Filed under: ideas — Tags: the wake — Trefor Davies @ 8:15 pm
Don’t wait until you can’t attend the party. How many times are there when you get all your old mates together in the same room? Probably not since your wedding. Well now’s the chance. Don’t wait until you are dead. Conduct your own wake now. Chose the music, what you want to say about yourself, the venue!
Only problem is that if people know you aren’t actually dead will they come to the wake? Avoid the embarrassment of finding out who your real friends are by suggesting they have their own wake at the same time. That way they will definitely want to come.
the dishwasher is on in the kitchen again. it is very relaxing. in the same category as photocopying but different.
the house is quiet – other than a debate going on upstairs regarding who has rights to the hot water from the immersion heater. unlike the water it isn’t a heated debate. more of a vocal eyebrow raise.
I can hear the bath running and the downstairs toilet flushing. outside it is raining though it is a silent rain.
The service was due to start at 2pm but by 1.40 if you weren’t already in you weren’t going to get a seat. We sat there in our Sunday funereal best biding our time. I was glad I had dressed soberly although I had considered doing otherwise. This didn’t stretch to a tie.
Anne bought a job lot of leeks, boy,
From a little chap down some dark alley.
He said, “These will last you for weeks, boy,
Since I’ve heard your Tref’s from the valley.”
But Trefor’s too posh for such things, boy –
He’s moved on to mangetout and zucchini
In his dreams that’s the food that anne brings boy
Served up whilst she wears her bikini
The view from the top of the Post Office Tower on a not very nice day in January. There were some snow flurries though I’m not sure these are visible on the video – take a look. The three videos represent a 360 degree tour.
It pelts down and the unwary get wet.
forty days and forty nights seem like an eternity
all hail Saint Swithin and all who sail in her
flood alerts fill the wet air waves
another notch on the windscreen wiper control
oh no a leak, fetch a bucket (more…)
Sad music fills my head knowing you are gone.
My heart, once light with the carefree pleasures
of our younger days when your nature,
spirited, excited and challenged,
was pleased to soak in the sunshine of your ways,
now weighs me down, the shadows growing long.
My friend I cry, my grief, your suffering and pain,
the tears, unleashed, flow freely down my face.
Proud girl bowed, broken, driven to an end,
washed back into our consciousness,
into a deep and final sleep. But you should know
the memories that remain are of good times,
where your beauty prevailed,
your irreverent laughter filled our lives
and we lived like there was no tomorrow.
RIP Angharad Jones, 12th May 1962 to 9th January 2010
One of my favourite people.
There was nothing to distinguish the road from the others I had crossed on my journey there that day. I imagined the nearly identical front rooms in each of the identical terraced houses having little to tell them apart.
This one was different though. On the surface it looked the same and for consistency the everpresent seagull was perched on the rooftop of one of the terraces. But this road had soul.
He lay prone, face down on the pew in the kitchen, left arm dangling limply onto the floor. On his face was a look of utter hopelessness, the vacant stare of the condemned man, the innocent about to be consigned to an undeserved fate.
There had been a time in the run up to that moment where he had sat there earnestly, waiting for the good news to arrive. The radio was on in several rooms leaving nothing to chance. There was no way, when that announcement came, that he would not hear it. So there he had remained.
He displayed none of his usual appetite while he waited. Such was his concentration, intensified by an anticipation that told you the stakes were high.
The others had heard of their good fortune quite early on in the process and had already begun to celebrate. This did not help. In fact it was part of the problem.
As the kitchen clock ticked, the remaining time shrank away and the realisation that it was not going to happen finally hit him. His shoulders dropped and pure anguish radiated from the shapeless form.
His school stayed open whilst his older brothers and sister got to stay at home to play snowballs because theirs had shut!