Pure Cremation

A few weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, my dad phoned me.

“I’ve seen this thing on the telly,” he opened with — no greeting or small talk, straight to the point. “It’s called pure cremation.”

“Oh, right,” I replied.

“What they do is, when you die, they collect you from your home, burn your body, then send the ashes to your loved ones. No fuss, no service, no nonsense. What do you think?”

I didn’t really know what I thought. I’d been out the night before, getting drunk in a friend’s garden, and had a shocker of a hangover. There was no thinking happening that morning.

“Erm,” I stalled, “well, I suppose I’d need to mull it over a bit.”

“I want you to talk to your brothers and find out what they think.”

“Okay,” I agreed, cautiously. “How are you, anyway?”

He ignored the question, “I want to get it all sorted and paid for and this is the cheapest way of doing it.”

“Right,” I paused. “What do you think about it?”

“I don’t care, I’ll be dead,” he replied bluntly. “Like your grandpa used to say, ‘for all I care, you can dump me on the side of the road.’”

“I see,” another pause. “So what’s new? Aside from pure cremation?”

“Nothing,” he said matter-of-factly, “nothing at all. I’ve done nothing, I’ve been nowhere, I’ve seen nobody.”

“You’ve seen nobody? What about your carers?”

“Well, them I suppose.”

“And has Philip not been round.”

“Yes, he brought me a sandwich.”

“Excellent,” the conversation was stalling already. “Well, I’ll talk to Robert and Matthew then.”

“I know what they’ll say.”

“Oh? What do you think?”

“Rob ’ll say it’s my choice and I can do what I want, and Matt ’ll say he’s against it and I should be buried with your mum. But it’s okay, you can scatter my ashes on her grave and we’ll still be together.”

“I see.” I find ‘I see’ is a good all rounder when you need a response. It’s non-committal, non-confrontational, and it ends a conversation with little fuss. I didn’t see, but I agreed to talk to my brothers and get back. I told him I needed a few days — I rarely speak to my brothers, most of our communication is done by text message and I didn’t think this was an appropriate subject for WhatsApp. Also, I didn’t know how long this hangover was going to last. It was pretty sinister. 

My dad has changed in recent years. I suspect much of the change is to do with his physical health, which has without doubt affected his mental health. He does very little for himself nowadays. Carers tend to him four times a day, there’s a morning visit (too early as far as dad is concerned) when they wake him up and help him to the bathroom before propping him up in bed and leaving. At noon they come back and hoist him out of bed with a contraption that looks like a huge pogo stick, wheel him to the sitting room, and leave him in his chair in front of the television. Someone comes back later to make his dinner and there’s a last visit at about eight o’clock when he is hoisted from his chair and delivered back to bed, again too early in his opinion. He can’t walk on his own, so he spends his life in bed and in his chair. If he needs the loo he has to wait till a carer arrives and in the interim has a couple of bottles on a table next to his chair which he can pee into.

He’s stopped reading and his only vice - whisky - is rationed to two a day, which I understand is watered down after going down a very slippery slope with the booze a few years back. He never leaves the house. From most people’s point of view, it’s a miserable existence so I can appreciate why his mind has wandered to cremation.

Dad was always a thoughtful type. He used to spend a lot of time talking and asking questions; he was genuinely interested in what people had to say. There’s less of that now, and I can’t help but think about a visit I made to him a couple of years ago when he was in hospital, a two and a bit hour journey each way from Manchester to Lytham, when after 45 minutes of awkward chat he said, “You don’t have to stay. You can go if you want.” 

People keep saying he’s given up. I’m not exactly sure what they mean by that, but suspect they think he’s ready to die. As I’ve pointed out to them and him, he’s only 71 years old, he could have twenty years in him yet. Another twenty years of sitting in a chair watching crap TV and peeing in a bottle. 

He doesn’t seem particularly interested in self care, maybe that’s what they mean. Last time I saw him I took him a new jumper as part of a birthday present because the one I’d seen him in the time before was holey and falling off him. I unwrapped it for him. He looked at it and said, “A jumper? Stick it over there with the other four.” Cheers, dad. I then asked him what was going on with his glasses — they only had one arm, which was Sellotaped to the frame, and the bridge was also taped. 

“These are my telly glasses,” he said, oblivious to the fact they were falling apart and precariously balanced on his nose and one ear. 

“Which optician are you with? I’ll find out what the prescription is and we can get you some new ones.” He told me but said he’d not had a test for years, so I said I’d arrange for someone to come to the house and test his eyes. He seemed to think it was a lot of fuss over nothing, but agreed all the same.

He has been eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine for yonks now, but when invited by his doctor to get it he told them he couldn’t get out of the house. They said they’d get the district nurse to deliver it, but months later when I asked, he still hadn’t had the jab and seemed disinterested in following up. He did finally get it, only a week before I had mine.

Several professionals — nurses, doctors, consultants — have said there’s nothing medically wrong with him and he could walk again if only he’d try. He says otherwise. 

Despite what anyone says, there are obviously some things wrong with his body. He broke his hip a few years ago after falling off an office chair and put his back out badly whilst recuperating. He takes warfarin to thin his blood after an earlier deep vein thrombosis which resulted in a pulmonary embolism. He has some arthritis which prevents him from picking things up and he struggles with his phone, and he mentioned a trapped nerve too. 

I’m sure there is an element of fear at play here. He’s fallen several times and been alone on the floor for hours, waiting for help. He has an emergency call necklace now, nevertheless, the last time it happened he fractured his arm. With the potential of that happening, I imagine I would be worried about trying to get out of bed too.

I’m not sure what I can do. To be honest, I’m not sure if there's anything I should do. He’s compos mentis, and he’s resisted any suggestion that he move to sheltered accommodation, preferring (if that’s the right word) to receive help from carers at home. I’d gone to great lengths to find a brilliant place, close to where he lives now, that I thought would be ideal for him to move to. It was a self-contained flat in a building where there were a team of carers on hand round the clock and communal areas — a canteen and a lounge room — where he could meet other people if he so chose. I never imagined him choosing to spend time with a bunch of strangers, but it was all academic anyway when he said, “I’m not moving to Fleetwood, it’s a dump!” I considered highlighting the fact that he wouldn’t be going outside anyway, so it didn’t matter all that much, but thought better of it.

He doesn’t ask for much — apart from the occasional thoughts on funerals — and I don’t think he wants much. When it comes to his birthday or Christmas, he’s quite clear when I ask what if he wants anything in particular as a present: “Whisky. Nothing else. Just whisky. Bells.” I suppose I should have listened to him when I bought him the jumper, which he dismissed.

We’re not especially close, but we talk every now and again on the phone, and I think that suits both of us. People have told me time and again that I should talk to him more often, but I reckon we’ve found our level, an equilibrium of sorts. All I do is make sure he knows that if he needs anything from me he can ask, and every now and again he does, usually on a Sunday morning while I’m grappling with another hangover.

Statistics and Death - the miserable post.

Statistics are funny buggers aren't they? I learned this many years ago when I worked for MORI, the polling and market research agency. I distinctly remember how careful you had to be when presenting your project findings because clients were apt to claim all manner of wild and wonderful things to make interviewee responses suit their product or business plan.

You'll have seen the TV adverts that claim '98% of people said this product made them more beautiful / gave them an IQ of 200 / elongated their whatever...' and then underneath, almost apologetically, in brackets, and tiny letters, you'll see (of eleven people surveyed), there was lots of that at MORI.

You'll forgive me then, I hope, for taking the cavalcade of Coronavirus critics, strutting their stats on social media, with a pinch of salt.

Opinions are like arseholes: everybody's got one, most of them stink, and I'd really rather you didn't push it in my face if it's all the same. For that reason I'm not going to go into where I stand on the plethora of stats coming from every media outlet in the world, suffice it to say I think it's too early to discuss who did what well and who didn't with regard to the pandemic.

The one source I look at regularly, is the Worldometer website's Coronavirus updates. It gives me a way to look at what's happening in each country, compare them and rank them by a number of different factors including number of cases and deaths per million. Still I'm not sure if these are correct figures, I've just read that deaths in the UK have surpassed 40,000 today and yet this website tells me it's less than 35,000. I can't possibly know but by using one source (which I assume is unbiased) it at least gives some continuity.

It's easy to look at these numbers and forget that every integer is a person. The Top of the Pops of which is the worst country this week suddenly becomes rather grim when you take that onboard.

But how else are we supposed to deal with what's happening if we let ourselves get tied up in the reality of every individual case. We'd surely go mad.

When faced with large scale death we must employ coping mechanisms, otherwise how would someone be able to continue living after a war or genocide? How could someone work at an abattoir or be a grave digger?

Statistics become a defence strategy. We can't grieve for everyone.


Yesterday my youngest brother sent me a message to say that our dad had fallen. When you get to his age you don't just fall over, you have a fall. Fall is no longer a verb it becomes a noun. Having a fall is an event when you hit three score years and ten.

I got as much information from him as possible - the who what where when and why protocol - assessed the situation and let my uncle know. I took the decision not to call my dad last night and instead phoned him this morning.  I assumed he'd be fed up of telling the story again, he'd be sore and crotchety, and maybe even a bit embarrassed.

When I called him this morning he seemed in reasonable spirits. His voice sounded feeble but then it always does now. I asked him how it had happened and he told me that the biddies, the elderly woman he pays to clean for him and her ancient mother, had put a square of carpet down to cover a worn patch on the floor, he'd not known it was there, tripped on it and fallen, cracking his knee on the bedside table.

Thankfully my cousin was only a few minutes away as she'd been round to run some errands for him. She waited with him, and got a carer to come to attend who determined there was no need for a hospital visit.

Since then social services have agreed to come in twice a day instead of once, giving my cousin some respite and possibly alleviating the biddies from some of their duties.

My mum died when I was in my mid twenties, and despite having been treated for cancer for the best part of a year, it was a shock. It felt like it happened very quickly. It feels to me now like my dad has given up and is just waiting for his turn. There's no fight or frustration, just acceptance, which I struggle to understand. We've had the conversation about his funeral and whenever I speak to him there's nothing to say. He's stopped reading, he doesn't go out (though I suspect if he wanted to he could) and despite a polite interest in what I'm doing, the conversation has all but stopped.

The speed that my mum went - four days after the final incident - was difficult to deal with but likewise this drawn out affair is tough. I just hope it doesn't happen before the country opens up again, I feel like I should see him again.

Easter Eggs

Quizzes, it seems, are the new thing. This week we have taken part in two in the space of three days, a general knowledge quiz and a music quiz, which turned out to be part general knowledge too for some reason. We signed up to a repeat of the first a week on Wednesday and I've managed to drunkenly volunteer to write and host one myself this coming Thursday. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with mine yet but I think I need to shake it up a bit.

As it's all done over Skype or Zoom or Hangouts I can make it visual so I'm toying with the idea of a round in which either the contestants have to guess which animal I'm pretending to be with kitchen utensils or alternatively I might challenge them to come up with the best animals they can with kitchen utensils and then everyone guesses. It's quite a responsibility.

I originally declined the Thursday quiz mastery because I like to start work at 8.00am during the week but then someone pointed out that this Friday is Good Friday and I won't be working anyway. This left me with nowhere to go and I conceded.

We had three Easter eggs delivered with yesterday's groceries. We've already eaten one and I can't see the other two surviving till next weekend so I'm going to have to order some more from Tesco and just demolish the remaining treats in the meantime.

I always loved Easter as a kid. Every year until I can't remember when, we went as a family to our grandparents, my mum's parents, over in Poulton. Invariably the extended family would gather there too with my mum's brother John & my auntie Elaine, and my cousins Sarah and Peter. My mum's sister Anna would join us too on a rare release from the Epilepsy Society in  Chalfont St Peter, along with her boyfriend Fred in his zip up cardigans and his roll up cigarettes.

Anna, but mostly Fred, loved nothing more than to spend the afternoons over the Easter break in the Thatched House or another of the village pubs, necking pints and getting pissed. In turn the alcohol would diminish the effect of both their medication and they'd come back to the house and proceed to have seizures. Anna's fits were something to behold and quite scary. Not because we were unaccustomed to them as children, we'd grown up knowing all about what happened when someone had an epileptic seizure, but because they were so loud and surprising.

Without any kind of warning Anna's body would completely stiffen, from head to toe, like rigor mortis just without the mort bit. This temporary petrification would often send Anna sliding or falling to the floor where, once made safe, she'd be left until the fit passed. Accompanying the stiffening was a monotonous, and deafening, deep wailing noise. Whether or not she was in pain I couldn't tell you but it was a sound I'll never forget. A haunting sound, and not a spooky haunting, a horrific, tremendous noise that could be heard throughout the house and went straight to your core.

Fred's fits on the other hand were an all together more romantic affair. From an observer's point of view it was like watching someone astrally project. His out of body, and as it happened, out of mind experiences would find him rocking to and fro, often hanging onto something like a door handle or the back of a chair, and gently whistling, unaware of the world around him. Like the wind blowing in through a window that hadn't quite been closed properly.

In both cases, and whether it was the seizure taking it out of them or the pints of beer they'd knocked back beforehand, they'd usually retire to their bedroom and sleep like the dead, not to be seen for hours.

As a child, Easter in Poulton meant chocolate of course, long warm days sitting in the sun as it blazed through the sash windows, and watching boring TV. One of my enduring memories of childhood is in fact, being bored all the time. I'd whine to my parents and be told in no uncertain terms that only boring people get bored, and to read a book.

Grandpa would be up early while Granny slept late when she wasn't working. It wasn't unheard of for her to emerge mid afternoon and then stay up to the small hours reading. The house felt vast, and calm, despite so many people being there at the same time. Clifton House had a way of slowing everyone down.

If we were lucky my grandparent's cleaner Mrs Gray would be there. She lived a few streets away, made marzipan animals, pronounced breakfast as if it was two words - break fast - as if to make a point about its meaning, and had a large round growth next to her nose, the size of a marble. I always wanted to ask about it but never did. I would do now but I was very polite as a child.

She'd occasionally bring her dog Tish round to wait while she was cleaning. Tish was a particularly mean Dalmatian. She'd sit there in her bed in the kitchen or the pantry and growl at anyone that came too close, baring teeth and generally being grumpy. We grew up with Dalmatians - Dylan, Skipper, Dougal and then after I'd left home, Jake - and all of them were delightful compared to Tish.

Dalmatians are known for being friendly, approachable and completely mad. In fact Granny once told me a story about a woman's Dalmatian that had got off its lead in Blackpool, trotted to the end of a pier, and launched itself into the Irish Sea at full tide for no apparent reason.

More exciting than Mrs Gray and her marble sized growth was her husband Mr Gray. Mr Gray had tunnel vision and wore a flat cap. That's all I really remember about him, other than his name being Larry, so why I thought he was more exciting to talk to than Mrs Gray remains a mystery. We would usually only see him if he was passing by along Victoria Road and we were in the garden. His whistle would give him away and we would rush to climb the fence in the corner near the big black gate behind the incinerator.

One Easter when I was maybe ten or eleven years old I asked Granny if she would take me to church because I was curious about it. She agreed and I think was quite pleased that I'd asked her rather than my parents. The fact of the matter is that she was the only person I knew that went to church. We were not a religious family, Granny was no exception, after all she was a woman of science. She loved the old language that was used and picked her churches based on which prayer book they used. St Chad's in the heart of the village used the King James Book of Common Prayer and this was right up Granny's street.

Grandpa was a lapsed Methodist and loved nothing more than poking fun at the pomposity of the church. His father, a mill owner, who was terribly disappointed when Grandpa decided to train as a doctor instead of going into the family business, would have been equally disappointed by his son's love of wine and his daily pre-dinner tipple - the gin mix, made up of one part gin, one part sweet vermouth and two parts dry vermouth, poured into a stemmed glass with no ice and served at room temperature. I learned at an early age that the gin mix wasn't for the feint of heart and would take a layer off the roof of your mouth. It was delicious all the same and the smell of it on a family member's breath is something I associate with my childhood.

Easter Sunday, 1986, Granny and I got up, got dressed and headed into the village, a five minute walk to St Chad's in the centre of Poulton. We walked through the grounds, resplendent in flowering crocuses, purple, yellow and white dotted across the lawns and between the headstones and tomb tables. We passed the door with the skull and cross-bones gravestone in front of it where, local legend has it, a pirate, on the run from the law, once made his way up from Skippool Creek to the church and died in that very doorway. My mother taught me that if you spit in both the eyes of the skull, spin round three times, then knock on the door, the ghost of the pirate would appear. Something she'd learned as a child and probably my Granny before her. Obviously I never tried this for fear of certain death.

(This photograph and another childhood story about the Pirate can be seen here.)

Granny and I got the entrance of the church and went into the cold stone building. We were evidently late as the place was full so we sneaked into a pew at the back, as quietly as possible in the echoing church, so as not to disturb anyone, and took our seats. I was quite disappointed to be so far from the action but still, I was there and I was about to find out what church was all about, and on a special day too - Easter Sunday. 

I was idly flicking through the pages of the prayer book on the shelf waiting for the service to start properly when the congregation rose to their feet and, expecting to sing a hymn or follow in a prayer, we followed suit. Then the strangest thing happened, one by one people started to drift out from the pews and walk towards the back of the church. We stood there watching, confused, as the good people of St Chad's left their seats, gathered up their belongings and filed out into the sunny churchyard.

It was when Granny spotted the vicar heading our way that she got suspicious and collared him. It took just a few words with him for her to work out what had happened and she realised that with Easter being a moveable feast, and this year it being early, Easter Sunday had coincided with British Summer Time starting and she'd forgotten to put the clocks forward the night before. We'd arrived for my special Easter service an hour late and missed the whole bloody thing.

Since then my only experience of church has been weddings, funerals and a tedious debate about fracking at Preston Minster a few years ago.

This year Easter will be spent, much like the previous three weeks, at home. The papers are saying that the lockdown might be lifted by the end of May if, and only if, we the British public stick to the emergency measure and stay at home like good citizens.

The Government, concurrently, are issuing pleas to stay in as the weather improves this week, and thinly veiled threats that the lockdown will become less of a 'we're all in it together so let's do the right thing' affair, and more of a 'you will stay at home or we will set the police on you' type thing.

I suspect, and this is after a brief chat with a police officer this week, that the powers that be have been easing us into what will become a more draconian state until this passes. Taking a society from total freedom to complete lockdown is far more difficult than introducing it in small steps as they have done. We're all used to staying at home now and less likely to balk at the idea of being told to rather than asked to. Anyway, time will tell and I'm not going anywhere any time soon.

The People of Roebuck Lane

I grew up in the countryside on a narrow and windy lane called Roebuck Lane on the edge of Saddleworth. At one end of the lane was the Roebuck Inn, a typical country pub, well known in the eighties for the quality of it's restaurant (sadly not so now) and at the other end was a little shop owned and run by Joan Greenwood. Between the two were ten houses.

Starting at the pub end there was a lady whose name slips my mind but who kept to herself and was kind enough to give us 50p one bonfire night towards food and fireworks; on the other side was an old farmhouse which had been converted into two residences - in one side was Vinny and Mad Mary (so named by my mother for her tendency to feed sliced white bread to the cows in the field behind our houses and the fact that they kept chickens in an old broken down ambulance) and in the other side was Jean, Frank, Christie and Damian.

Next along the lane was a terrace of five houses the first of which I lived in with my brothers Robert and Matthew and our parents Hilary and Howard. We lived at number five. During the time that I lived there I remember three sets of next door neighbours, the first Kevin and his wife Lorraine. Kevin was, I believe, the tour manager for the Grumbleweeds - a comedy and music act. Next to move in were Howard Jones the sign maker and Brenda who shouted a lot at each other and on whose wedding night introduced me to the word bonking through a sign on their front door which read 'Do not disturb - all night bonking in progress.' I think he made the sign himself but I can't be certain. As family tradition dictated they were both given nicknames, Brenda was the poisoned dwarf and Howard was affectionately known as the ferret - but never to their faces...

The Molloys lived there next. Steve was a professional rugby player who played for Featherstone Rovers and Paula was a nurse who according to my youngest brother had a huge arse. They also shouted at each other a lot.

Clara and John lived at number nine with their grown up kids. Clara and Jean from number three, were good friends and I used to go with them and Damian on shopping trips to such wild and adventurous (to a young child) places as the Mosley Mill Shop with it's fascinating aquarium shop full of the biggest and ugliest fish ever to have graced a tank and Ashton Market where Damian and I wandered between the stalls while Jean and Clara shopped and where twenty years previous Brady and Hindley had picked up that poor Kilbride boy and taken him to the moors. For me, through my childish eyes, Ashton Market was not about that, it was about Cornish pasties and my ever growing keyring collection.

Number eleven was an odd one. Brenda lived there with her husband who I only ever knew as China man. They would spend a long time abroad every year and then we would see Brenda and their daughter for a few weeks before they were off again. I might have seen China Man once a year if I was lucky but he was very elusive.

On the other end of our little block of five lived Jimmy and Elaine. Jimmy was known as Mr Angry after a rather unfortunate instance of trespass on my and Damian's part.

Next along the lane was George Groves's farm. He always had a dog tied up in the yard at the front of the house. This dog liked nothing more than barking incessantly and went particularly wild when someone walked past. It was the most terrifying dog I had ever encountered. I used to try sneaking past the farm to avoid the rabid outbursts of this devil creature and woe betide you if the dog wasn't tied up! Grovesy was accused of feeding our dog Dylan rat poison. The poison made Dylan's stomach bleed and cough up blood before he would try to cool down in a bog in one of the fields across the road from our house. We had to have him put down. Grovesy never denied having rat poison on the farm, what he did say was that Dylan must have gone in one of his barns to get it and he shouldn't have been in there in the first place. Whizbang, our cat, was also ill with what we suspected was poison but he recovered. Our next dog Skipper, another Dalmatian but this one with liver colouring rather than black, also died from rat poisoning. Needless to say that we didn't have a great relationship with George Groves and as a young child he was almost demonised in my eyes. It was years until we got another dog and when we did we took great lengths not to let him out of the house without a lead.

Further along the lane was a little stone cottage in the corner of a field. This is where Connie lived. I couldn't begin to start telling you about Connie, all I can remember is that because hers was the nearest house to Joan Greenwood's shop she became know as her near Joan's which over time and with the assistance of Oldhamers' accents morphed into something altogether more unpleasant. Connie tragically adopted the name Hernia Jones and was known as such for ever more.

Finally we follow the lane around the corner and down a dip and reach Joan's shop. A right old treasure chest of goodies and necessities. Sweets of course were there in abundance. Great big jars of chewing nuts and midget gems weighed out and served in little white paper bags. The penny sweets in the glass counter which would make up our traditional 10p mix (an occasional treat for going to Joan's for your parents,) the cans of pop - the ever elusive cherry pepsi which I asked for relentlessly for years and years and she never sold, shandy bass, giant cans of coke the size of a lager can and briefly when i was a teenager, the nasty but fascinating Tab Clear; chocolate bars - Fry's chocolate creme, Terry's Pyramint, Hellas Bars. I don't know why I wasn't the size of a house.

Joan didn't just sell sweets and drinks. Damian's mum used to send him to buy her cigarettes there - something my mum tried with me on a couple of occasions rather unsuccessfully as Joan was not at all happy about selling cigarettes to children. She did though. There was a big bacon slicer in the corner, you could buy potatoes, cleaning products, wine, cat food, fire lighters... The list goes on. Joan had a real community shop. When the lane was cut off by snow in the winter, which it was most years, she stayed open for those brave souls that could make it through the snow drifts (usually us kids) until Holroyd, another local farmer, would dig the lane clear of snow with his tractor. Even when the snow brought power cuts with it she'd be there with candles burning on the counter helping us to get through it and of course flogging us the boxes of household candles that we'd invariably run out of the previous winter.

Joan was in the paper once. The Oldham Evening Chronicle (the chron) ran a story about her shop being robbed. Joan was threatened with a gun which the thieves shot into the ceiling (something I looked for every time I went in there afterwards but never saw) and cleared her till out. I seem to remember that they didn't get very much cash - bad timing on their part. From that day on Joan always peeked through the little glass pane in the door between her house at the back and the shop at the front before she came in to serve anyone.

Roebuck Lane was a good place to grow up - despite the guns, the poison and the scary neighbours - it's a shame that I don't have a reason to go back there any more but I suspect if I did I'd be disappointed so I'm happy to leave it where it is - in my childhood.

The end of a family.

I wrote this on an old diary on 11th March 2003 at 6.35am:

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There are a number of reasons why I stopped writing there but primarily because I was avoiding writing about the events of last summer.

On 4th July 2002 at about 8pm my mum died.

She had been suffering from cancer a second time and despite much treatment - chemotherapy mostly - she didn't make it.

I got a call from my dad whilst I was at Kings Cross station waiting for a train to Leeds to visit Alison. He told me that somehow, during the night, she had turned in bed and her hip had crumbled and broke. At this point nobody knew the seriousness of this and we assumed that she would go to hospital and be fixed up. I asked dad to keep me up to date and went to Leeds. It didn't feel right.

On the Sunday as I was waiting for a cab to take me to Leeds station I got a call from dad again telling me that she was now on morphine. This is when I knew it was going to happen soon. I asked dad what he thought I should do (my train to London was within the hour) and he suggested that I should go to Preston.

I took the train to Preston and dad picked me up and took me to Churchtown (they were living at gran and grandpa's old house in Churchtown whilst renovating Clifton House.)

When I got there I went in to see mum. She was very drowsy from the morphine but still able to talk. I asked her if she was comfortable and she said no. I helped her to sort out her pillows. Every time she moved she was in agony.

She had a catheter as she was bedridden. Nurses came a couple of times a day to clean her and move her to prevent bed sores. Every time she moved she screamed in pain - you couldn't get away from the noise. Her bedroom smelled horrible, like pee and disinfectant, like a geriatric ward at a hospital - the smell of dying.

I went out with Robert who was there. I bought her some magazines - home magazines... Still planning the house! I don't think she could read them though. I also bought some food and wine and made meals for us all. Mum's last meal was one that I made.

I spoke to Matthew and told him that he should come over. I think Robert picked him up. I don't think he realised how serious it was until he got there. I kept taking him out of mum's room because he was getting so upset and I wasn't sure if she knew or not but felt she might so thought it best.

At some point during the five days we were told that she wouldn't recover. Also her morphine was increased gradually. It was in a pump that hissed every now and then as more more was injected.

I was on the phone to Chris a lot. I wanted him there but also felt that it was right that it was just family. I was annoyed when Kevin turned up, not least about his reaction when he saw mum. It was a look of shock and fear and revulsion which whilst being understandable was something I didn't need to see.

John came over a couple of times. He was a wreck.

I called Janet and Celia because I thought they should know. Janet wept like a child as soon as I told her and had to hang up. Celia kept talking normally for a few minutes before suddenly breaking down. I also had to call Matthew's boss so that they would know why he wasn't at work. It is the most surreal and painful thing to have to tell people that your mum is going to die in the next few days - especially when the people you are telling are your mum's best friends.

On the Thursday Chris drove up. He arrived at about 7pm and I needed to get out so I took him on a tour of Churchtown. We walked down the road. I showed him the two houses that Phillip and Denise had lived in then we went to the Punch Bowl for a drink.

I was about half way through my pint when Kevin called from the house. He said 'I think you'd better come back.'

When we got to the house she had died. She lay there with her head back and her mouth open not breathing any more. She looked yellow and old.

Dad, Robert and Matthew were sat around the bed and the curtains were closed. I held her head in my hands and kissed her. Then I broke down.

Dad said 'a prayer to speed her to heaven.'

About 5 or 10 minutes later the nurses arrived at the door to see to mum again. I told them that she had gone and asked them for a couple of minutes before they went in to clean her.

The nurses did there stuff and then Chris & I went in to sit with her before the undertakers arrived. The most startling thing was the change in sound in the room. After the gurgling and rattling in her chest and throat as she developed pneumonia the room seemed extremely calm now. I held her hand and kissed her again. The nurses had sprayed her perfume around the room.

Dad was in the living room phoning family and friends to tell everyone. Eventually the undertakers came and took her away. We all packed up and went to John and Elaine's.

I have never been back to that house.

Mum's funeral was on 11th July. It was a very sunny, warm day.

She left from Clifton House, went to St Chads and was buried at the cemetery just outside town. Everyone went back to John and Elaine's afterwards.

The strange thing is that only now, months later,I am noticing how it affected me and continues to.

I went back to work immediately but don't know how I managed to do anything - it all seems a bit dream like now.

We've left London now. We lived at my dad's (that's weird too - not saying 'my parents') in Poulton for a couple of months and now live in Chester.

I still have weird dreams about mum and get upset every day.

If you imagine your body is made up of your emotions, it now, still, feels like a huge chunk of my chest has just disappeared. Most of the time I feel empty and as if I am just floating about aimlessly. I don't feel like I have much influence on my own life - I just react to situations. I have little enthusiasm for anything and no ambition. I don't feel that I can talk to anybody about it and I don't think most people are interested.

The whole affair (for want of a better phrase) has made me clarify my thoughts on what happens after death. During mum's funeral the words about God and Jesus did nothing to comfort me. It's hideous but I can only think of her in a box under ground. It kills me to go to her grave. Mum was only 55.

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Reading back on this tonight is upsetting but also makes me realise how much I've healed over the years since mum died. I still don't go to her grave though.

Playing out

I grew up in the countryside on the edge of Oldham where it becomes Saddleworth. My house was surrounded by fields which were brilliant to play in. No street corners for me.

In the front field there were the remains of an old house - now merely a cellar open to the elements in the side of a hill. This was one of our many dens. My friend Damian and I cleared it out, put a roof on it made out of old plywood boards covered in grass and finally installed the piss pipe so we could urinate inside and it would drain outside. Very civilised as far as I was concerned. This den met an untimely end when one of the stinky goats decided that it wanted to eat the roof and promptly fell through it.

In the same field there was an old shed which we also made into a den. We found lots of old wire grates which we used to construct a run around for a local jack russell - I'm not sure how pleased he was with it but it entertained us. There was also, strangely, an overturned wooden boat which had briefly been used as a den by Damian before I was on the scene. It was on top of this boat one summer evening that I told my cousin Peter a horror story. The story naturally involved the boat itself and a thunder storm and was so clearly terrifying that Peter burst into tears and ran back to my folks house.

Continuing on the den theme there was also the cellar of my house. Originally accessed from a trap door under the stairs in my house however by the time we moved in a door had been put on the outside of the house and the stairs down into the cellar had been bricked up. Damian and I slowly but surely over a number of weeks removed a few bricks from the bottom of the stairs and managed to get into what was the old stone staircase. This is where we stashed porn magazines liberated from the local tip as well as other treasures. In the main body of the cellar there were old stone shelves built into recesses in the wall which had originally been a cold store for meat and other produce pre refrigerators. We however covered the front of these openings with wire mesh and connected this, via a dodgy old transformer, to the mains electricity. The reason for this was so that we could contain ghosts, behind the wire, once we caught them. Sadly the outcome was a couple of electrocutions and no ghosts.

In one of the fields at the back of our house was another derelict farm building only revealed by a hole in the ground which was a cellar entrance - do you see a theme here? When you ventured down the hole you found yourself in a brick room with rubble on the floor and a curved ceiling above. This place didn't last long as a den because it was a bit too spidery for us. We did have fun burning the spiders though.

The least successful dens were in the corrugated sheet metal garage at the back of my house. One was rubbish because it was actually on the roof of the garage - I wouldn't recommend it. No shelter from rain, a bit blowy and on a slope. Crap for a den really. The other was in the back of the garage. Damian and I set a fire in there one afternoon. My dad, upon seeing billowing smoke spewing forth from the front of the garage, ran in to rescue us without realising that we had escaped through the secret loose back panel once again to safety. I think he nearly died putting out the fire... He wasn't best pleased either way.

Update

On 13th August last year I copied a letter on here which was sent to my grandmother and described the last hours of her first husband's life before he was shot by a sniper. I just found the following photograph and eulogy. Margaret Jean was my grandmother.

Click on the picture to see it properly.