Funerals and birthdays - June 2024

I will be glad when June 2024 is over, I am sitting here on June 29th 2024 and I am physically and mentally exhausted from the events of this month.  At the very end of May my Uncle Stan died, he was 83 and prior to his death he was a relatively healthy old man, but a fall and brain bleed and possibly poor care at the Sunderland Royal Hospital led to him fading away pretty quickly, admitted on Friday May 24th and died overnight on May 26th. He was an incredibly kind, funny man and we had a very odd relationship as he would always claim I know everything I know because of him, it was a running joke since my teens and I tried to send him a postcard from wherever I visited in the world as I knew as a former coal miner and shipyard worker, he had never left England and I know he appreciated my postcards.  His funeral was the first I've attended as an adult and it felt odd, being a grown-up can be hard, I comforted my aunt and my mum and had to navigate the usual family politics of a big family and I also met with two of my oldest relatives, aged 91 and 86 who I've not seen since I was a kid. I know there'll be a lot more of these things as I get older but they fill me with dread. The ceremony was Humanist as my uncle, like me and many of my family, was not religious. It was very inclusive, allowing people who are religions to pray in silence.

So the funeral did not happen for 4 weeks due to coroner and hospital delays so I rushed up to Sunderland for 2 days and 2 nights to attend the funeral, rushing back on the 28th to attend the 40th birthday of a friend and former student.  When I was at home staying with my parents, their shower broke and my dad fixed it with my help, he didn't want my help and to be honest I hate all thing electric but as he has a bad leg (and a newish knee) I felt it was my duty to hold the step ladders and talk to him and keep hold of the screwdrivers etc. I am not a DIY person and he has a far more practical son-in-law for that.

 

So I rushed back to London and got back 2 hours before Linda's birthday event. I met Linda in 2010 and she was my first student of English as a foreign language (she is from Latvia) , she is funny, glamorous and very clever and I've seen her go from serving coffee in Starbucks (that is how we met) to being a graphic designer at a very famous department store as well as a mother and we became friends when she didn't need lessons any more. She invited me to her 40th and it was good fun. The venue was a drag show bar in Hoxton and though I am not a fan of drag at all, Linda and her partner and friends all loved it, they whooped and giggled at things that made me cringe but the highlight of the show was the drag queen, Lady Bushra, mimed and danced to this classic Bollywood duet with some poor woman grabbed from the audience. I loved it and more importantly, Linda enjoyed her birthday and I got to meet a real, live Olympian as one of the party guests is a British winter sports champion and Olympian and not only was he fit and handsome, he was a lovely lovely person and very humble about his achievements, more proof that we should never judge books by their good looks and muscles 😏

And as June comes to a close I hope July is better, we'll have a new government here in the UK and hopefully they can slowly undo the damage done to us since 2010 and heal the divisions and end the culture wars.