Monday 25 March 1963

Today is the  anniversary of my father's death. Not a particularly unusual circumstance, except that he died 50 years ago when I was just a few days past my 10th birthday.  

Even after all these years, it still feels raw and freighted with emotion.   I think that's largely because, in an attempt to reduce my hurt, the adults around me didn't talk much about him. It was left to my headmaster to break the news that I no longer had a dad. Or at least one that was alive.   "Least said, soonest mended,"  my mother explained years later. Which is about as far removed from the theory of appropriate grieving as you can get.

I wanted to commemorate this sad anniversary and, as we often do, turned to religion. I don't have a particular faith myself, although am respectful of all.  But I have a strong sense of spirituality, and am particularly drawn to the tenets of Buddhism.

But today I fell back on Christianity;  the faith of my parents and my childhood.  But where to go on a Monday in March?  To my slight surprise, I discovered the office of morning prayers, starting at 7:30am at Wells Cathedral.  

There were about a dozen of us, all middle-aged or older and mostly male and dressed for the reality of an early-morning service in a cavernous cathedral on a bitterly cold morning.   Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, I found the silences more profound than the litany of the psalms and Bible readings.  

I sat looking at the beautiful, ancient stained-glass windows, and experienced both a heightened sense of loss but also gratitude for my life, and the reality that I have already outlived my father by 22 years, with hopefully many more to come. But, as evidenced by events this day 50 years ago, you never know.

If nothing else, I owe it to him to live each day to the full and make the most of every moment.

Thanks, Dad.  

For Pete's sake

"Roads were not invented for cars."  I've often pondered those words, but never so intently as when waiting by the side of the road in St Petersburg, during a 60th birthday visit to that spectacular city.

St Petersburg might be famed for many things :  golden-domed churches, priceless art collections, the Hermitage.  But it is not famed for courteous motorists. 

I'm guessing, but it must surely  be the case that there are more pedestrians in the city than cars. But there is no comfort in numbers when another battalion (perhaps that should be panzergruppe) of Bavarian driving machines come barrelling along, reckless as to the plight of  poor pedestrians trying to scramble across the road. 

Forget the old Soviet images of smoky, dented Trabants backfiring in grey streets.  St Petersburg is now vibrating to a decidedly Western ethos of bulky 4x4s, driven by confident young men and women in suits and sunglasses.

We learned quickly of the unwritten rule : cars (in this case, it seemed to be mainly black BMWs) can do what they like, oblivious to the presence of anyone too stupid or poor not to be in a vehicle of their own.

I lost count of the times that we waited obediently for the pedestrian green light, only to be nearly run over by a driver jumping red, and usually talking into a mobile at the same time.  They seemed more callous than indifferent to the plight of the car-less, and  gave not a glance as they squealed past. 

The wonder is why pedestrians meekly put up with all if this. Have no lessons been learned since the down-trodden overthrew the aristos nearly 100 years ago?