Somehow I associate life with sunshine and death with winter gloom, so it’s odd to post something about the end of life in a gloriously warm summer’s week. But that’s how it goes sometimes; just scribbles!

There’s an old Latin saying from the days of Socrates, ‘Memento Mori’, which I came across the other day in a novel by Victoria Hislop about the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). I don’t know much about the latter, apart from the fact it ripped Spain apart, and hadn’t heard the former before. It means ‘Remember you must die’ and before you think it’s the sort of thing Bruce Willis or Clint Eastwood might have said, the point of this reminder is not to be morbid or promote fear, but to inspire, motivate and clarify ……. and I like that …….. get on and live life to the full.

A couple of months we were driving through deepest Surrey and I suddenly realised we were in Shottermill, passing St Stephen’s Church. A decade ago this would have meant nothing to me, this little church on a triangle of land surrounded by busy roads; but then, in the process of researching family history, I found that somewhere in their cemetery were the graves of my great grandparents and their second son who had died aged 48 in the 1936 TB epidemic.

I had been. Eventually I found my great grandparents in one grave and looked around for the other, for their son Cecil. Then I realised that Cecil had joined his parents in the same grave. I could just about make out the names on the stone slab and side bars.

Shottermill 2007

Various methods have been used down the ages to mark the ‘end-of-life’. The Anglo-Saxons built earth and stone burial barrows; you can still see them particularly across the county of Wiltshire. We’ve all seen footage of the cremation of Hindus in Varanasi, India’s oldest city, where they come to die, believing that cremation on its funeral pyres on the ghat will release them from the cycle of reincarnation and allow them to progress to nirvana. The way the Vikings laid their dead to rest on their ship and set it alight feels romantic and spiritual; although if you feel this is for you, in the UK it’s not currently legal and you have to be cremated first, then sent off to sea!!

Christian graveyards in the UK, Protestant ones in particular, are very sombre, boring affairs. Rows of small head stones, atop a space a coffin’s width and length, cover a few acres. If you’re lucky the grass in between is mowed; but there are few benches as though neither contemplation and nor remembrance is encouraged. Those of you who read PC 60 following the death of my father-in-law Carlos Rocha Miranda, a Catholic, in January 2016 may recall: “The crematorium is surrounded by the graves of the departed. Some huge edifices have been erected ….  the artist obviously having been given free reign  …… winged angels stand guard  …..  women lie draped in distress across the cold stone  bust  …. Mausoleums, large and frankly ridiculous, dot the landscape. Is this glorifying death …… or life? Not sure! Maybe just highlights our awkwardness about what to do and how to do it??”

Religions differ in how they see the passage from life into death, into heaven or into the after-life vary. Muslims commonly believe that the present life is a trial in preparation for the eternal life. If they’ve done good, they go to Paradise. The body is buried as soon as possible and placed in a grave oriented towards Mecca. Muslims cannot be cremated and neither can Jews. The Jewish funeral consists of a burial as soon as possible after death. No flowers are allowed in a Jewish Cemetery but there is a lovely tradition of visitors placing a stone or pebble on the grave. Burial was normal for Christians in the UK, whether Protestant or Catholic, although now cremation is quite common. No one seems to be in a hurry and it can be a fortnight or more before the funeral takes place!

Back to Shottermill. We pulled into the car park and went and stood; the ravages of 10 years have made it almost impossible to read anything. Talk about death and decay! Stone is not immune! So I wrote to the Protestant Church of England church to ask whether I could place a brass plaque of some sort, to some agreed design, to make it easier for future generations to locate their ancestors, otherwise no one will know. Their initial response suggests I could replace the stonework or have the letters recut! Both these options are very expensive and I may have to argue for something more affordable. George’s father was buried in another St Stephen’s cemetery, (there’s a coincidence!) this one in the Auckland suburb of Parnell in New Zealand, where he’d been the mayor. At the time, 1891, a family financial crisis meant they could not afford any form of headstone or grave marker, and it was only by looking at the cemetery plan was I able to determine where he was buried. In 2011 some 40 of his descendants gathered to dedicate an appropriate plaque; otherwise no one will know. (This is what I have in mind for his son George’s grave here in the UK.)

 

His father, another Stephen but no Saint, is buried in the Christian Cemetery in Cawnpore, India, where he succumbed to Cholera in 1828 aged 49. Sadly the ravages of time, of heat, of climate have mean the large tombstone, with a huge inscription from his fellow officers, has crumbled and disintegrated. I saw where the spot should have been, well, within 10 feet, such was the unkempt nature of the cemetery.

Searching for Stephen Nation in Cawnpore, India

My own father was cremated and his ashes scattered on the River Clyde on the west coast of Scotland, so no physical place to go to, should I have ever wanted to. My stepfather and mother were cremated and their ashes were scattered together in Worth Crematorium north of Brighton. I am sure there’s a little plaque on a wall somewhere but I’ve never been. But I was excited by finding George and Eva; the idea that their skeletons rest beneath the gravestone attracts me more than a place where ashes were scattered. But to recognise the place you need to be able to read the carved words!

And if you can’t read the words, you won’t know. If no one knows, does it matter?

Richard Estoril, Portugal 26^th July 2019

PS Katrina Spade, an appropriate surname for the CEO of Recompose (!), has just been granted a licence in Seattle, Washington State, to turn human cadavers into compost. Great idea but would you want to know if the food you’re eating had been grown using this compost, I wonder?

 

Travel and time seem to be a theme that I keep mulling over, keep coming back to; sometimes it comes out in the written word. My last scribbles about having some overseas experience prompted a number of readers to comment. “I was posted to New York with my company two decades ago. Changed my perspective on those pesky American cousins.” and “Teaching for two years in China in my early thirties was life changing, and life affirming.” and “I was reluctant to leave my parents when we went to Singapore on posting …..” (This from a chap who worked for a law firm) “ …… but they visited us and our children, who went to the local schools, now have some great experiences of Malaysia and Borneo. Never regretted it for a moment.” Whilst these are all positive, go-and-do-it sort of comments, I recognise that there will be some for whom my postcard brought back negative thoughts!! Hey! Ho! You never know ……. unless you try it?

Last December we flew to Portugal, just before some numskull decided to operate a drone within London Gatwick airport’s airspace. Flights were cancelled and the airport effectively closed for three days, so ruining a few thousands’ people’s holidays. Personally I thought they should have caught the bastard(s) and left them in the terminal building with all the disgruntled passengers – maybe with a note around their necks saying something like “It was us wot done it” or words to that effect. It would have been cheaper than putting them in prison!

As we descended into Lisbon’s Portela Airport I reflected how the last time we had travelled to Portugal we had taken the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Santander in Northern Spain and driven. Five slowish days, west towards Santiago de Compostela and then south to Porto and on to our destination of Estoril, compared with seven hours door to door. Time to experience ….. we hear that saying ‘travelling is a journey not a destination’ so often these days it’s become a cliché but we all understand the sentiment; it broadens our outlook, our knowledge. Throughout our limited time on the planet, we need to suck as much as we can from every day!

 

Whilst we haven’t developed the ability to tele-transport yet (aka Startrek and ‘Beam me up Scotty’!), fairly instant travel over long distances by airplane is something our forebears may have envisaged but not experienced. Jumping from one place to another, from one continent to another; no time for reflection or for acclimatisation – in, bang! George Nation, my great grandfather, went to Alaska as fast as he could in 1900. Firstly on the US Mail Ship St Paul; five days across the pond, days of sea air, of formal dinners, of gambling and of conversation. (Round trip on Queen Mary 2 in 2019 would cost £2650!) Tired out by the time he arrived in New York he spent two days in the Grand Union hotel. If you’d never been to NY, you’d probably have a look around, walk in Central Park. He left by train from Grand Central Station for Montreal in Canada, took the train to Winnipeg, where it was 15°below zero, passed through Calgary and arrived in Vancouver some 8 days later. (Today the train journey would take around 4 days and six hours and cost £275). Flying Air Canada from London’s Heathrow will get you there in ten hours and cost £470. In 2015 we followed in his footsteps, his letters to his wife Eva in London being the inspiration, but we flew to Seattle. We both caught the ferry up the Alaskan Marine Highway (See PCs 44-46) to Skagway, although George’s ferry was an old river steamer and very crowded compared with ours.

He then took the train to Whitehorse; we drove. On to Dawson City by horse-drawn sleigh; we drove our rental car. George stayed in basic roadhouses; we did it in a day. In a romantic sort of way it would be wonderful to experience a horse-drawn sleigh, but for five days in the snow?

Some moons ago I drove from Sydney to Coffs Harbour on Australia’s East coast. Whilst the view from 30,000 feet might be dramatic ……..

……… you can’t feel the heat, smell the dust, get bitten by the mosquitoes or put your toes in the Pacific!

Nambucca Heads

Walking from home to Hove station you pick up the street vibe, amuse yourself with observations and judgments, up George Street then past Dean’s fresh fruit and veg stall with a ‘How’s it going?’ sort of exchange, past the gentlemen who like to spend their day on the bench on the corner and up Goldstone Villas towards the station. Past Osman’s new 24/7, past the Small Batch Coffee café, which gives you an instant whiff of coffee beans being ground, and arrive at the station in touch with your surroundings. If you get in the car drive there and drive back, insulated and isolated from other people, you get none of that.

Working for Short Brothers, after a year of sale’s trips around Europe, my first venture out East was to Singapore. As we disembarked, I remember exiting the aircraft door and being overwhelmed by the smell, the warmth, the humidity, the excitement of a Singaporean evening, the essence of the Orient. That particular memory, that particular moment, will stay with me forever.

A reality TV programme a few months ago offered £20,000 to the first couple to reach Singapore from London – without using an aircraft. Credit cards and mobile telephones were taken off them and they were given the cash-equivalent of the airfare (economy I suspect!). With this limited budget it was clear they would have to work somewhere, somewhen (A delightful English word from 1300 or there abouts; originally spelled sumwhanne and meaning exactly what it says!!). Of course there was a sameness of the cheap rail or coach travel, one long distance train or bus as uncomfortable as the next, but instead of hopping Europe to South East Asia by air, they saw Delphi, made their way to Baku in Azerbaijan, then through the Stans – Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and into China. South to Cambodia and on to Singapore. Now there’s a journey with time to stand and time to stare!!

Last month in a Yin yoga session with the brilliant Sam Goddard, she finished with a wonderful quotation from Pico Iyer.

“In an age of speed, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. In an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”

Twiddling your thumbs? Travel ……. quickly or slowly! Or simply enjoying twiddling your thumbs. Always your choice!

Richard 11^th July 2019