The Voice in My Head

Thursday, 25th June 2020

Pop was synonymous with sarcasm and laughter.  He loved nothing more than to recount his favourite anecdotes or jokes.  It mattered little whether or not they were funny because his own laughter was infectious.  An audience was almost inconsequential!  How I miss that; him.

Latterly, stuck in that horrendous home, he reminisced a lot and pulled little gems from his memory.  I had no idea that the following was his favourite joke – never heard it in all my years – but here it is …

Builders are renovating this old house in Dublin – obviously, uninhabited for some time – when they come across a hidden cupboard.  On opening the door, they are met with a skeleton!  Round his neck, on a ribbon, is a medal which reads: Irish Hide & Seek Champion 1958!

So simple.  So clever.  So Pop!

Pop died on the 16th October, 2018 and my post of 20th October is dedicated to him.  I wrote:

‘A legacy secure, he lives on in those he loved and who loved him back.  Perhaps fitting that I end with one of the last jokes he told me – you had to hear him tell it!

Picasso’s house is broken into and the police are called. Enquiring as to whether Picasso saw the burglar, they suggest he produce a drawing of the suspect.
The following day, the police arrest a horse with a can of sardines!

I, actually, didn’t get it immediately but he laughed and laughed.  God speed, Pop …’

Beneath, I wrote the title of one of my friend, Tom’s (Odell, that is), beautiful songs, Half As Good As You – my favourite.  We went to see Tom, in concert, two days later, tears tripping me as he sang the lyric, ‘If I ever find anyone half as good as you, think maybe that will do …’.

As I write, the mother of one of my dearest childhood friends passed away, peacefully, last night.  A poignant time and one of reflection.  Brings it all back.  The loss of the second parent pulls one up fast; a stark reminder of one’s own mortality – and the ties that bind.  Strangely, too, I am reading a book, at the moment, by my favourite author, Alexandra Fuller.  Called Travel Light, Move Fast, it is about the death of her beloved father and, as with so much of her writing, touches my soul.  I have just copied some of her words into my book of quotes of which the following probably resonates the most …

‘He was gone, and a time had gone with him, and my way of knowing how to be in all time; that too had vanished.
So this is grief, I’d thought.
It’s the theft of time, all time for all of time.’

See what I mean!

5th September, 2020.

Last Sunday, I finally opened the old blanket box which used to sit by the window in my bedroom in Lyndhurst.  I, carefully, lifted out the old cuckoo clock (brought back from St Wolfgang) – still in storage wrapping – synonymous with the stair leading up to the Maid’s Room.  Pop used to pull the weight and wind it up every night as he went upstairs to his ‘dressing room’, en route to change into his jammies, before coming down for his supper of ‘flakes’!

I lined the blanket box with an old roll of wallpaper and then pulled the bag from the shelf in my cupboard filled with precious cards, letters, photos and so many memories.  Cards wishing me luck in my driving test, my 21st Birthday cards, the programme for ‘They’re Playing Our Song’ which we saw on the night of my actual Birthday at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London and even the empty bottle of champagne we had in the interval!  Relics, now …

Then, I found the unexpected – a letter from Pop!  Throughout my life, I thought he had only sent me one; little more than a note, really, at the end of uni, with which he included a £5 note to go out for celebratory drinks!  Water, then?  No, just a long, long time ago.

I had completely forgotten about this one but, of course, I had kept it!  The headed notepaper, his distinctive handwriting – completely illegible – and that unmistakable humour, as ever, directed at me!  As I read his words, I can still hear his voice; The Voice in My Head.
Always.