My father emails to tell me that my Great Great Aunty Eva lived to 102. So my memory of her dying at 99 seems to be incorrect. That would be one assumption. Which is weird because the incident seems very clear in my mind and I had always assumed she'd gone one short of the century. Maybe I was crying because I had lost my one relative who was over 100. Or maybe, and I think more likely, my mum and my gran, aware of how excited I was at the prospect of have a centenarian relative and wanting to spoil my fun, colluded to give me the false information that Eva had died, when in fact she was going on to live, unbenownst to me, for another three years. That is the only way I can make sense of all this.
Otherwise it casts doubt on all my memories, including the actual kiss itself. Was that really Eva or some other relation? She would have been in her late nineties at the time - would she have been capable of grabbing me and strong enough to stop my struggling as her wrinkled lips approached me? It would be terrible if I had been bragging about being kissed on the lips by someone from the 1870s and actually it had been some forty year old aunty who just looked ancient to the 5 year old me. Or maybe the kiss never took place at all. Ah memory, why art thou so unreliable?
Dad also sent me the very moving eulogy that my mother delivered at my Aunty Babs funeral. It made me slightly shame-faced to realise how little I knew about this remarkable woman, not least the fact that she was christened Edith May. I assumed she was a Barbara and that my mother had been named after her. But no, her name was Edith, which was cunningly abbreviated to Babs. Why? What were those crazy people of the early 1900s thinking?
She didn't meet her husband until she was 32, which was relatively late in those days I would assume, and yet they managed 63 years of marriage (she was 96 when she died).
Almost as impressively she joined up into the ATS in 1943, where she
worked at the Central Census War Office. She was involved in secret work (that my mum has only heard about this week - good that the secret was kept this long - you never know where Hitler might be lurking), working with the AFU–Armoured Fighting Vehicles. She introduced a card system, so that the War Office knew exactly where any vehicle was at any one time. How cool is that?
And the dog which tried to copulate with my leg was, of course, Sandy.
Anyway it's a shame that it took her death for me to discover these and other facts about my Aunty Edith May. If you've got any oldies still around you, then turn on your dictaphone and talk to them. Bearing in mind though, that I'm only 41 and my memory is clearly shot to pieces!
The rain continued to pour intermittently, which was a shame for the wedding that was taking place in the hotel this morning. Don't worry, it wasn't mine. I am a bachelor boy and that's the way I'll stay. Though I did consider muscling in in the middle of the service, grabbing the microphone and addressing all the local people who had gathered and saying, "While we're all here and set up, what you say we have another little celebration" before shouting, "Come on, get up here," to my girlfriend. I imagine it would have been the most romantic thing ever and in no way ruined the big day of the happy couple or made my girlfriend wish for an earthquake to swallow her up into the bowels of the earth.
It would have been worth it just to see the looks on people's faces, though I imagine I would have been escorted from the property and had to spend the remainder of the week sleeping in a hedge.
Funnily enough, just as I had preempted the rain a few days ago by mentioning that we hadn't had that day of being stuck inside as yet (only for it to happen the next day), I had also been speculating on why it was that one never seems to get a hangover on holiday. I figured it was probably mainly because you slept in for long enough for it to abate and also because you don't really have to do anything once you're awake.
Well today I was hungover. I don't know why. I hadn't exactly drunk all that much last night. In fact although I am having a couple of beers with lunch and maybe a couple of glasses of wine or a cocktail or two over dinner, it's all spread out through the day and I haven't really been caning it.
But for some reason the one rum punch mixed with half a bottle of cava had brought me down. It had been a hot night and I hadn't slept as well as usual, and had maybe become dehydrated, but I felt pretty awful for most of the day.
We had planned to take a bus into town, but the tiredness and hangover made me opt instead for more lying on a lounger and reading. We are going on a day trip on Monday, but I am actually rather pleased that we've used this time for rest and relaxation rather than exploring or getting to understand anything about local culture. It's been a real stress buster and I think it's pretty clear from the improved standard of recent entries that it's been good for me in terms of inspiration. But then again it's easier to write Warming Up when I know it's all I've got to do all day and there's no pressing engagements meaning I have to rush it.
In the last few days I've read:
The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland - I have always been a big fan of Coupland, though hadn't enjoyed the last couple of books of his I'd read quite as much. However, this is really excellent, though I think I might need a second go at it to pick up all the nuances. It's so full of lovely ideas and was constantly providing inspiration for stuff of my own. It's largely set in a Staples store, which reminded me of
this piece I wrote for the Guardian a couple of years back. I'd quite like to write a bit more about Mr Dandfleace and Paperclip World. Anyway, you should read Coupland if you haven't already. He's amazing.
Currently I'm on
Julian Barnes's "History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters." He's another favourite. I'm also reading the second half of the Pompeii book by Mary Beard that I started a month or so ago, which is still as good as it was back then.
I also had a crack at Day by A L Kennedy, but I couldn't get into it at all. I think it was a problem with me, rather than the book, as it's got excellent reviews, but sometimes you're not in the right frame of mind when you start something or just can't get under the skin of what's going on. I've certainly experienced this a few times with books (like stuff by Julian Barnes) that I've later gone on to love. I'll give this another chance at some point in the future and hopefully get more out of it then. Maybe it's because I am more familiar with Coupland and Barnes now, but whenever I pick anything up by them I am almost immediately transported and enraptured by whatever world they've created. But then some books you pick up feel like just words on a page that could be written in another language.
Blah blah blah. Back to the beach, motherfuckers.
