Although ordinarily enjoying, not to mention thriving in, my own company, recently I’ve concluded I spend an unhealthy amount of time on my own. Despite my social media posts perhaps hinting I enjoy a full and fun-packed life with numerous like-minded reprobates, in reality I spend a detrimental portion of my day alone.
Incidentally, the above is an acknowledgment of an issue which needs addressing, not a cry for help or sympathy. I have a great life in so many ways and the last type of bash needed to augment any low mental wellbeing is a pity party.
After all, I have everything man needs for survival. Availability of food, water, shelter, and heat. Add to that heady mix an unfettered access to Marmite and Netflix, it’s hard to dispute I’m anything but truly blessed.
To be honest, a lot of my loneliness is self-inflicted. For example, due to one lame excuse or other, my misguided choice of late not to partake in the various writing groups which afford me networking opportunities.
This current decision to spend life in solitude also delaying an opportunity to join a choir. An uplifting pastime recommended by a friend to enhance my existential itinerary, mitigating against being ‘on my tod’ so often.
My partner Sarah, who through a mixture of her work and time she spends at Wakefield College lecturing in Advanced Swearing BTEC courses, is a rare companion these days.
The only quality time we spend together either stolen weekends away, or a boisterous Saturday night in town. Evenings spent partaking in much loved hobbies of dancing, drinking and inelegant kebab eating. Sarah’s efforts of the latter made even more ungainly by not removing her beloved vape from her gob while shovelling in slithers of kebab meat.
Not that I eat a donner kebab gracefully, I hasten to add. When I have had a few, I should just get the kebab shop owner to withhold the pitta bread, instead throwing the meat and chilli sauce on my shirt where it generally ends up anyway. Consequently, witnessing me on a late-night taxi ride back to Sarah’s eating spicy donner meat remnants from my t-shirt front.
It’ll be good to see my brother Ian next week. My younger sibling venturing south from his Gateshead abode for a few days. His sojourn coinciding with the third anniversary of the death of our mum, Margaret. Our force of nature matriarch passing in a care home around 500 metres from Sarah’s Ossett home in October 2021.
While he’s in West Yorkshire, we plan to scatter some of mater’s ashes on Leeds parkland where she spent many happy memories in childhood. Our sister Helen is unfortunately unable to make the trip east from her Cheshire home.
The rest of the remains will be shared by close family; the brood planning to add them to pots which already contain our father’s roots… By our father I mean dad Malcolm’s ashes. Not God’s… The latter, I’m reliably informed, is still alive and kicking.
We’re hoping dad will approve of being reunited with mum in ash format. Hopefully the rhododendron I own, containing some of his remains, won’t spin around demonically when his beloved wife’s carbonates and calcium phosphates are added to the pot.
Finding a suitable place to scatter mum’s ashes has been somewhat of a dilemma. The venue for dad, being a proud cricket-loving Yorkshireman, proved a straight-forward selection. The family paying to place a proportion of his remains at a plot in Headingley cricket ground’s memorial garden. Even though mum had numerous pastimes, the consensus among the clan was none of them provided suitable venues for scattering ashes.
For instance, Maggie loved a visit to Marks & Spencer (M&S) Food Hall for meal shopping. However, we deemed M&S management might have something to say if we spread her remains within their hallowed chiller aisles… And, in the unlikely event they didn’t, I’m fairly convinced the customers would!!
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