Good examples and resolutions
The last of our children’s grandparents, Francis’s mother, Patricia Wheen, died in peace and with dignity last week (Jan 31st 2020) . She leaves a gap in our lives. This is emotional of course, and different for each of us. I’ll feel it also in practical, diary-planning terms. I had grown used to mentally reserving Wednesdays for a trip into Hertfordshire to sit with her: help her with her lunch perhaps, chat, knit, listen to music, watch a DVD. Parkinson’s disease disabled her from taking a very active part in any of these pastimes but it was a pleasure for me to be there; the moments when we achieved real communication were precious. They will stay with me. I need to find some way to ensure that those newly empty hours don’t vanish. Patricia was a notably well-organised and self-disciplined person: I must try to take my cue from her.
My own mother, June Jones (who I wrote about in Beloved Old Age and numerous AE blogs) died just over a year ago: one small way we continue to remember her is by organising a half hour’s Singalong every Sunday afternoon in the nursing suite that was her final home. Music was one of my mother’s particular gifts to me. From Patricia I could try to take the gift of stoicism but I don’t want to - it would mean finding something unpleasant to be stoical about. I’ll choose to take just a weekly half-hour’s gift of better organization instead. Here is my Resolution: to write a brief diary entry every week — published on a Wednesday if I can. Not heart-pourings but a record of happenings, noted here so I can check how consistent I will be.
The week started with Francis up early to Private Eye on Monday (Feb 3rd 2020). It was Press Day. Editor Ian Hislop was away and Francis on his mettle to see all ran smoothly despite having been necessarily out of touch during the earlier part of the production cycle. Almost all the pages were made up when the Metropolitan Police came knocking at the door. An unexploded WW2 bomb had been found in next door Dean Street; the Soho area was being evacuated. If he’d wanted a dog-ate-my-homework excuse for any shortcomings it would have been perfect. But none were needed. Everything was so well advanced that two members of the management team were able to come back to the building early next morning when the Royal Engineers had removed the bomb and the magazine made it to the printers only hours late.
Francis’s experience was just the boost I needed to get myself back to work to the current chapter of my book (provisionally titled In Memoriam) which follows the fortunes of WW2 RNSVR yachtsmen and is inspired by the discoveries I began to make when I unearthed my father’s Cruise of Naromis in 2016. By a rather brilliant co-incidence my draft chapter 10 had reached the point where some of the yachtsmen found themselves volunteering to make mines safe during the autumn and winter of the London Blitz (1940-41). I sat on the bed throughout Tuesday typing incessantly. Meanwhile more facts came to light about the wartime history of the Soho area. I’ll include some of them in my Authors Electric blog for Sunday. That’ll be the 9th Feb. And on the 8th I’ll be with the Bawdsey Sailing Club in Suffolk, talking to them about Naromis.
Thank you, once again, to that great generation born ninety or one hundred years ago.
On January 31st 2020, approximately two hours after Patricia breathed her last, Britain left the European Union. To me this seems a regrettable step: perhaps I do need to borrow a modicum of her stoicism.