A remarkable person

I attended a funeral last Wednesday, at 11.00am, in London. No, not THAT one. It was my uncle's.

He died on Good Friday, at the age of 96. He was a lovely man, and was one of those people who took care to live well. He hadn't married or had children, and out-lived his siblings, so his 8 nephews and nieces were his next of kin. But there were, at a guess, 75 people at his funeral service. He was incredibly sociable, and had spent his life making friends, both abroad, when working for the British Council, and then in retirement in London. I don't think I know anyone who made more effort to keep up with friends. He organised his own 90th birthday party, which he held in a marquee in his next door neighbour's garden. From the nursing home where he spent his last couple of years, he would phone people regularly, and insist that they visited.

I spoke at the funeral service, and shared childhood memories of the uncle who was very much a part of our family life. What I said was echoed by others. He was always so interested in people. If he visited you by train, he would arrive with a story about the person he'd sat next to, and sometimes their entire life story. His interest crossed barriers. He was once asked by a teenager (and this is years ago) for a light. He responded by telling the youth that - speaking from personal experience - if he only knew how hard it was to give up smoking once you'd started, he wouldn't be lighting up that cigarette. The youth came back with "I asked for a light, not a lecture". My uncle was tickled pink, and lived off the story for ages. He wasn't offended at all, as many of an older generation would have been. He thought it was hilarious.

It wasn't just people that my uncle was interested in. He had a natural curiosity about anything that came his way. My brother told the story of how he had taken my uncle to Mcdonald's in Paris (there were small children involved). It was my uncle's first visit to a Mcdonald's. He chose the Filet O'Fish. He unwrapped it, opened the bun, peered inside, and returned to the counter, to ask which bit of it was the fish. Not to be rude, or clever; just because he was genuinely interested. It was The Emperor's New Clothes meets 21st century fast food.

Funerals bring out the lesser known, or at least lesser talked about, elements of a person's life. My uncle had served in Burma in 1944 with the Special Operations Executive. I knew very little about that. He had once told my brother, in detail, how to sabotage a steam train! He had also studied History at Oxford, but left without a degree. I think these days he would have been diagnosed as dyslexic. The irony is that these days, so many people leave university with a degree, but having gained relatively little from it. My uncle left with no degree, but with a lifelong interest in History, which he read widely about for the rest of his life. At the time, the family had treated his lack of a degree as a cause of great shame and embarrassment. I hope he knew, at 96, how proud we all are that he was part of our family.

With my uncle's death, Britain loses its longest operating heart pacemaker. He had it fitted in the 1970s, when it was a new and astonishing thing. I remember visiting him in hospital, all wired up, but cheerful and cracking jokes. It has served him well. It has lasted him all these years, with occasional changes of battery, and regular check-ups at which my uncle enjoyed the doctors' and nurses' interest in the oldest pacemaker of them all.

For me, the funeral event was a swirl of emotions. I was so sad, of course, but so very, very glad to be there. It's something that expats deal with so often. Would you fly home for a funeral? A wedding? A christening? To see a new baby? If someone is ill? You can't return for them all, even if money and time are no object - which, of course, they are. How do you decide whether to go or not? It's agonising. We missed so many family parties and gatherings, and each one was a loss. I was so deeply grateful to be at this funeral, (and the funeral of another uncle a month ago). Although a funeral is a sad occasion, it can be a very rich time. This one was particularly so. I loved it. I loved being part of it.

.

A sad day

I seem to be obsessed, blog-wise, with the wildlife in my back yard. I don't quite know why this is. I suppose school holidays and summer do tend to push you out into the back yard, and there's not all that much that is interesting to write about inside the house. There are rooms, and they are filled with our furniture.

I thought the back yard was coming good on the wildlife front. Fireflies good, mosquitoes bad. Glorious red trumpet vine good, odd-looking fungus bad. I think I'd started seeing it in terms of a scorecard. Fireflies good - fifteen love. Mosquitoes bad - fifteen all. Trumpet vine good - thirty fifteen. Fungus bad - thirty all. You get the idea. I had a feeling that I was winning, or at least getting the upper hand.

I asked someone round to help me learn about the plants, and she came yesterday, gave me loads of helpful information and left me some gardening books to borrow. She told me where to buy a large long-sleeved smock-like garment (a smock, in fact) impregnated with insect repellent, which I can keep by the back door and put on whenever I go outside. I got all excited about the potential of the place. I was planning a triumphant blog entry (perhaps with pictures) about our lovely back yard. I was going to tell you my clever anti-mosquito strategies, the beautiful birds, the squirrels (including Poor-tail, the one who is easily identifiable by his half-missing appendage), and the crowning glory, our little tame rabbit. How lovely to have a tame rabbit in the garden (see how at this point I lapse from the back yard into the garden again). How surprising, given that our predecessors had two cats. He looked like a wild rabbit, but we live right in the middle of the city - where had he come from? He was tame enough that he would not move away until you approached very near. It was easy to get within 4 feet of him. I had set the children the project of trying to get him to eat a leaf from their hands by the end of the summer. We had put out carrots and celery and a bowl of water. I loved that rabbit. He had become our rabbit.

You know where this is going. It was 6-yo who found him. "The rabbit has died. At least I think it's dead. It's got a purple eye." He was right. It was dead, and it did have a purple eye. No other signs of cause of death. Flies already closing in. The children are remarkably philosophical. They are sure that they WOULD have managed to get him eating out of their hands by the end of the summer (although on the evidence of the amount of time and patience they had for the task, I silently doubt it). They agree with me that he died probably as a result of eating something poisonous, that he didn't die a horrible death, just had a poorly tummy and went to sleep, and that it was nice that he had come right up to the house to die - he must have wanted to be near us. I used to opportunity to reiterate the rule about not putting anything from the garden in your mouth (3-yo is a worry on this front, at that age where it is funny to do naughty things, or be about to do them, she has been deliberately putting leaves in her mouth and coming to show me - I don't think she'll be doing that any more. Sorry, rabbit, but I couldn't help using you as a cautionary tale).

I was telling yesterday's gardening friend how I had been surprised by how hostile (a word I apologised for in advance of using) the environment here is, and how that seemed to make such a difference to daily life. I had never truly appreciated how very gentle a country Britain is, in terms of climate and countryside. She understood, and then put it very eloquently: "Here, we do have to try harder and take more steps in order to live happily alongside nature". I know in the grand scheme of things, the death of one rabbit doesn't amount to much. He did, however, make our home here feel a bit friendlier, a bit softer round the edges, a bit less hostile (there, I've said it).

Today it definitely feels like Advantage Back Yard.