Grief is just a form of self pity ...... or so claimed .....

... my eldest brother a few days after our fathers funeral ..... I thought it was a bit harsh at the time .......

In January of this year I wrote about Pam, and how it came to be that her Son and Husband came to tell me she had been ill ...... since then I have seen Pam and we've had some loverly chats remembering the good moments in our respective time together ..... but she never once felt sorry for her self .... in fact we didn't really talk about her illness .......

Over the May bank holiday weekend I received word she had moved to a local hospice. I went to see David on the Sunday, he was stoic, but you could tell he was hurting. Last Wednesday, after speaking to David on the phone in the morning, I went to see Pam in the afternoon. As I walked down the hall of the hospice towards her room, I met David and he offered to show me the way to her room. Bearing in mind that David has almost lost his sight and now relies upon a white stick, showing me the way, well..... David is a proud man, but he took my arm. I asked him how she was doing and he started to cry, it took all of his energy to try and maintain his dignity ..... I took his hand and we walked down the corridor saying no words... anyone walking behind us seeing two middle aged men walking hand in hand .....

As I sat with Pam, holding her hand .... David next to me, in fact we were both kneeling, he gently stroked her hair ......

David rang me this morning .... Just hearing the pain in his voice ...... Pam passed away last night. The call took seconds and as I put the phone down .... I found myself crying too.

As I lay in bed last night despite it being 1am, I was wide awake reflecting back ..... unaware that Pam was taking her last breath on this earth ..... my brother's words were ringing in my ears ...... I thought about the moment kneeling at the side of Pam's bed last week holding her hands, David stroking her hair .... anyone at the door seeing me kneeling might have thought I was praying at her bedside .... who knows perhaps I was ..... but the contrast was not lost on me ..... David's marriage coming to an end by death and mine by divorce .... I elected not to share this with David .... his grief was yet to come, but only less than a week away.

They say divorce brings about it's own form of grief and lying in bed last night, I was also thinking about the sadness in losing my Dad, Katie dying last year for no good reason at the stupid young age of 21 [but can there be any good reason to die, even though it is inevitable] and then perhaps the sadness that the life I have known to the age of 53 years has come to an end.

But why do we grieve .... do we grieve for the person that is lost or for the life that we lost .... the lives left behind that have been lost. I have no real idea what happens to us when we die, but in my mind it is nothing, a dark quite unconscionable nothingness. If this is true, then why should it be that death is something to fear, for if you die in to a nothingness, then you have no consciousness and can therefore experience no loss. It is only the ones left behind who are left with their thoughts, the moments lost from a life once lived.

I remember on my first trip to sea and I suffered terribly with sea sickness, by the christ it made me ill, but I did eventually get over it by my 2nd trip. But considering it was 37 years ago I have this strong memory of one moment of sea sickness. I was on bridge watching keeping duties, and to the rear of the bridge was the loo. This was an older ship, very utilitarian construction, the engine vibrations constant through the fabric of the steel structure and as a fuel oil carrier had a pervading smell of dark oil. As I honked up in the bowl, I blacked out. I don't know for how long, but at the nano second I came too, just in that very instance I had no understanding of where I was, what had happened nor that I had blacked out. No conscience at all, and then at the end of that nano second, I became aware of the vibrations, the smell of oil and an awareness of where I was and who I was. That memory has stayed with me all these years.

But at that nano second before I knew what was happening, there was nothing, a complete empty nothingness ..... that is how I imagine death ..... so why do we grieve towards the thought of death .....

And still it comes back, we grieve for ourselves for the life lost .... the lost life of the departed ? or is it the life the living have lost  ? ......

These are the thoughts I had last night, the thoughts I had before last night, and now the thoughts I have today.

We look back on moments in our lives...... 

that moment when to steal the line ....

This kind of certainty comes but just once in a lifetime ....

and as I listened to this music last night, and now again today 

..... I wonder why I write this shite ......
 ..... who knows maybe my brother has a point after all .....

First it was Andrex revenge ..... now it's incontinence....

..... when the UPS envelope arrived I knew instantly what it was ..... having signed for it and closed the door ...... I so wanted to jump and down, and squeal excitedly like a teenage girl ..... but the staff were looking at me ..... when one person then declared ..... ere boss what's that large wet stain that has appeared on your trousers....

I looked them square on and bold as brass declared that ...... I had pissed my pants with excitement .....

Turning the clock back to 1980 ..... in fact to be precise it was 24th March 1980 and I was in Ras Al Khaima awaiting to join the Mv British Tweed .....

Here she is traversing the Firth of Forth ....

I've done that run a few times, 

who knows I might have been on her
when this photo was taken....

But back in March 1980, she was heading south down the Persian Gulf and I was getting used to the heat of the Middle Eastern desert. At the tender age of 17 years old, this was a whole new world for me .... and at that time Dubai was not the skyscraper theme park it has become today ..... back then it was nothing more than an oasis in the desert ..... literally .....

Once on board the Tweed, and we were New Zealand bound .... but the thing about being on a tramper [and oh how I love a good tramp] you very rarely knew what ports were coming next.

But as we navigated through the Tasmanian Sea, orders came through .......... after New Zealand we were to sail to Singapore for dry dock.

At this point I must declare that as a navigating apprentice, to hear over the tannoy that we would head out to Singapore for dry dock ..... came across the tannoy as .... brilliant news boys .... 2 weeks full expenses paid holiday in Singapore .... oh and we'll bung in some beer money as well .....

So there it was, we off loaded our cargo of petrol to New Zealand and headed out back north across the equator, with a 4 day slow steam through the great barrier reef ..... a whole new world really was opening up before me .... seeing flying fish for the first time .... or even wondering what the fuck was that luminous haze on the night time waves.... on seeing both of these phenomenon I felt too much at risk of being deemed a knob, I dare not ask ..... but sure enough, it was flying fish ..... I discovered this one morning when I found the lifeless body of one on the deck ..... flew a bit too far me thinks.... and the luminous haze ? ..... Bioluminescent phytoplankton ..... I could have been on another planet ....

As it so happened..... this was a trip of a life time, especially considering this was only my 2nd ship .... on that trip, I also visited amongst other places Japan, China, Yemen, through the Suez Canal ......  these were just names I had seen on a map in school geography lessons less than a year past .... and now I was seeing them for real.....

But Singapore was something else..... by 1980 a lot of slum cleansing had taken place..... and the Singapore I visited was not the Singapore that survived the 2nd world war..... but in fact the Singapore I visited 5 years ago was not the Singapore I visited in 1980 but one thing never changes ..... the humidity and the aroma ....

Also in 1980 we were on the cusp of the electronic age .... we didn't have sat nav in daily lives [can you believe we were still using a 1731 invention..... the sextant..... to navigate by the stars], mobile phones were just a figment of Star Trek ..... but Singapore had tomorrows gadgets at bugger all prices ..... in 1980 it also still had Bugis Street, and the Friday night dance of the flaming arseholes ..... you had to be careful not to end up with a Kai Tais either ..... I was more of tiger beer man me sen.

There was something else about Singapore .... bootleg music tapes .... at 50p a shot there was all the latest titles ..... I even brought Elvis Costello ~ Get Hapty ...... that was the only downside..... plenty of spelling mistakes, and sometimes not even the correct track listings.... but who cared.... they were 50p ......

And that is when I bought my first Iggy Pop album ...... New Values ..... that was it .... I was now an Iggy Pop fan ..... 1980 and still am ...... a particular track from that album which is a favourite ....

.... and so winding the clock forward to the present day, and I am stood in the office with piss dribbling down my leg .....

and here's why .....

My Iggy Pop ticket had arrived ...... after all these years I am going to see the god like Iggy Pop ..... he must rank as probably the prettiest ugly person that ever walked this planet ...

In fact given what happened to that other god like creature, David Bowie .... it's amazing that Iggy Pop has lasted this long ..... my best mate saw Iggy Pop at Eric's club when he was still at school [my best mate not Iggy .... my best mate is now 52yrs old] and Iggy was on stage singing, and then David Bowie joined him [Iggy .... not my best mate] to play the piano .... and Iggy jumped up and down and promptly knocked him sen out by hitting the ceiling.... Can't see that happening at the Albert Hall, especially the Bowie attendance ......

But the last Album that Iggy has done with Josh Homme [lead singer of the great Queens of the Stoneage] appears to be Iggy's swansong [literally] and for sure the last we are likely to see him gigging on these shores [by his own admission in a recent BBC interview] ...... oh gosh I do hope he makes it until 13th May ..... we've lost a lot of talent so far this year .... so hang in there Iggy ..... we're rooting for ya .....

How about this true classic Iggy offering .... I'm looking forward to seeing this performed

I also have a significant worry about my ticket, in that the divorce lawyer confirms all assets are to be split equally ..... I am so not giving up my seat half way through the concert ..... ! she can have the car, the kids, the dogs .... even the house ..... but not my Iggy ticket ....... stay strong Iggy .... stay strong .....