that going to the bathroom. But it makes an interesting alternative to the old G & T. And my head wasnât at all fuggy this morning.
Perhaps I might develop a taste for it. Perhaps in six months or so Iâll have the beginnings of my own ladyâs beergut. Nothing particularly imposing. Just a bump big enough to rest my pint glass on. As I hold forth on my dayâs bricklaying. And complain about the price of sand and cement.
A couple of months ago I did a bit of cursory Googling
A couple of months ago I did a bit of cursory Googling and tripped over some startling statistic, regarding how many women lose their husbands each day of the year. I’ve forgotten the actual number, but it was many more than one might have imagined. I have this picture in my head of a hundred newly minted widows popping up across the country the very same day I burst onto the scene. And every last one of us with that same stunned expression on our face.
Sadly, the fact that I’m not alone in losing my husband is of no comfort to me. I have no desire to get all sisterly about it. I feel not the slightest need to hold hands with all the other widows and make one great big daisy chain of grief. Suffering, I’m inclined to think, is a solitary business. And, I could be wrong, but I suspect that a fair proportion of the other widows feel the same.
*
I can’t help but notice the continuing proliferation of roadside floral tributes. Either they’re actually on the increase or I just tend to notice them more these last few months. I passed one earlier this week, just down the road from here. Some sorry-looking, garage-bought bouquet, still in its cellophane wrapper, slowly turning to dust.
Do the people who lay these flowers imagine they’reperforming some public service? That their sad little posies are going to prick people’s conscience and improve road safety? Or are they just hoping to provoke in all the passing motorists a few brief moments of empathetic sadness? Either way, they’re deluded. Perhaps, suspecting that no one else actually gives much of a monkey’s about their ‘loss’, they have gone out of their way to draw attention to it. As if, by spelling out their loved one’s name in petals, they could make the world sit up and take notice, and that this might somehow siphon off some of the pain.
The first floral tribute I remember seeing was out near Barnes, a good thirty years ago now. A few flowers tied to a tree on the common. I hadn’t a clue what they were doing there until some friend explained that the previous year some pop star had been killed in a car crash at that particular spot. It was just some teeny-boppers laying flowers at the site of the death of their idol. I’m sure they were very upset, and that they thought they loved him. But I mean really.
I imagine it’s the same misguided instinct that was at work after the death of Princess Diana. When half of central London seemed to be carpeted with flowers. I can’t be alone in thinking that that public outpouring of emotion was quite obscene in its magnitude. At the time, no doubt, there was much talk of some shared sense of sadness, but I thought then and still think that whilst there might have been the veneer of unanimity, beneath it simmered something almost sinisterly self-involved.
But at what point did the whole flower-laying concept shift from being something one did for famous people to something one did for one’s own brother or daughter or son? I must have missed it. Although, if people are laying wreaths for complete bloody strangers it’s only reasonable that genuine mourners be allowed to create a shrine for their own flesh and blood.
But now everyone’s bloody well at it. A teenage boy is shot dead in some faceless city and before the police have finished cordoning off the area there’s a gaggle of girls hugging one another and clutching single roses and grieving for the cameras. The body’s barely cold and they’re already
Perhaps I might develop a taste for it. Perhaps in six months or so Iâll have the beginnings of my own ladyâs beergut. Nothing particularly imposing. Just a bump big enough to rest my pint glass on. As I hold forth on my dayâs bricklaying. And complain about the price of sand and cement.
A couple of months ago I did a bit of cursory Googling
A couple of months ago I did a bit of cursory Googling and tripped over some startling statistic, regarding how many women lose their husbands each day of the year. I’ve forgotten the actual number, but it was many more than one might have imagined. I have this picture in my head of a hundred newly minted widows popping up across the country the very same day I burst onto the scene. And every last one of us with that same stunned expression on our face.
Sadly, the fact that I’m not alone in losing my husband is of no comfort to me. I have no desire to get all sisterly about it. I feel not the slightest need to hold hands with all the other widows and make one great big daisy chain of grief. Suffering, I’m inclined to think, is a solitary business. And, I could be wrong, but I suspect that a fair proportion of the other widows feel the same.
*
I can’t help but notice the continuing proliferation of roadside floral tributes. Either they’re actually on the increase or I just tend to notice them more these last few months. I passed one earlier this week, just down the road from here. Some sorry-looking, garage-bought bouquet, still in its cellophane wrapper, slowly turning to dust.
Do the people who lay these flowers imagine they’reperforming some public service? That their sad little posies are going to prick people’s conscience and improve road safety? Or are they just hoping to provoke in all the passing motorists a few brief moments of empathetic sadness? Either way, they’re deluded. Perhaps, suspecting that no one else actually gives much of a monkey’s about their ‘loss’, they have gone out of their way to draw attention to it. As if, by spelling out their loved one’s name in petals, they could make the world sit up and take notice, and that this might somehow siphon off some of the pain.
The first floral tribute I remember seeing was out near Barnes, a good thirty years ago now. A few flowers tied to a tree on the common. I hadn’t a clue what they were doing there until some friend explained that the previous year some pop star had been killed in a car crash at that particular spot. It was just some teeny-boppers laying flowers at the site of the death of their idol. I’m sure they were very upset, and that they thought they loved him. But I mean really.
I imagine it’s the same misguided instinct that was at work after the death of Princess Diana. When half of central London seemed to be carpeted with flowers. I can’t be alone in thinking that that public outpouring of emotion was quite obscene in its magnitude. At the time, no doubt, there was much talk of some shared sense of sadness, but I thought then and still think that whilst there might have been the veneer of unanimity, beneath it simmered something almost sinisterly self-involved.
But at what point did the whole flower-laying concept shift from being something one did for famous people to something one did for one’s own brother or daughter or son? I must have missed it. Although, if people are laying wreaths for complete bloody strangers it’s only reasonable that genuine mourners be allowed to create a shrine for their own flesh and blood.
But now everyone’s bloody well at it. A teenage boy is shot dead in some faceless city and before the police have finished cordoning off the area there’s a gaggle of girls hugging one another and clutching single roses and grieving for the cameras. The body’s barely cold and they’re already
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