Sales

In the absence of much else to do, I took the train into town (well, as near to town as Bristol's main station takes you) to look at a few shops.

I was not born yesterday so I went to the main shopping area, called Cabot Circus (I call it Carboot Circus, which I think is no less silly), in the knowledge that there would be few if any real bargains.  How right I was.

If there were bargains, they were snapped up by the 'I must have this' brigade at 5.00 am on Boxing Day morning.  There was nothing I could see that resembled anything like a bargain.

I went in a couple of stores and although there were signs like 'Everything 50% off', items were still horrendously expensive.  Or maybe it's because my wages have stood still since the mid 2000s - well, that's not true: in actual terms, minus overtime and plus huge increases in pension contributions, they are much lower - and everything else has gone up?

Either way, I kept thinking to myself: I can't afford this and anyway it's no better than the old stuff I've got under the bed.

It's slightly depressing, in the literal sense of the word, to be amongst people who DO have the money to buy stuff, or at least appear to have it.  But as I looked closely, most folk seemed to be shuffling round just looking at things.  There were few staggering under the weight of their purchases.

By Primark, where we do a lot of our shopping, it was a very different story.  It looked rammed and the pavements groaned with shoppers buying at the basement end.  And I got to thinking.

I consider myself to be at the lower end of the squeezed middle.  We neither of us earn large sums despite working hard (thus dispelling the Cameron myth of supporting those who "work hard and want to get on" - no, he doesn't give a shit about us) and things get tighter.  I'm wearing cheaper shoes and much older clothes.  I replace not for stylistic reasons but because I have to.  I buy the cheapest 'name' brands because they last longer than the cheap non named brands when the water gets in the bottom of the old ones.

I can't talk about what I do - I'd be sacked in this free country of ours - but I work hard for ever reducing 'reward' and I wonder, sometimes, why I bother.

Those at the top, from their elite private schools and affluent lifestyles, know nothing about us, the riff raff of the proletariat who struggle by on what they would regard as chicken feed.

I would love to visit my brothers in Vancouver, play golf at some nice courses, buy some nice things just now and then, maybe even go out for a meal at somewhere better than Frankie and Bennys (and that's bloody dear by our standards).

It doesn't help that I am horribly depressed, lurching from one mood swing to the next, but this awful government, enabled by Nick Clegg and his gutless, self-interested party, makes me feel a failure and I think they are rather enjoying it.

Death was final

When someone dies, people often offer their prayers by means of offering the their kindness and support, even those who don't pray.

And non religious people like me wish that the deceased should rest in peace.

I don't pray for anyone because I am pretty sure it's no more than talking to an imaginary friend.  If belief in a god brings comfort to the bereaved, who am I to argue, even if it doesn't make it real?

I wasn't with my mum when she died and I was half the world away when my dad died, but I was with my step dad.

I had the call from his Residential Care Home that he was dying and I'd better hot foot it.

I arrived and he was, obviously, in bed. He was breathing but life was drifting away.

As the moment got near, the guy who ran the home told me it was imminent and did I want to be there?  At first, I said I didn't and I stood in the next room, but I suddenly realised I had to be there.

Shortly after I went back into the room and I heard his final breath, his heart stopped beating and he was dead.  Nothing else changed.  He wasn't moving before he died and I am pretty sure he was in such a deep sleep he wouldn't even be dreaming.

Of course, I felt sad for a while.  This was, after all, the man who came along and made my mum's life worth living for a good few years but then he got struck down with Parkinsons, the most evil disease, and it took away everything that made his life worthwhile.

I watched his final years with a mixture of sadness and despair.  There was nothing positive to say about what the illness did to him.

I loved him but I hated what old age and illness had done to him.

So when that final day came along I was almost ready.

When he died, there was no spiritual feeling, no signs that he was passing into another world; just the end.  I didn't pray, didn't even think of praying.  Here was a god who could kill millions by way of floods, famines and plagues but he couldn't do anything to preserve my stepdad's dignity or make his final days more bearable.

Death was final.

Unanswered questions

Most, if not all, of my older relatives are dead.

My mum died in 1999, my dad in 2011.  My stepdad died many years ago, too.

One of my granddads died before I was even born and my remaining granddad and grandmas have all long departed.

I had an Uncle and Auntie in Rotterdam but I fell out with them when my uncle didn't give a fuck that my mum, his sister, had died.

There might be cousins and other distant relatives out there but I am not going to spend my remaining years trying to find them.  They've never been interested in me before, nor me them.  So let it be.

I was close to my mum.

Neeltje 'Elly' Verburg was born in Rotterdam and met my father Anthony Johansen sometime in the 1950s, presumably when he was visiting the city on some merchant navy ship on which he was serving.  They married - don't know when, don't care - and she came to live in England.

I am guessing they were still a couple when I popped along but I have no memory of him living at our house.

I vaguely remember seeing him occasionally, presumably on leave from said merchant navy, although I can't be certain I'm not remembering seeing sepia-coloured photos of us together.

My mum was not the best educated person in the world but she was streetwise.  We lived together in the marital home, except it wasn't, for many years.  She knew no one save the people she met through work (she always worked, never once went to seek benefits) and my father's parents who lived a mile away.

I went to theirs after school where they fed me until mum collected me and we'd walk home.  She worked in town, massive 10 hour days for little more than poverty money, and her whole life was little more than work, bring me up as best she could and sleep.  It was no life at all.

Meanwhile, my dad sailed the high seas until the late sixties when he never came back.

We kept in touch by way of airmail letters, although I had little interest in his stories and he plainly had no interest in anything I did.  I thought. I was already mind-reading.  

As the years went by, he became more someone who lived in Canada.

My life drifted along aimlessly through school and then to a lifetime dead end job.

Mum couldn't and didn't guide me.  Even as a teenager I was drifting along with no clear idea of where I was headed in life and as an old codger (almost) the song remains the same.

I was happy when she remarried because until her cigarette habit began to wreck her life she was having the time of her life.  I saw her every week and whilst we never once had a serious conversation about anything in real depth, ever, she was a wonderful woman.

My dad came to England every couple of years.  Bearded like all sailors should be with bandy legs and a raucous laugh, he had a glittering career after a mid life relaunch at McGill University whereafter he worked in various high-powered jobs including in the office of the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

He came to see me, he always wrote.  I occasionally wrote back.

My first significant time with dad was in 1975 when I spend three weeks in Saint John New Brusnwick.  He took his young son to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, the Bay of Fundy and his young son took the train to the Niagara Falls, Toronto and Montreal.

Before I knew it, he was 75.

In 2004, I was invited to his party in Ottawa and merrily I flew to be there.

He had remarried, this time to Joy Phillips who would be the love of his life. I had a week with him and oddly I felt for the first time that he was much more than my dad in name.

His 80th birthday followed and I went to that party too.  

I was struck by the change in him since I had been there before.  Mentally, he was still as sharp as a tack, but the ravages of time had caught up with him and he looked ever so slightly frail.

I talked with him on Christmas Day in 2010 and that was the last time. The next day he was admitted to hospital with pneumonia and despite the optimistic prognoses I had from time to time I feared, knew, the worst.  On 28 February 2011, the worst happened.

I cried once when my mum died and that was when I was calling her brother who, it turned out, didn't give a fuck, but when I arrived at Heathrow Airport to fly to my dad's funeral, I cried every time I spoke to someone.  Check in, security, boarding, stewardesses - I was broken.  Why?

I had not prepared myself but there was something worse: there was unfinished business.

I had no unfinished business with my mum.  Of course I loved her but in her latter days she was a physical mess. Stick thin, unable to walk or go out because of the damage smoking had done to her legs and it was not always good to visit her.  She was in residential care too, a nice place but the whole place, inevitably, stunk of piss.

It turned out that my dad, who never told me how much he loved me, or not loudly enough so I heard, loved me a lot.  He adored my family and was incredibly proud of them.

He loved his grandchildren to bits and they loved him.  And it was all gone.

If I could have one dead relative back it would be my dad.  Not because I loved him more than anyone else, but because I never really knew him until late on in his life.

Anyway, he's not coming back and he hasn't survived his own death to go to heaven, so that part of me is gone forever.

It's a strange thing about life that at one time you are the youngest of the brood and another time you are the oldest.

I don't miss my mum and dad every day and I'm not sure if I even think of them every day either.

I wish they were still here to answer the many questions I never got round to asking but now there's no one who can do that.