The Metaphorical Mantelpiece

I recently realised that my mantlepiece is a metaphor for the confusion of my brain.

Front and centre, the Unitarian chalice. At the back, a souvenir from the Lit and Phil Society. To the right of the chalice, the Mesopotamian Goddess of Beer.

I'm not sure what this says about me. Other than that I like Unitarianism. And beer.

The Tale of A Rose

When I learned we were due to have a Flower Communion at my church (a traditional Unitarian Ceremony), one thing I immediately thought was “I must take a rose in”.

I have a rather lovely rose bush growing in my back garden. It’s a “Forever Friends” rose, which is apt, since it was given to me as a moving-in gift by one of my best friends, J.

J and I have been friends since we were 14. We went to the same secondary school, and found ourselves sitting next to each other in GCSE Biology class. This was lucky, because the teacher was not especially concerned about arriving on time to his classes, and we soon got to talking to each other. It’s one of my few friendships – well, actually the only one – where one of the first bonding moments occurred over a shared refusal to dissect a lamb heart. (Her due to lifelong vegetarianism, me due to a lifelong unfortunate tendency to faint at the sight of blood.)

Following our shared dissection refusal, our lives took similar paths, as we moved to a different school to do our A-levels, went to the same university (Durham), and ended up living not far from each other. Our friendship has held steady through life’s rocky moments, and there have been some very rocky moments, but I am now the godson to her two adorable boys, who like to come around and rearrange my house for me every now and then. I particularly wanted the flower I would take to the Flower Communion to be a rose from the rose bush she had given me.

I did, however, face a problem. Since I had deadheaded it (you know you are at a certain point in life when the word “deadhead” enters your vocabulary), the rose bush, for reasons best known to itself, had decided to grow all ten of its flowers on a single stalk, as you can see. I really didn’t want to cut all of the roses off, but they had very short stalks.

I left deciding about it late, until the morning of the Flower Communion, itself, then went out with the secateurs to take a look. I took a closer look at the bush, and smiled.

As if it had read my mind, there, tucked away behind the flower stalk, the rose bush had grown a single perfect pink rose.

I clipped the rose carefully, tucked it into a bag, and carried it to church.

A Bit of a Stopper

So, I recently wrote my will, which is perhaps an odd thing to do at 33. Until now, I never needed one, as I never had anything to leave. Then someone pointed out to me that if I met an untimely end, the mortgage insurance would cover paying off my mortgage, and I would have a certain amount to leave behind. I like things to be neat and tidy, so I found a lawyer through Amnesty International's "Make a Will Week". This happens in March each year. Amnesty arrange for a free will-writing service, in the hope that people who use it might be inspired to leave a small legacy behind (which I have).

My will is pretty simple, mostly along the lines of "leave money to godchildren, jewellery to best friends, dive gear to dive shop, some gifts to charity, and my family and brother get the rest". The actual writing involves a certain amount of depressing speculation, it being a lawyer's job to point out things like "If your parents die, do you want your brother to get the lot? What about if he dies before you?". It is best not to flippantly reply "By the point this becomes an issue, I won't care, I'll be dead".

I don't always see death the way other people do. Having Asperger's syndrome, albeit very mild, means there's a lot of social detail you tend to miss. I've been called a Vulcan in the past for holding views such as my failure to understand why people eat cake and then complain it's making them fat. Either eat the cake and enjoy it, or don't eat the cake and save the calories, but eating the cake and then complaining about it seems to me to be pointless. For me, the inevitability of death is something I view much in the category of paying tax and getting rained on in autumn; it just happens. It just is. Why not talk about it, when it will happen to everyone? I don't get the urge to avoid talking about death, but then I also don't get why people don't provide for their old age. You know you'll get old, you've seen other people age and need extra support, so why don't you prepare for when it will happen to you? I plain don't get people, sometimes.

Nevertheless, it was quite a stopper to be holding in my hands the draft will. Staring at a piece of paper heading "The Last Will Of..." with your name below it is hard to process. This is a document whose sole purpose to exist is to deal with the fact that, one day, I won't. There will be no more me. That's how things are, but actually seeing concrete proof of it... Still, I'm glad I have the will. It does give you peace of mind, in the end.

I think I'll go and eat some cake now. Without complaining about it.

Saga of the Boiler

And having gone from the saga of the wiring (still unresolved as of this date), we move to the saga of the boiler, which decided to pack in about three weeks ago, and still isn't fixed despite the best efforts of Centralheatingman (an everyday superhero, or at least I'll consider him as such if he fixes the bloody thing - it's putting up a fight). I tell myself that it's a good way to appreciate what my parents grew up with, neither of whom, being born in the 1950s, had a centrally-heated house. Apparently my Dad and his brother used to yell "Mum, it's cold!" down the stairs on winter mornings, and I'm pretty sure my Mum once commented that she and her brother and sister used to put their school uniforms in the bed to warm them up overnight during the winter.

There is a reason everyone in my family got central heating as soon as we possibly could.