Jump to content

Recommended Posts

I sometimes even have to hold back the tears when I am doing the funerals, and I know what's coming! I worry that they think I am putting it on, and I really am not.


Last night even though I have seen it five times, cried at Sixth Sense, ESPECIALLY when he tells his Mum that her Mum is proud of her. Mr PR watched it too and turned round to face his computer, so I expect he was blubbering too.


And don't get me started on ET when ET looks like he's gunna die.


And on a more personal level, seeing my Dad in Lewisham hospital, when I had brought my Mum up from Margate to see him, and he was on a breathing machine and not doing well at all. And she held his hand as she left and their fingers parted - I don't think they'd spent a night apart in the 50 years they'd been married. Nope, I'm off.... (he survived).

I was at Heathrow airport once, in the mid-noughties.


There was a Bangladeshi family gathered near the departure gates, surrounding an elderly man and his wife. One by one, the men, women and children walked up and hugged that old couple. The old man touched his heart and then placed the tips of his fingers on the bowed heads of each of the children in turn. Each of the children handed over a single orange flower to the old woman, who wiped their tears with kind, wizened, hands.


Seeing me looking on, one of the women in the party turned to me. She spoke as if she knew me. Perhaps she dd.


"They're going home," she said. "After thirty-five years in this country they're returning to a land built of their memories. They've built four businesses, one for each of their sons. Both their daughters are married and they have more grandchildren than we have names in the family. He has made more than a life in this country, he has made dozens of lives; carved them from hard, grey English stone and moulded them from damp, red English clay. Now he longs to return to his own soft dark earth, to be carried by the warm rains and washed, clean, into the rich emptiness of the Bay of Bengal."


As she spoke, the children started up a low song, with words I didn't understand. Its mounrful melody lifted and fell in slow time like a tropical tide, while tributaries of song poured in from the adults, eddying and swirling like the confluences of the Brahmaputra. Many of the workers at the airport, responding to these ancient Bengali cadences, joined in too in respectful tones. A Delta of emotions was carrying this old couple, supporting and forming them like two tiny, perfect pieces of silt, joined and yet separate, atoms of humanity, into the welcome of eternity.




"That's amazing," I said. "But could you get a fucken move on, my flight leaves in 40 minutes."

I was on a building site years ago ( in the days before I took such care of my nails & stuff ) when the foremans son came in, head down & obviously upset.There must have been 20 odd guys sitting around at tea break.


The dad put his arm round his son's neck and in a deep but warm northern tone said..


" Aye, has she finished it son ? "


"Aye dad, she has" replied the boy, wiping away the tears from his dust covered face.


" HAA...UNLUCKY " he boomed, punching the boy in the belly.He walked of laughing, leaving his son humiliated in the middle of all the workers.


" You've gone all soft " shouted the father " now back to work "



I had to laugh, It couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow.



Nette:)

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Latest Discussions

    • Labour have changed a number of things overnight.   1. VAT on school fees - this has resulted in 25,000 moving until state education. 2. Increasing NICs adding billions to the cost of going to work. 3. Introducing the Employment Rights Bill causing employers to stop hiring. This and item 2 have added 100,000 people to the unemployment scrapheap. These are also causing businesses to relocate further harming the economy. 4. Scrapping all the small boats deterrents meaning 60,000 illegal migrants have arrived in small boats since they were elected. 5. Dishing out huge public sector payroses with no conditions so we have a massively increased payroll and doctors etc arestill going out on strike. 6.changed IHT and non domicile tax rules causing 16,500 millionaires to leave the UK and stop paying any tax here at all forever. 7. Alongside 6, leaving the budget up until an historically late period after the last budget has caused a house price crash, killing the market and decimating government stamp duty receipts. 8. Their profligate borrowing (£100bn extra in just one year) to fund all their lavish promises means the government can now only borrow at the highest ever yields on records. They are more beholden to the bond markets than Liz Truss was. 9. The rate of inflation has doubled under this government. It was a healthy 2% when they came in. For most of the last year, as a result of all of the above it is now nearly 4%.   These are all decisions the Labour government took that have immediate cause and effect.  Its no good harking back to 15 years ago. The current administration was gifted the fastest growing economy in the G7 and within 15 months they have destroyed it.    And things are only going to get worse this winter.      
    • I use Autocar Repair in West Dulwich.. been using them for over 20 years. Excellent service… 
    • A lot to agree with here - don’t get me started on Irish people complaining about immigration! - but that final paragraph is once again a cop out  there’s a lot of extreme right wing money stirring up the division that people are feeling - but there is zero excuse for handing power to these people. We live in a democracy and if we have enough people willing to give it up then judging those people foolish enough to do so is not only something that will happen, it is something that the rest of us should be morally compelled to do  if someone wouldn’t “normally” vote for a racist party yet somehow will do so because they hear someone like me saying that would be bad, then you better believe I’m judging them
    • We can't use our kitchen for a while and so looking for an air fryer to plug the gap. Please let me know if you have a good one in working order.  07702 305 310 Thanks
Home
Events
Sign In

Sign In



Or sign in with one of these services

Search
×
    Search In
×
×
  • Create New...