of bits of wallpaper, fabric, cushion covers, curtains, tiles, flooring, bits of wood...whatever she was trying to match at the time for the latest decorating project.

'Does this go with this, do these match, which of these nets do you like the best?'  I'd often pick wrong and she'd say 'I don't think I like that one' and we'd have to start over.

The reward would always be some low end cafe like the 4 Cousins or Athena, endlessly being told not to drink all my milkshake before my food arrived, which I invariably did.

I loved to hold her hand inside her jacket especially the fun furs she had.

We rarely disagreed on anything but by the time I'd reached Junior School the clothes I'd wear were certainly one thing - she eventually caught me hiding clothes in my bag so I could change into them when I got to school.  I know it upset her at the time and I felt terrible about hurting her feelings but it was hardly surprising that her son had become as impossible to buy clothes for as her.

We certainly never disagreed about her clothes or how she looked - she had such style always on a very low budget but never cheap she always looked great especially in her 50s and 60s and dare I say 70s.  In the last photos she was in at the recent family reunion she looked absolutely amazing.

Teenage Years and Terry

Everyone thinks it was so tragic that period of her life because it ended quite unpleasantly.

The stories we'd tell each other from that period were always filled with laughter.

The way he would sound like he was dying when asked what he wanted from the fish shop - 'I'll just have half a fish'.

His food never being hot enough and him microwaving it to death - her shouting 'Terry, you're going to crucify it!'.

Him calling her petal even when she was super mad with him.

When he was clearly starting to lose it and he put a block of frozen peas in the deep fat fryer and he couldn't work out how they had disappeared from the basket.

Towards the end of those days when she took him out for his birthday and he tripped and ended up rolling down a hill near the Old George - mum saying one minute he was there the next gone, I just heard him say 'Petal, me legs av gone'.  

Later life

After me and Jonathan had left home and moved away we sometimes didn't see each other for months at a time and rarely until more recent times were the three of us together - we all had busy lives - but it didn't alter how close we were, she would always be my first call with any news, good or bad.

When we did catch up often it would be after a holiday.  I loved to look at her photos, photos that have given us such tremendous comfort these last few weeks - I loved them because they were so often so bad, out of focus, people photographed when they weren't expecting it, heads chopped off, people not exactly looking at their best sometimes, but always loads with people laughing - she always made new friends on holiday and she was always blessed to have good friends to go away with over the years.

I know coming to Greece where me and Liz got married was huge for her, being included and getting to know our friends made it extra special, especially Brucie who was like a third son fussing around her and making her laugh so much.

I guess the next big event is the hardest for me to share with you - just saying the word Grandma - take a breath.

Before she became too ill she used to look after him once a week - Jack could get her to do anything, he'd get her to look for things under the sofa even though she knew she'd struggle to get back up, he even got her to open the ultra messy moon clay that we'd banned him from opening - they both ended up completely covered.

I honestly believe that without him she couldn't of come through some of her illnesses - she lit up as soon as he walked in the room.

Not being able to watch him grow up and talk to her about him will be the hardest part for me but I cherish the memories of them together and their last phone call could not of been more perfect.  Jack said 'I love you' and she said 'I love you back' and Jack ended it by saying 'You're my sweetheart'.  I'd like to think those words and his little smiling face were what she thought of as she departed.

Illness

No doubt she was hounded with illness in her final years but we were still able to find laughter no matter how dark the subject.

We all three of us made fun of the cancer / stroke / knees etc.

Death

What today would be like

Who would come and what would they wear

What possessions we would be having off her.

She even told a great story about how she had slipped over outside when we had the last really heavy snow and how because she couldn't bend her knees she was like a big tortoise on its back trapped in the snow and how she'd laid there for a bit imagining the news headline of being found dead outside just feet from home - but having not done her hair and make up found the strength to drag herself back indoors.

She went as she would of wanted - on great form, in high spirits, looking good, enjoying life and able to spend time with friends and family - if living longer would of meant going back to those darker times none of us would of wanted that.

Finally throughout my life the overwhelming feeling of being loved and cared for and her caring about anything and anyone that was important to me.  We always hugged and we were never embarrassed to say I love you.  I still feel her love every bit as much even though she has passed and I know I always will.  Love you Mum.


There's really nothing I need to add.  I was really pleased yesterday that I got the chance to share my own memories of mum, but a concern during this week was that we might be squashed for time as the crematorium services are by nature quite short, and between us we knew we could only speak for a maximum of around 15 minutes.  At one point during the week, when Phil read me a draft of what he was going to say, I told him he could have the whole 15 minutes if he wanted.  I was so impressed with what he said, that if only he had spoken on behalf of the two of us, it would have been enough.  But in the event we shared the time out 50 / 50 and I think that's right.  Above all, we wanted to do justice to our mum through our words and I think we did.  Funerals are strange because you can't rehearse them, and you can't go back and do them again if you foul them up.  You get one chance and one chance only, and so you have to feel at the end of them that you've done your very best for the person who you're saying goodbye to.  And knowing that we managed to do that between us is a huge weight off our shoulders.  Anything less really wouldn't have been good enough.

Another quick point is that we had to sack the guy who we'd initially asked to conduct the service for us with less than 48 hours to go before the funeral because separately Phil and I were absolutely appalled at what he'd written about mum.  He'd shown absolutely no understanding of the message we were trying to get across, and it would have been a travesty to let him anywhere near the service after that.  By some fluke or miracle or act of grace we managed to get Rev. Joanna Seabourne to do the service for us at the last minute, and she did it exactly as we wanted, and much more in keeping with the spirit of mum.  And we're incredibly grateful to her for stepping in, and dragging us back from the brink of disaster at the 11th hour.  Thank you Joanna.

Look at what you could have won - Memories of Bullseye and of my mum whose funeral it was today

Considering that my mum only died 2 weeks ago, it might sound wrong that I've spent so much of the last two weeks with my brother Phil laughing and telling each other funny stories, but hopefully somewhere in there is a clue to what it was like to be part of our family.

You've probably seen the gameshow Bullseye. People used to win some Tungsten darts and 30 quid if they were lucky, and then they'd also win some other stuff like a food mixer and an iron, and they could gamble them at the end to win a speedboat that they couldn't tow because they didn't have a car, but Jim Bowen would always say, about the darts and the 30 quid. That's safe.

And 'that's safe' was mine and mum's favourite catchphrase.

If I was passing her her disabled badge to put away, she'd say that's safe, or if she was passing me some tomatoes to put in the fridge, I'd say, they're safe. To us it was funny every time.

I've been using her car for the last year. Last time I borrowed it, she said to me. Jonathan, you know how I always come to the window to wave to you when you leave, and you know how you always wave back. Yes, I said. Well, I'm not waving to you, I'm waving to my car.

I've always hated decorating, and I think it's because I saw so much of it as a child. I'd get home from school on the 19th December and I'd think 'Great 2 weeks off school', and I'd walk in the house, and she'd be up some ladders wallpapering. And I'd say Mum what the hell are you doing, it's 6 days before Christmas? And she'd say are you blind? What does it look like I'm doing. And I'd say, but mum why? And she'd say she wanted it to be nice for Christmas, and I'd say why no-ones coming, it's just the 3 of us, and she'd say, well it'll be nice for us.

Mum was always very particular about her appearance, and she seemed to be fascinated by shoes. When Phil was still in a pushchair, she used to call him the Road Runner, because whenever she'd stop to look at shoes, he'd get out of the pushchair and run off. I only wish I'd thought of it.

Mum could spend days trying to make her mind up, even about the most trivial of choices. She'd generally like the first pair of shoes that she saw when she was out shopping but then she'd go to 20 other shops to see what else was available and then go back at the end of the day for the ones she'd liked first, which of course had sold out by then.

Trying to order a meal in a restaurant with her was torture. She could never decide what to have. Even when recently I was only taking her out for fish and chips, and pretty much all they sell are fish and chips, she'd say, oh I don't know Jonathan, mushy peas or no mushy peas, it's such a big decision. Whatever she did end up ordering, she wished she'd ordered something else, or she'd think what you were having looked nicer.

Ever since I can remember mum lied about her age. I once pointed out to her, when I was 7, with nothing but primary school maths to go on, that she was lying about her age by at least 6 years.

Shut up Jonathan, she said. In our family Shut up Jonathan was actually a term of affection.

She was always sensitive about getting old though. A few years ago, I once suggested to her that she start going down to the day care centre to get a hot meal once a day.

The day care centre, have you lost your mind? It's full of old people. I'm not ready to join the blue rinse brigade yet Jonathan, most of the people who go there look like upturned bogbrushes, with their little white perms. No thanks.

I don't think I ever saw her with a grey hair her whole life. When she had a stroke a few years, what upset her the most aside from not being able to drive, was not being able to see properly to do her own hair and make up. She wouldn't even go to the hospital without putting her face on.

Mum loved a bargain. She loved finding stuff in the sale or from charity shops. Anything she bought for herself, she'd say 'I thought I'd treat myself'.

The last thing she bought me was a Jasper Conran shirt from a charity shop, I thought about wearing it today, but I think she'd be annoyed if I didn't wear a suit.

The first time she used her blue badge, it saved us £3.50 on parking, and as we pulled into the disabled space, she actually shouted 'Back of the net!'.

I know she'd be appalled that we've spent some of her money on a perfectly good coffin that's just going to be incinerated in about half an hour. What a waste of money, she'd say.

It sometimes occurred to me that she never listened to a word I said. I could spend 40 minutes talking to her, and I'd think 'she hasn't heard a bloody word I've said there', and then two weeks later I'd speak to Phil, only to find out that she'd repeated the story to him word for word.

It's not that she didn't listen, it's just that we couldn't always tell she was listening.

As she might say, she didn't like to make a song and dance about things. I remember telling her I'd passed my exams at school, and she'd say something like that's nice. And so I told her again, just to make sure, and she'd say I heard you the first time, no need to go on about it. No-one likes a show off.

Sometimes when she was talking, her stories could be hard to follow, a bit like mine, she could ramble on a bit and listening to her stories could be quite frustrating.

The day she got her cancer diagnosis I took her to the hospital and that evening she had to ring Phil. The conversation went a little like this. Hi Phil, well my appointment was at Ten , we got there 10 minutes early, but we couldn't get a parking space, all disabled bays were full, eventually we got parked just after 10, the young nurse who checked us in, she's from Barnsley you know, she drives to Leeds every day, it's costing her a fortune in petrol....and I was thinking. For God's sake Mum, just tell him you've got cancer.

A couple of weeks ago I had to ring Phil myself from A&E to tell him mum had died suddenly. It was really playing on my mind, that I didn't want to drag it out in the way that she might have. I didn't quite say. 'Hi Phil, it's Jonathan, mum's dead' but it wasn't far off. I actually felt absurdly pleased for saying it without much of a build up.

Although there's never a good time for your mum to die, the last 7 months I've spent with her since I moved back to Leeds has been one of the best times I've ever had with her.

In the last few weeks before she died, I used to go round for tea a lot, and our current gameshow of choice was Pointless.

It's quite appropriate that we used to watch Pointless, because most of our conversations were pretty pointless. But they were that lovely playful pointlessness that happen between people who love each other, where the content doesn't really matter, all that matters is that you're talking and laughing and spending time together.

We'd talk rubbish to each other about people we saw on TV, like what the hell is he wearing? Why would you wear an orange T-shirt on a gameshow, he's going to be seen by millions, why didn't he wear a shirt? Even if he turned up wearing that, surely they've got a wardrobe department that would have made him wear a shirt. Oh my God, he's got no teeth either, he's only 36, surely he could get himself some teeth on the NHS?

There was very little that happened to us in our lives, that we couldn't laugh about. In fact, some of the grimmest episodes of our lives gave us some of our favourite stories. I think the way the three of us told each other stories was the very best thing about being in our family.

So I hope you'll continue to remember mum, like I will, in the stories that you tell. I'm sure you'll have plenty of your own. And if you can't think of anything funny to put in them, try harder. Because with my mum there was a funny side to almost everything. Just being alive is so absurd at times, that if you can't think of anything else to laugh at, just laugh at that.

We always did.