Category Archives: mum

Mum

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Mum

Mum

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments and emails about mum. She really was the best mum in the world. I know I’m biased, but I also happen to be extremely well-informed. Trust me on this.

I couldn’t bring myself to speak at the funeral, but the lady curate did an excellent job piecing together a tribute from the reminiscences of my dad, sister, uncle and me. She certainly picked up on the unplanned theme which ran through our memories and choice of music: mum’s great love of nature. We spoke of her delight at finding glow-worms as a child on holiday in Anglesey; her self-professed stupidity at school due to her constant day-dreaming about the countryside; her taming of the blackbirds in the garden; her concerns that her birds might not be being fed properly while she was confined to bed.

It was mum who gave me my great love of the natural world. It was mum who bought me all those nature books when I was a boy (and adult), who taught me the names of the birds and flowers, and who took me on all those walks in the countryside. Mum was so excited when Jen and I bought a former farmhouse in the Yorkshire countryside, and delighted in my tales of the wildlife I saw here: the hares and occasional deer in the front field, the rabbits in the garden, the lapwings and curlews on the moors. Mum could never quite understand my enthusiasm for standing in the garden at twilight while the local bats flitted around my head, but she knew that she was totally responsible for the enthusiasm. In recent months, local gossip, curious droppings, and claw marks on our trees have convinced me that badgers are visiting the garden. I have been looking out for them all summer, keeping mum posted, but I still haven’t seen any. I was really looking forward to breaking the news of my first badger sighting to mum. I’ll keep looking.

Mum and Dad had planned a holiday in her beloved Anglesey earlier this month, but, some months ago, she realised she wouldn’t be up to it and asked if Jen and I would like to go instead. We agreed, not realising how little time mum had left. As it turned out, we took our Anglesey holiday the week after mum’s funeral. We stayed in a static caravan on the same farm my parents have been going to since I was a child—just three miles down the coast from where mum found those glow-worms over 60 years ago. The place has countless fond memories for me. Early on the first morning of our holiday, I went down to the headland at the bottom of the field and sat on the rocks looking out to sea, reminiscing. After half an hour or so, I spotted a dolphin rounding the point and heading out to sea. Five minutes later, two more followed. In all the hundreds of hours I have sat on that headland over the years, I had never seen dolphins. Mum would have been so excited. I’ll post some photographs soon.

Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to go and feed my birds.

Lest we forget

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Yesterday was the 90th anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. I spent the night at my parents’ house. We watched a documentary in which Rolf Harris visited the First World War battleground on which his father was injured and his uncle killed.

“They were very brave, weren’t they, the Aztecs,” observed mum.

She meant Anzacs.

Weapon of choice

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My dad has what can only be described as an unhealthy paranoia about the BBC. He thinks they’re the spawn of Satan.

Like all the best paranoias and conspiracy theories, Dad’s has a small toe-hold in reality. There certainly is a Southern England bias at the BBC, which is reflected in its news coverage and even its weather forecasts. But Dad seems to believe that every single BBC presenter or continuity announcer who pronounces their A’s long was personally selected by the Director General to promote the corporation’s Cockney Agenda.

Dad’s fixation with the BBC began in the summer of 1982 during the Falklands War. Every evening, the Newsnight programme would wheel on some recently retired British general and get him to talk military tactics. Dad was convinced this was tantamount to treason. “The Argentinan Embassy will be noting all this down!” he would shout at Peter Snow.

In fact, Dad did have a point: I clearly remember how, during the early days of the war, when one Argentinian bomb hit a British warship but failed to explode, the BBC displayed a helpful graphic showing how the bomb should have been dropped. Next thing our lads in the South Atlantic knew, that was exactly how the bombs were being dropped—with far greater effect.

Ever since then, Dad has been convinced that the BBC’s not particularly well-hidden agenda is to undermine British society and betray us to our enemies. He is, for example, the only person I know who believes that the Hutton Enquiry wasn’t a shameless stitch-up, totally exhonorated the Blair government, and showed up the BBC and its Cockney Director General for what they really were.

This Tuesday, Dad’s BBC paranoia finally tipped him over the edge. My parents and I were watching the comedy quiz show QI, when Stephen Fry asked a question along the lines of, “Why might it be dangerous to have a ship-load of pistachio nuts?” The answer, it turned out, was that large masses of pistachio nuts are prone to spontaneous combustion and can sometimes explode.

“There they go again!” Dad shouted at the telly. “Giving away information of use to terrorists!”

Mum and I thought we were going to die. We were laughing so much, we couldn’t breath.

“I hardly think the pistachio nut is going to be the weapon of choice for a terrorist!” I gasped at Dad, still trying to work out out how to get my lungs to take in air.

Dad was adamant: “Mark my words, you’ll be watching the news one day soon, saying ‘Norm predicted that!’”

It’s like Strictly Come Dancing on ice

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To allow us to get to Liverpool Derek Hatton Airport in time for our very early flight to Rome the other Sunday, Jen and I spent Saturday night at my parents’, where we were required to watch the final of a minor celebrity talent contest called Dancing On Ice. It was on ITV, the channel that does Foyle’s War and Inspector Morse. I hadn’t realised it also does family entertainment. I use the word entertainment guardedly.

The following conversation took place:

Me: It’s very sporting of that Phillip Schofield to dye his hair silver to fit in with the ice theme.
Jen: Is he famous or something?
Me: He used to be a children’s television presenter. He’s never been the same since he split with Gordon.
Jen: Gordon who?
Me: Gordon the Gopher. He was a glove puppet that squeaked a lot. Phillip Schofield was his straight man.
Mum: I thought you said Jordan.

Serendipity Do Dah!

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James Garner

James Garner.

How’s this for a pleasing co-incidence? It’s a bit convoluted, but bear with me, it’s worth the wait:

  • when I was a kid, I always thought that James Garner from out of The Rockford Files was the spitting image of my dad. I wasn’t alone in this belief: kids I hardly knew would come up to me and say, “Your dad looks like Jim Rockford”. Sometimes they would go so far as to say, “Your dad is Jim Rockford”;
  • for the record, my dad’s name is not Jim Rockford, it’s Norman;
  • entirely unrealted to the above—or so it would seem—my mum’s favourite film of all time is Oklahoma!
  • while I was in totally shattered mode after my big walk last Friday, I turned on the telly, and they were showing The Rockford Files. While I was watching it for old times’ sake, I found myself wondering whatever happened to James Garner. He must be getting on a bit by now, I thought—assuming he is still with us, that is. So I looked him up on the Internet Movie Database;
  • the good news is that James Garner is still very much alive, and is still making films, but GET THIS…
  • James Garner was born in the city of Norman, Oklahoma!

I lied when I said it would be worth the wait.