Diver Chris

We were at the funeral today of the very lovely man who was Chris Hall. We knew Chris from living in Marsden and him building our nice new bathroom and we'd only just got friendly before he was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease. He went from a fit and active, passionate diver; to a man who couldn't move and relied on the 24 hour care of his wife Liz. All in a very short space of time. The service earlier today reflected his character, a bright pink coffin and Elton John's "I'm still standing" as an exit theme - good on you Chris, what a star.
He set up a website in the early stages of the disease and it is being maintained with plans to raise even more money for the MND charity.. Have a look : http://www.justgiving.com/diverchris .. And donate please :D

I had a very vivid , very calm dream the night after my mum died suddenly ... I was in a pod of dolphins (I think they were) , and Mum was there and we were swimming with them in silence and also in the presence something much bigger - massive really - that I could only get a sense of out of the corner of my eye. We stayed like that in the increasingly darker, quieter blue for (subjectively) hours until I turned back. Mum swam on serenely with the others into the dark. Ok, that was grief trying to make sense of a tragic event and the subconscious projecting a wish for peaceful passing into a dream - maybe - But I can imagine Chris taking that same journey and being enthralled by it as the lifelong diver he was :-)

http://www.justgiving.com/diverchris

Chris in action feeding sharks

Word Up

I spent this Saturday at Huddersfield University with the other finalists in the short story competition that was run by The Examiner in which I [polite cough] came 2nd out of 70 or so entrants.
Everyone there was very friendly and supportive of each others steps out of the back room/bedroom/kitchen and into the light of 'proper' writing ambitions. A nice bunch of people who were enthused by , err, the enthusiasm for writing of Gaia Holmes, our lovely, quietly confident teacher / facilitator for the day.
Twas good and I'd love to do one again. Maybe in more picturesque surroundings though .. There are some nice views away from the University over the canal, but the views of the building we were in were, well, brutal. See below. That coupled with the closed road opposite because of a drive-by shooting the night before made for a pretty urban feel to day. And I added to that by buying a new book on graffiti / street tags in our lunch break. 'New ' graffiti are like short stories I think, there's a narrative there sometime and the position of the deliberately placed characters against ad posters or street signs or place tells a story.
enough of the essay.

Mad for it

We took Joe into Manchester on Saturday to pick up some new clothes and generally mooch about the big city away from our hill-ringed village. They have shops and galleries and pretty shiney lights in the big city. He got a very fine 1980's Adidas zipper sweat jacket, complete with authentic german disco logo, groovy dude.

We went on the Manchester Eye (or is it 'the Wheel'), which was a real effort by me as I absolutely hate heights. It was my idea, spontaneous lets-have-fun that propelled me through the ticket booth, the small queue for the next empty pod and as far as about 5 foot off the ground before reality hit and I got all tense jawed and starey eyed, much to the the boys amusement. The fact it was really windy and the pod-thing (much smaller and flimsier feeling than it's London big brother) swung a bit made it all the more funny for the youth. Junior gits.

We also went into the uber trendy Richard Goodall gallery, in the northern quarter. I want to buy everything in there, should I win the Lotto. Loved the band posters and a lot of the vinyl toys, Dalek's exhibition work is technically great but I prefer the more vibrant, warm cartoony-ness of Jon Burgerman for example. Its a great gallery, get there.

Photos of the day are below..

coz I'm a dancin' fool .. oo oo, oo oolll ..

We were at Debbie_who_works_with_Anita's 40th tonight. It was in Huddersfield at the back of one of the pubs. One of the pubs reveals the fact that I don't know the name of any of the pubs in Huddersfield. This is because we have lived on the edge of this town for 17 years 8 miles out and 3 children in.. So it was never our hometown, never our destination town. We come in to town for shopping, sure - but never stay in it for a drink (certainly not till 2.00 like tonight.. oh shit will I be hung over tomorrow).
[edited next day : I was . very badly. all day]

Debbie had all her life songs on an ipod that stayed on shuffle all night. 40 years (ok, maybe 30 as she started tuning in to music at age 10 like most of us) of songs all mashed up.. Sigue Sigue Sputnik ran into Britney Spears's Poison. class. All the 40 something’s danced happily and I realised (in the middle of dancing like an idiot 3+ weeks after my tumour op) that they weren't at all self-conscious..
They were dancing pretty hard, dancing with the knowledge that life can be great but also shit and deals you bad blows randomly, information earned from the death of loved ones, the odd serious illness etc..

[hee hee.. just re-read this and written like a true celt.. can't have a great night out without getting all philosophical and maudlin on you.]

Final (drunken) thought (this whilst in the loo at the party venue)... was John-Boy of the Walton’s the original blogger..? In that he always articulated his take on the day at the end of each episode.. He summed up his response to family and events around him .. Hmm.. That was it.