Anniversaries

Yesterday marked the twenty-fourth anniversary of my father’s death. I remember it as though it were yesterday.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of MasterB becoming my cat.

Death and life march hand in hand. Or maybe that should be hand in paw.

MasterB doesn’t seem too interested in having any celebrations. He has refused to sit beside me on the sofa and has commandeered the chair.

I was at work all day, and when I got home, after a quick cuddle he just wanted to go out.

I imagine he’ll want to go out again before he’s ready to settle for the night. This is just a pause for supper, a wash and to catch up on himself. I am wondering when it’ll dawn on him that the garden is now a Cookie free zone. She went to her new home last night. Apparently she was a bit unnerved by the unfamiliar surroundings, but it was no great surprise to hear that within a couple of hours she recovered enough bounce to emerge from behind the sofa and to play with her new family.

That cat has nerves of steel.

Despite MasterB’s lack of enthusiasm for a champagne supper, I felt sufficiently moved by the memory to check back via this blog to see if I had the date right. I had.

This is how it began.

And here are some photographs from the last four years.

April 2011

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Twentieth Anniversary

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of my father’s death.

One way and another, mortality has been pretty high in my mind for several weeks.

My father died very suddenly. One moment he was turning out his bedside light, the next he was unconscious. An hour later he was dead. I was in London, and received a phone call to say he would probably not survive. I did not have the option of racing to his bedside, but instead sat beside the ‘phone drinking camomile tea and hoping he would not survive if this meant a further reduction in his quality of life.

Happy Birthday Dad

Tomorrow, had he lived, my father would be ninety.

 

I find it hard to believe it’s nearly twenty years since he died. Mother has a photograph of him on that last birthday, the one where he turned seventy, on the sideboard.

 

He’s reading The London Encyclopaedia, my present to him, and I took the picture. He’s sitting next to the regulator; his pride and joy.

 

When he was demobbed after the war he worked with my grandfather as a horologist. A bit of a change from his service career as a Royal Marine Commando.

Runner Bean Memories Haiku

when I eat runner

Cornwall, pictures and someone else’s memories

I’m really glad I’ve found this pix. They were on my old computer which died suddenly. Someone rescued them from the hard drive for me.

I’d never been to Cornwall before. My parents went there for their honeymoon and then pretty often until my sister started school. I suppose up to that point they went outside school holidays when it was less crowded and also cheaper.

It was a special place for my father in particular. During the war he was a Royal Marine Commando and he spent a lot of time in Cornwall.