Author: billyblagg

Five Years

Posted on by billyblagg

23rd December 2022

Tomorrow will be my fifth Christmas Eve without Gail. This barely seems possible.

Christmas Eve 1987, under the clock on High Wycombe Station (Eat yer heart out, Trevor Howard), was the first time I told Gail I loved her and it subsequently became ‘our day’. Though we tried to make sure we spent every subsequent 24th December together, situations at the time dictated we were sometimes apart; though we never really were (if you know what I mean).

When we moved in together in 1994 we made sure we made every Christmas Eve after count but now, strangely, it’s those missed ones before ’94 – the ones where all I had were feelings and memories but couldn’t see her – that get me through every year. I get strength from those. The others rip me to shreds.

I was looking for some festive photos for the Calendar and unexpectedly found this from 2014 and I wanted to post it here. We were doing our usual Christmas Eve West End thing; Harrods, lunch where we first met, Selfridges, Billecart-salmon champagne in the Hix Cocktail Bar overlooking the designer bags area – watching everyone buying last-minute presents that cost us more than we made in a week – then a top meal after Hix (occasionally) threw us out.

As we’d entered the store she’d found this purse. It was pure Gail; Ted Baker ‘Itty bitty’, pink and stupidly expensive. I feigned a lack of interest (not the hardest acting job I’ve had, to be fair), but when we stopped at the Bar I made an excuse and went to buy it for her. I loved buying stuff like this for her, loved seeing her face as she opened it. She could make you feel like a King at times like that. It got good use too, it was the purse she always kept the coins in when we went abroad.

It’s a lovely memory.

I hope you all make your own memories this year and cherish them forever.

Merry Christmas to you all x

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24th December 2022

I’ve always got on well with my brother-in-law from my first marriage. Although we are very different people, there is a meeting of minds of sorts and he ‘gets me’ really well. He emailed me the other day; ‘I won’t ask what type of Christmas you’ll be having. I know you’re a traditionalist. You’ll have been playing Christmas music since November; you’ll have seen at least one production of ‘A Christmas Carol’, you’ll be wearing a Christmas jumper and on the day you’ll have a Champagne breakfast, the speech from the Crown, full Turkey dinner at the table with a decent red. You’ll even share the table with the Ghost of Christmas Past”

It made me laugh a lot.

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1st January 2023

The 5th anniversary of Christmas and New Year without Gail and I thought I managed it reasonably well. I did the usual Christmas Eve thing; bought some after-shave in Selfridges, glass of champagne at the Oyster bar and even got a late booking for a production of ‘A Christmas Carol’. I locked the door a bit after I got in, but I saw some friends later in the week and even went to a Pantomime with another friend. Caught up with someone I’d not seen in a good while on NYE afternoon then sat down later with a decent port and some fine cheese to watch Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. Ten minutes in and The Real Thing are on doing ‘You To Me Are Everything’ – Gail’s funeral entrance song if you’ve arrived here late. I mean, ten minutes into 2023? I really don’t believe in anything but sometimes I do feel greater forces are at work. “That’ll larn ya” I hear her say.

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6th January 2023

A serious advocate of the 12 days of Christmas I refuse to take my decorations down before Twelfth Night. So today it’s time to pack away the Christmas decorations and ruminate on the fact that I’m possibly the only heterosexual man in the UK who has a tree full of white and silver shoes and handbags, fluffy white balls and feathers. Once again, I’ve promised myself I’ll change them but I doubt I ever will; not because of the fear of change but because if/when I do change them I will have a fair number of decorations that I will then be faced with getting rid of. I know myself well enough to realise I couldn’t put them in a black bin bag so it would probably be a donation to a charity shop somewhere and I’m not sure that is a journey I can make.

It made me consider how strange the grieving mind works.

Had Gail been here it’s unlikely I’d be wrapping these shoes and handbags in tissue paper for another year. Gail was a force of nature who brushed all aside when she felt something needed to change. The existing decorations relate to the ‘white and silver phase’ but I’m sure we’ve probably had a red & green or purple & gold state since then but I’ve just missed it. Gail never missed these things. She had an uncanny knack for knowing when the next thing was coming along to the extent that I’d see her looking for, say a mustard dress or a pair of teale boots and I’d say ‘Is Mustard/Teale this year’s black?’ ‘You’re larning’ she’d reply. It got to be one of those standing jokes that couples have and it used to make her laugh when I spotted a colour trend on the High Street and managed to get in a ‘Is that this year’s black?’ before something had even entered the house.

I recall traipsing all over Marmaris one year, going into shop after shop until I eventually asked her what the hell we were looking for. ‘Pandora jewellery’ she told me. “Who’s Pandora?” I stupidly asked. “It’s the next big thing” she answered. I knew better to ask how she knew because she always did. There were never any fashion magazines or web sites scrutinised; it was as if she just had some sixth sense or some fashion clip beamed directly into her brain. Sure enough the following Christmas was a rush on Pandora jewellery and Gail had a drawer full to wear or sell. “Wow Pandora” they’d say “Where’d you get that?” while I’d recall a baking hot summer day haggling in a Bazaar with an entranced Turkish trader.

So, deity of choice willing, next December I will again open up the Christmas tree box – almost certainly in a new house – look at the shoes and handbags and wonder if it’s time to seek out the latest thing.

I dunno. I still don’t feel like ‘I’m larning’.

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Five Years (Preface)

Posted on by billyblagg

Back in the summer on the 4th anniversary of Gail’s death, I posted on Facebook from Porto where I’d gone for my getaway

‘Four years ago tonight was the last time I spoke to Gail. This seems utterly bizarre. Like picking up a telescope in the dark, never sure what way round it is, I’m uncertain if she will be so far away that the whole relationship seems like a febrile fantasy or so close that I can just shout out and she’ll answer.’

I wrote it late in the evening just about the time I had last spoken to her. I was in a great City that she would have loved, seeing places she’d have liked, eating food she’d have approved of and I’d had a few reds too – which she would definitely have enjoyed! When I read it back later it seemed unbearably poignant but also something I was pleased with as it captured my immediate feeling so accurately. What was nice was that many people contacted me to say that they ‘got it’ and felt the same.

That phrase became the subject of another thought later though as I realised that short reflections like that were exactly the type of thing that prompted me to start this blog in the first place, but somehow, over the years, that had fallen away and I had only posted here if I had something specific that would make up a few hundred word post. I realised that social media is still the best place to get a short consideration like that out. This isn’t the place for a fifty word idea.

This brought me back to something that had concerned me soon after I started this blog; which is how long exactly should I continue to do it? I think I mentioned elsewhere that a lot of places I visited on the web seemed to stop after the first year. I felt that was wrong as it gives the impression that after a full cycle has been completed, grief gets easier and it buys into the whole myth of ‘time being a great healer’. Conversely, I did see the issue with continuing after the year; essentially most people just assume you’ve come to terms with it and are back on the road and sympathy for your feelings are – if not exactly non-existent – certainly strained. The only people who understand are those it has happened too.

I’m now approaching my fifth Christmas without Gail and, honestly, none of them have been any easier than the first one. In fact, apart from odd incidents that have stuck I’m not even sure I have had five. Whole Christmas Days seem to have blocked from my mind; Boxing days are virtually non-existent. I’ve even found myself counting up on occasion to make sure I have the dates right. Was the third one the lockdown? No, that was the second, wasn’t it?

So here’s what I’ve decided. I’m going to open up a page called ‘Five Years’ and post various thoughts that strike me during the year and then – at the end of the five year anniversary in August next year I’m going to stop and just leave the blog here for posterity (in reality when I die and no-one is going to pay the annual fee!).

I think I’ve done what I needed to do. I think Gail would have appreciated what I’ve done but mostly I’ve done it because it’s helped me.

So that’s it. Five years, stuck on my eyes perhaps.

God Save The Queen

Posted on by billyblagg

The death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8th September 2022 opened up some interesting discussions on grief, mortality, the need to mourn and eventually – yes, I’m afraid so! – embrace the succession and move on.

It didn’t seem to matter if you believed yourself to be a Monarchist or Royalist or if you thought the whole scenario was an unedifying spectacle that you wanted nothing to do with; a large majority of the population seemed to get drawn into the fact the Queen was not only a well-respected Head of State but was also a Grandmother and Mother and many found themselves profoundly affected by the events of the Monarch’s passing. As the days unrolled in September there seemed to be something in the air,

Like the vast majority of the UK population, I’d never known anyone else on the Throne in my lifetime and, despite the Queen’s age and frailty, there was a genuine shock when the news came through. As everything turned to black and the media became a 24 hour mourn hub however, those on the edges of Republicanism – and I count myself among them – found themselves avoiding TV and radio and news outlets as the whole thing seemed to drag interminably with little to say that hadn’t already been said succinctly in the first 24 hours.

But then an odd thing seemed to happen. As the music stations tried to find a suitable tone and the sounds became more melancholic and restrained, I found myself becoming maudlin and introspective – even more than usual that is! – something I found difficult to disperse even if I played my own music and didn’t listen to the radio or turn on the TV.

I felt the need to go up to London on the day the Queen returned to London but my ideas of getting around the City soon fell apart as I realised that the short cuts and clever rat-runs I’d congratulated myself on knowing were now just largely boarded areas. I made do with going to see some of the flowers in Green Park.

Then later that night, my daughter sent me some photos of her in the queue for the Lying in State. She had joined it on a whim immediately after the opening of Westminster Hall and was among the first mourners to pass through. I hadn’t thought it would be something that would particularly bother her but she seemed to want to commemorate the event and the sense of sharing a loss became even more pertinent when, a few days later, she told me she’d taken my mum’s scarf as ‘Nan would have wanted to be here’. I found that really moving and got quite emotional thinking about it; it just crystallised some thoughts of my own.

Without really showing any particular interest prior to her death in 1997, Gail had become quite emotional when Princess Diana had died and had insisted we go up on several occasions to see the flowers. Having often been quite disparaging about the Royal family from time to time, Gail surprised me by taking some things along herself to lay in the vast display that sat in front of the gates of Kensington Palace. I couldn’t help but think what she would have thought about this momentous event. Regardless of anything else, there was no denying the historical aspect and Gail had always loved history and the succession of Kings and Queens and I knew she’d have wanted to show her respects or be involved in some small way.

I instinctively felt that I should follow my daughter’s lead and go to the Queen’s Lying in State as it is something Gail would have wanted to do and would have wanted me to do for her, so after several abortive attempts when the queue seemed too long for me to reasonably stand, I joined the queue early on Sunday morning; the day before the funeral.

I’d changed my mind so many times before I actually left the house, I couldn’t rightly say why I did what I did but I was undoubtably influenced firstly by my daughter but then by the interviews with those who’d paid their respects on TV. So many said they were there representing lost members of their own family; Mother’s and Grandmothers who’d loved the Queen and had passed, Father’s and Grandfathers who had served in the forces and for whom she represented their commanding officer. I felt the shared sadness of losing someone vital and the Queen seemed to have become, in a slightly ironic way. a figure head for something else; a focal point for grief.

Queuing that day It was one of the best decisions I’ve made and the eleven hours snaking along the Thames are something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I don’t really want to say much about what I found when I got to the end of the journey – there’s little I can add that hasn’t been said elsewhere – but I will just mention the stillness; not the quiet (although that was certainly apparent) but rather the sense that entering the hall you were looking at a tableau and the mourners were moving through a picture postcard. It was a unique experience.

I returned to London and Hyde Park the following day to see the funeral on the big screens and, as often seems the way after a funeral, (however massive) the air seemed to lift in the following days. If I could be said to have been at the funeral by dint by being in the same City, then this was actually one of four funerals I attended in a little over six weeks.

We’re now into Autumn and things are slowly changing. For the first time since 2018, I’ve actually managed to do this year what I said I’d always do and that is be away somewhere for each of the Anniversaries; three of the breaks were solo and one with my kids and my daughter-in-law and son-in-law. I’ve also bought a new house and should be moving early next year.

A succession of sorts? The Queen is dead; Long Live the King.

On The Beach

Posted on by billyblagg

Life’s rich tapestry, eh?

If you’d told me five years ago I’d be on holiday in Dubrovnik on Gail’s birthday with my son and daughter-in-law, daughter and son-in-law, I’d have suggested you get a lint-free cloth and polish up your crystal ball a little better.

To say Gail and I were a self-contained unit would be putting it mildly. We never needed other people and were perfectly happy just being in each other’s company. In my case, people would nod and say ‘Of course he’d be happy just being with her’ but with Gail the supposition seemed to be that she wanted more dynamism is her life and somehow I was holding her back. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never wanted to hold Gail back from anything she wanted to do, and I actively encouraged her to try things she might otherwise not have experienced even if they didn’t involve me. But she often complained to me about the expectations that people had of her, wondering why people only saw a side of her that – while it existed – wasn’t her full personality.

While I knew full well what it was that people got from her company, it was very difficult to describe what happened when someone came into her orbit. Somehow, once they’d met her, they wanted more from her than she was often able to give. It’s difficult standing outside and seeing a personality bubble and shine, yourself a victim of it of sorts, but also with a different perspective on it that nobody else seemed to grasp (This isn’t me giving myself some side here either; Gail told me as much herself).

We’d met people on holiday before and, while happy to make their acquaintance, we didn’t want to spend more than a meal time or an evening drink with them. Gail had said to me ‘Let’s go out for the day so we can get away from [whoever]. The thing is that would suggest we didn’t like these people or didn’t get along with them but that isn’t the case. Inevitably though, the blame for her not being around for these people was down to me as it was assumed Gail would never have turned on her back on their company. I have to be careful here but one of the couples – much older than us – we grew very fond of and I am still in touch with; the other – well, let’s just say the male half was a TV personality – and he and his wife gave the impression that they thought I was locking her in the room so they couldn’t see her. “He doesn’t like you” was all Gail said, barely supressing a giggle.

As far as family were concerned we were both of the opinion that you nurtured children through the early part of their life and they then went their own way. We used to holiday together when they were younger but the teenage years put an end to that – they were Gail’s step-children so it was unfair to foist that trial on her – and while Gail did occasionally go on short breaks with her own daughter – usually to Marmaris to do shopping – the idea of us all going on holiday together just wouldn’t have arisen. Since Gail’s passing, I had been on holiday with both my children and their spouses as couples – itself a major development – but there was no denying this extended Fam thing was a new venture.

Of course, some see this as chance to put that tick next to the box that says ‘Moving On’ or ‘Making New Memories’ and, much as I despise it, it’s pretty difficult to argue against that. I am moving forward at least; I’m still here and determined to do , experience and see things and the fact I was away on Gail’s birthday was certainly no coincidence. I’m need to be somewhere on those days and this holiday, originally planned in 2019, was another opportunity to cover one of them. Of course, it was great spending time with my kids; seeing your offspring becoming fully-rounded adults dealing with life on their own terms is extremely rewarding.

I woke early on the morning of the 3rd and decided to go for a walk. I called up Gail’s music on my phone and went to the nearby Copacabana Beach. The gang and I had spent the morning there a few days before and it was a lovely spot; not crowded even then. Today, it was beautiful morning, warm sunshine and a gorgeous early light reflecting off the Adriatic but with absolutely no-one in sight. I just sat down and played the songs that meant a lot to us. It was very emotional and I felt very close to her. It got the day off to a reverential start for me and it felt good. I distanced myself a bit during the day but the birthday was never mentioned and in the evening we all went into the walled town and had out a big meal. It made a huge hole in the budget but it wouldn’t have been right to do anything else.

We all agreed that Dubrovnik really is a fantastic destination and my kids – better travelled than me even – reckoned it was one of the most beautiful places they’d ever seen. There wasn’t an hour that passed that week though, when I didn’t think ‘Gail would have loved this’. I still feel she’s holidaying with me and I know I don’t ever want that to change.

6am Copacabana Beach, Dubrovnik

After Life

Posted on by billyblagg

January 14th was After Life 3 day.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, After Life is a TV show on Netflix, what critics might call a ‘bittersweet’ dark comedy, written and starring Ricky Gervais who plays Tony, a man who has lost his wife Lisa and is struggling to cope. Set in the small fictional town of Tambury, Tony is an everyman whose life has been torn apart in losing the one thing that made him whole.

It’s a work of genius.

The first episode of the first series was released on March 8th 2019 and I devoured the six episodes with relish. Gervais has always had the capacity to pluck at the heartstrings – the Christmas party scenes in ‘The Office’ specials really resonated with me – and I was ready made for a story about a man trying to cope after losing his wife, seeing myself in so many of the scenes.

Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who loved it and After Life 2 was announced soon after, premiering in April 2020. The day it was released I did something I’ve never done before. With it starting in the early hours of the morning, I simply cancelled the day and watched it all back to back throughout the night. I wasn’t disappointed.

I was so moved by the writing in the twelve episodes available from the first two series that I contacted Ricky Gervais to compliment him. How he could have written that without having had experience of losing his wife is testament to how skilful a writer he is. To his credit, he wrote back and thanked me too.

With After Life 3 I was a little more circumspect on my viewing, with the show being released at 8am I staggered my 30 minute sessions through the day making sure I had a lunch in-between. The final scene left me both elated and deflated in equal measure. Elated because the promising relationship between Tony and Ashley Jensen’s character ‘Emma’ did fizzle out denying us the happy ending the show really didn’t need but looked as if it might be heading toward, and deflated just because the show had finished and had given me so many poignant moments.

There will be no After Life 4 and I think that’s a good thing. The ending for 3 described by Gervais as ‘Well .. life goes on’ – not how I saw it but how can you argue with the man who wrote it? – rounds things up admirably I suppose but, and I have to admit here, there were elements of the characterisation and story around Tony that didn’t really work for me this time out and the last episode in particular seemed clumsy and ill-advised, trying to tie off things that could have been left. However, It was Tony I was interested in and his story arc is the only one that matters and, even if I didn’t interpret the end as it was intended, then that’s OK.

The key scene in the third series for me – one that made me stop, get a drink, swallow hard and think on before continuing – was the scene with the lemon. It really was superb. Throughout the series we’ve seen Lisa – excellently and poignantly played by Kerry Godliman – appear only in flashback on Tony’s homemade videos. In this particular scene, on Tony’s video you see him drawing a face on a lemon and placing it back in a bowl ready for Lisa to pick it up as she cooks. Seeing the face Lisa complains to Tony, as he laughs, saying that she can’t use it now because of the face, exactly the reaction that Tony intended. It’s a beautiful moment; a superb observation of the type of small detail you find in a good relationship, one which the people concerned know only too well but would probably never mention to anyone else.

The key part of this scene though is that, after we witness the flashback video, we see Tony has drawn a face on a lemon for his new prospective girlfriend Emma to find. “You’ve drawn a face on this” she says, saying nothing more before cutting it up. You know a decisive moment in the relationship has passed.

I realised after seeing this that I’ve had my own lemon face moments. More importantly perhaps, is the fact that those moments don’t have to be engineered. That horrible moment where you’re trying to get along but find yourself cut adrift by someone missing a point or not being what you want them to be is a horrible feeling because, of course, it’s not the other person’s fault they don’t know what to do with the lemon any more than you can help how you feel about it. The result is a hideous sort of desolation; the sure knowledge that everything you ever had is gone and can’t be replaced however much you might think you want it.

It’s not true that if life gives you lemons you can always make lemonade.

Christmas Just Ain’t Christmas

Posted on by billyblagg

My fourth Christmas without Gail. It seems barely credible. I never knew how I got through the first one, yet I seem to have survived four. But then, of course, that’s what happens. You just keep going and going and suddenly you’re years away from the event, looking back wondering how you got where you are.

After last December’s pandemic lockdown difficulties, I decided to throw myself into the season. The annual hotel stay in London that used to do every year with Gail was back on, and I booked as many festive shows, films and events as I could reasonably squeeze in.

It was OK.

People still realise that Christmas is a difficult time for me and that’s nice. I’m always asked where I’ll be on Christmas Day, who I’ll be spending the day with and the answer is always the same, but that’s OK too. It would be wrong to say I actually enjoy it but then it’s not as bad as some seem to think either. There will be at least one time during the day when it all gets too much and I will breakdown for five minutes, but I understand that is to be expected and I just deal with it and the rising panic that comes for knowing that this is how it will always be.

The fact is I’ve always loved Christmas for the time it is. There’s that warmth and happiness that the season seems to engender, but there’s also a sense of melancholy and nostalgia that inevitably accompanies it. Over the years I’ve noticed differing personalities find more of one than the other but even now I find myself getting irritated by people who say ‘Thank God that’s over’ just as the clock ticks over from Boxing Day. Reasonably you might think I’d be like that myself, but I’m really not.

I think back to that first Christmas Eve that I spent with Gail and, in many ways, it just seems to encapsulate everything I’ve felt every Christmas before and since. There was happiness, excitement, anticipation and love, and there was sadness and loss, despair and anguish too. I can see and feel and smell that Christmas Eve as if it happened yesterday and the fact it took us six years before we spent one together, meant some of the feelings I’ve had every Christmas since 2018 have been feelings I’ve experienced before. The only difference is the hope then that one day they may be different; now, of course, I know they never will be.

Really though Christmas can be seen as the fulcrum of the year; a time when we look back and forward. I’ve done another one then, I guess and that’s probably the best thing I can say about it.

Our last Christmas photo

Words

Posted on by billyblagg

I’ve always been fascinated with language. The ability to capture an emotion, mood, nuance or feeling in a song, story or poem seems to me to be the greatest thing. I’m also always astonished when I find a word in another language that doesn’t have an English equivalent. How does that happen?

This is the 3rd Anniversary of Gail’s passing and I’ve done what I’ve done for every other significant day and that is to get away and try to do something different. This year sees me in Portmeirion, a place I’ve wanted to visit since I watched the TV series ‘The Prisoner’ as a boy, more years ago than I’d like to recount.

I know some people see what I do as ‘making new memories’ but it doesn’t seem like that to me. I have to do something with the day; I can’t ignore it or work through it some way, and it just seems better to be able to associate it with something I’ve always wanted to do. Three years away and even during COVID I can look back and recount where I’ve been on each successive anniversary – be it wedding, birthday, ‘D’ (No word for the day of death?) or Funeral day – and that seems a worthwhile thing. Like Hong Kong in 2019 and Egypt in 2020 I feel as if she’d have approved at me trying to do things, and in a way I feel closer to her if I can do and see things for her. Wrapped up in that though is a curious consequence.

Although I don’t remember it ever being discussed, let alone dismissed as a bad idea, the fact is coming to Portmeirion with Gail would have been extremely difficult. Due to her Lupus her mobility was always impaired and although she successfully got around Ephesus as relatively recently as 2010, Portmeirion would have been far too much. Coming to these places then means I’m doing things I wouldn’t have done had she been here and it’s too easy to see that as, if not a exactly a positive, then certainly a light in the darkness, a sense I’m – please no! – ‘moving on’. I try not to look at it like that.

For me there’s not one single aspect of my life that is better without Gail in it. However, the fact is I’ve done things, seen things, met people that I wouldn’t have done had she still been alive. All those things I’ve done and everyone I’ve met have been positive experiences – even when they might not have seemed it later on – and I’m happy and grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to do them while wishing with all my heart that it had never been necessary.

Because I posted some photos of Portmeirion on social media, I got a lot of support and positivity from people – many of whom I have never met. In amongst the wishes was the inevitable ‘It gets easier’ or ‘Time is a great healer’. I used to wonder about that three years ago. What exactly was going to happen when that time came and how would I recognise it? Would I have days where I simply wouldn’t think about Gail and what would fill that void instead?

What I’ve discovered after three years is that no-one has the language to adequately describe what actually happens. People generally are trying to help but, like those who tell me I will ‘see her again’ – something that rankles with me as it surmises a belief that shouldn’t be assumed – telling me it gets easier is just a collection of words designed to console.

To confuse matters, some who tell me it gets easier have occasionally experienced the same loss but are just a year or two or three further down the line; suggesting their is some end point I’ve not yet reached. However, that thought was expunged when, on one occasion, I discovered one consoler actually lost their partner more recently than me, but just assumed my loss must be more recent because of the pain I was describing. Did that person then actually feel better than me? Had they discovered some biblical-style grace that meant they felt the loss less keenly?

So let’s put this thing into some type of context. It doesn’t get easier, time isn’t a great healer, but what happens is it gets different. It isn’t more fun, you don’t relish the freedom, it’s not better to have an Anniversary meal on your own, you don’t think how lucky you are that you’ve now got the opportunity to visit this place you’d not have seen, you don’t count all the new relationships you’ve made.

What you do is the only thing left to you – you just get on with it and hope you find some nice times and thoughts to go with the ones you already had and lost.

So, a word for that please?

In Da Club

Posted on by billyblagg

I’ve never felt any affinity with those epigrams that seem to be so popular on social media; those little smart comments and bon mots that garner so many likes. The fact I get so irritated about them when I could just as easy ignore them seems to say something about me though. I think it’s because I’ve always struggled with the concept of putting everything in a nice neat box. I’m guessing it’s probably something to do with the difficulty I’ve always had in dealing with groups and organised social structures.

It’s not liked I’ve not tried over the years to be become a part of something, join in more things, but I’ve always had this strange reaction where, as soon as I’m with like-minded people discussing something I’m interested in, I always try to find a way to subvert it. Then again, I’ve made a small side-living out of doing it, so I can’t really complain

Nevertheless, despite my dislike of a well-worn phrase I think the old Groucho Marx quote about ‘Not wanting to be part of a club that would have me as a member’ sums me up pretty well.

Which is why I find myself in an odd situation here in February 2021.

The UK is in full lockdown and I’m unable to get away for the holiday I like to take to cover the whole wedding anniversary / valentine / birthday thing. However, I managed to arrange some work either side of the days (and one in-between) in the West End of London, meaning I can get away in some small way by choosing not to travel home every night but to stay in a top Mayfair hotel.

The hotel I’m staying in is a prime W1 address and is right next to a place I used to work, the company I was working for when I first spoke to Gail, in fact. I always said I’d stay here one day. It’s not the full experience; there are few other residents, the bars and restaurants are closed and I’m having to order in every night and London of course, feels very, very strange, but conversely the memories of this will linger long. A walk around a deserted Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Soho, Regent Street, Oxford Street and Bond Street at 10pm is not something many people will have ever seen and – I’d like to hope – it’s not something I’d want to experience again any time soon either. But there’s no denying it is an experience.

Shorn of things to do I’ve spent most of the time walking, I’ve zoom called my children – something I’d probably not have done had I been away somewhere abroad – and I’ve also caught up with my ‘membership’ – which is really what this is about.

Because I’ve joined a Facebook group for widowers.

Nobody is more surprised about this than me and the fact I’ve seemingly embraced it has really shaken me to the core but the strange thing is I’ve found it rewarding because – even though the sense of unity only lasts a while – I’ve found I’ve been comfortable enough in this company to be able to talk about those odd things, those crazy things, that nobody else goes through – only to find that many are going through the exact same thing.

I’ve attended online a few support meetings built around various issues but the one that intrigued me the most was one of the discussions on ‘waves of grief’ and how people were affected by the most ludicrous things. I found the courage to tell somebody for the first time about a plastic tub of talcum powder that Gail bought on our last holiday in Marmaris, Turkey. For no particular reason, I can see us clearly in that shop buying several things including the talcum powder. I was going to say I don’t know why I can recall the detail of that small incident as well as I do, but the fact is that day is burnt into my memory as we sat in a gorgeous restaurant in Ichmeler later and spoke about coming back the following year both of us aware of what was hanging in the air but not accepting it.

The talcum powder was in the suitcase in the loft on the day Gail died. It stayed in the suitcase as it would have done anyway and, barely having any use on that last holiday, it had subsequently travelled with me to Hong Kong, Egypt, Madeira, Sorrento and various places in the UK. However, the talc was getting very low and ran out completely on the first night in the Mayfair hotel whereupon I – frantic with frustration and anger at myself – spent the best part of 30 minutes trying to prise the top off so I could refill it from another container because I simply couldn’t throw the empty Turkish one out.

In one of those moments where it’s as if you have an out-of-body experience and can peer down watching yourself doing something crazy, I considered a situation where I actually managed to prise off the top, filled the old container with new talc from Boots or somewhere and then pushed the top back on only to find on my next holiday that I opened my suitcase to find my bag overflowing with white powder. Why was I doing this? It was insane! But it made no difference.

Not only was I able to tell complete strangers this but those strangers fully understood and also had their own stories of being unable to part with inanimate objects. It seemed to me after that everyone is so busy discussing pieces of furniture, little knick-knack’s, clothes, keepsakes etc that nobody ever mentions the real things that drive you to despair.

There have been other discussions, of course. Things that will probably make more sense to those who tell you “I’m glad you’re speaking to people about it – it will help you” as those are the very people who can never understand your affinity with a plastic Turkish container – one that sits just a few feet away in my suitcase – but it’s that discussion that keeps coming back to me; that one discussion that made me think I might have at last found a club I’m comfortable being a member of.

In conclusion I was going to finish this blog with a photo of the talcum powder container. But I decided to go with the lockdown London 2021 instead.

It still makes more sense.

Oxford Street 10.30pm February 13th 2021
Piccadilly Circus 9.30pm February 13th 2021
Leicester Square 9.45pm February 13th 2021

The Bed’s Too Big Without You

Posted on by billyblagg

I commemorate the big days – the birthday, the wedding anniversary, the D-Day – but I tend not to count the months. That way madness lies.

Having said that though, I notice as I type this that is has been exactly 30 months to the day I lost Gail. That’s significant. I understand a lack of sleep in the first year or so of grieving; I know how the mind races looking for answers to questions it can’t possibly find the answer to. But 30 months? Surely, in that time one or two decent nights sleep are not too much to ask for?

I’ve discussed this before (Sweet Dreams) but things seem to have gotten worse rather than better and I’m not seeing any real end to it. Lack of sleep, disquieting dreams, night sweats and awful, nerve shredding nightmares are one of the worst side-effects of grief. I know from speaking to others in a similar situation that they all suffer from them and all find them upsetting and bewildering but I rarely see anything written about it. I wonder why that is? The lack of acknowledgment is fascinating considering the surfeit of advice and self-help I’ve received for every other aspect of dealing with my life post-Gail.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, there’s a lot of well-intentioned nonsense to be had from others trying to console and encourage you as you attempt to recover from losing a loved one, in fact only today I was told I was ‘doing grand’ by someone I’ve not seen in two years. Depending on my mood, it can be very funny or faintly annoying; on a bad day it can induce Grief Tourette’s, but the only advice I’ve ever had on bad nightmares is ‘they can’t hurt you’. And there lies the rub.

Because for all the exercise, contemplation, meeting people, spending time on my own, going out, staying in, yoga, transcendental meditation – insert as applicable – that has been suggested for my wellbeing, nobody – and particularly me – has any advice on what I can instruct my head to do when I go to sleep. And, oh my God, it does some strange and terrible things.

One thing I think it’s vital to point out is that it never lets me dream about Gail as I knew her. Good or bad she is simply not there like that. This seems awfully cruel. After all, we’ve penning sonnets and writing love songs for centuries in which the protagonist gets to dream about his or her loved one. Poor Roy Orbison – and there was a man who had more than his share of tragedy – made a whole career out of dreamin’. I dream about Gail but never of her, she’s always on the periphery somewhere, usually somewhere I can’t get to her and I’m searching for her or just full of the knowledge that she’s unobtainable.

For many nights I searched a theatre that I knew she was in, going up and down aisles seeing if I could see her. Often I’d return to an aisle where I thought I’d glimpsed her only to find it was blocked off. I’d awake from these dreams, stressed and anxious and deeply disturbed. They would impinge on my day and be difficult to shake and yet, of course, they couldn’t harm me, they were just my brain’s way of dealing with a situation. So what can I do to make my brain have ‘nice thoughts’ and give me a decent night’s rest? Well, there seems to a marked lack of advice on what I can do about that!

Strangely, the theatre dream disappeared after I told someone about it and I did briefly contemplate ringing someone randomly every day to tell them of last night’s dream in the hope it would expunge it from brain once uttered but figured what few friends I had might disappear altogether if I carried on like that. My current dreams often involve Gail’s ex-husband – a man I’d never met and not considered for one moment in 30 years (I knew her before him and she left him for me – long story! – so it’s not as if I’ve any axe to grind). They make no sense and I genuinely don’t believe I have or had any deep-rooted issue with the man; rather I think my brain is trying to tell me something or get something out but I can’t figure out what it is.

Just two months after Gail passed I bought a new bed. I couldn’t bear to sleep any longer in something that she’d been in and would never be in again, so I decided to make a wholesale change and sell the divan base as well as the mattress and just get new. I thought I researched it well at the time but I’ve began wondering if I was just so desperate to make a change that I made the wrong choice so, even though it’s less than two years since I bought the new bed I decided I needed to make more changes.

So yes, the big news is I have something new in my life now; something that is supposed to make my life better. I’m just getting used to it but the cats seem to have already decided and they are perfectly happy with the change. Allow me to introduce you to Emma. Emma Mattress. I’ll let you know if this is a match that is going to last.

The Long and Winding Road

Posted on by billyblagg

It’s been over three months since I’ve last updated here, and I’m aware that’s significant.

It’s not through tardiness or waning interest in this project – far from it – but I will concede my criticisms of those blogs that have a one year timeline might have been a bit hasty. If you decide to chart your progress – or lack of it – by a period of time then you have some end to it. I’m worried some people might come here and think ‘Oh, he’s still rambling on, is he? It’s been x years now. Get on with it man!’

But then again that is what scares me; that circular concern that some people looking for some sort of solace from grief will think it either wanes after a period or, conversely, it never ends and there is no hope from it. I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. Some find other things in life to focus on. Others find a way of working around it, while some are unable to move one iota and it lives on in them forever.

Someone I met this year – someone I liked a lot and wouldn’t have met had I not been widowed – described every day as like ‘walking through treacle’. I quite liked the analogy but being the awkward so and so I am I couldn’t help but put the analogy through its paces to see if it could keep up. I was wondering if you ever get free of the treacle and you move as you used to? Or do you eventually build up some strength through the constant movement and it makes it easier to walk? Or does nothing change and you just get used to walking through treacle? (OK too far, I know!)

It’s interesting how we are prepared to face some things in life but find it hard to accept the inevitability in death. For example, if a 60-year-old could run as fast as he could when he was 16 then that would be a wondrous thing – but he can’t, of course and wouldn’t expect to. It would be wrong to say we like that fact but we at least understand it and accept it; to do otherwise would be pointless. But surely that’s the same with grief? We can’t be like we were when that special person was around but somehow we refuse to accept it.

Anyway, a lot has been going on – although in many ways nothing has been going on! – in 2020 and it has affected me enormously. Since January, I have been emptying my parents home. I’m an only child and I can’t and won’t ask for help as I feel it is my duty and, in any case, any help will still amount to the same thing i.e ‘What do you want to do with this?’ I may as well keep it simple.

I won’t lie, there have been days when I’ve got a boost from achieving something over there, but those trips to East London are also mentally wearing, knowing I’ve done them at least twice a week since I left home at 21 and now I’m doing exactly the same thing but without having anyone either with me as I travel, or having anyone to greet me when I arrive. I had considered renting out the property but I realise now I can’t do that. It will tie me to the house and the need to revisit. I need to let it go.

And now it’s December, and the house that used to be baking hot with a roaring fire in the living room, smelling of Christmas as my father burnt chestnuts with regular abandon, is cold and almost empty. People I don’t know are walking through it. Last week, I decided to bury my parents’ ashes in the garden and I invited the Vicar to say a few words in front of a small gathering; my daughter and son-in-law were there but my son couldn’t travel because of the pandemic, a couple of good neighbours attended but we couldn’t hug or even stay close together. It summed up the grim reality of the year so well.

The rest of the year has been concerned with those highs and lows that everyone suffers. I know if I threw a stone down the High Street and asked each person it hit to come and relate their year then I would gather a wealth of different stories by the end of the day. Probably few of those stories would mean that much to the listener -though many might – but each will be important to the person telling it. So it is with me, but this is not the place for it. All I’ll say is I’ve been elated and battered in equal measure by something I thought I was looking for but now realise I can’t deal with. The result of that is has left me hurt and confused and not sure where I go from here.

My third Christmas without Gail approaches and I feel like the Page following King Wenceslas; treading in some deep, well-dug steps, trying to stop a battering from the wind and huddling behind something to stop me freezing but unaware of where I am going. And yes, I know that will get me a place in Pseuds Corner but I’d love that anyway, that is something that makes sense.