I will tell you a little story - about one Olive Archer, who died last December 20, 2008, aged 83, Before her death, she had spent five years in a care. She had never married or had any children; an umblemished life had been spent looking after her sick mother.
The minister of Olive’s local parish church, Reverend Londsdale, was so moved by the urban tragedy that he made a public appeal for anyone, friends or relatives, to come forward and make themeselves known so that someone, anyone, could mourn Olive’s passing and pay respects on January 14, the day of her funeral.
"You can’t help but wonder what her hopes and dreams were, said Lonsdale."it just seems dreadful that, at the end of her long life, no one will be at her funeral to remember and celebrate her."
The media went absolutely bonkers, with competing headlines of heartbreak, citing a much-loved Beatles’ song and calling Olive "Eleanor Rigby de nos jours" ("…died in the church and was buried along with her name, nobody came… all the lonely people, where do they all come from?") A battle-hardened people, usually cloaked in selfishness and self-absorption, tearfully choked on it breakfast cereals.
Thanks to the publicity, you could almost hear the emotional drawbridges of the nation being pulled dow, one by one. This could be me, I thought.
Dying all alone, in old age, in this fragmented corner of our wide universe, with no one to remember us and no one to remark upon our lives and our passing from it, is a terrifying thin indeed.Yes, the timber of humanity is crooked, but not so crooked, for on January 14, the church of Reverend Lonsdale was bursting at the seams, with a standing-room only crowd of mourners, strangers to each other all of them, who, out of the largeness of their hearts, gave this moder-day Eleanor Rigby a warm and moving send-off to her Maker, at last.
— and so i refuse to be Eleanor Rigby, staring in the stupefying emptiness and with junkyards of memories for company. It is said that life is short, nasty and brutish. And, oh God!, there are so many lost and lonely people in this frequently hostile world, who bear the heavy weight of solitude.
We want so much to be happy, happy, happy that it makes us miserable! I don not want to be one of them. It is a pious fiction to believe that all you need to be happy and well is to have a wing and a prayer.
The truth is it’s bloddy hard work, and I am now going to pick my chin up off the floor, calm my torments and stop feeling sorry for myself, so that i could embrace the fullness of life.
As we navigate dangerous shoals, sometimes without a paddle, we are, I believe, shaped and polished through adversity.
Released from an unholy bargain, I might now take unbridled pleasure in life’s little discoveries– the lyrics of a well-remembered song, a bottle of full bodied claret saved for rainy day, a friend who makes me laugh so much she makes me cry, a host of golden daffodils in my garden, and, oh dear God, the benelovent parting of ashen-gray clouds. (Pictures Courtesy of The Telegraph and Daily Mail)
Once full nudity had become acceptable in the early 90s, it is well-known (although has always been denied) that the body responsible for film certification in the UK adopted the "Mull of Kintyre principle": if a penis is to be shown, it cannot be more erect than the degree to which the Kintyre peninsula extends from the Scottish mainland. (that’s it, in red ->)
