Head bowed, with gravity dispersing tears across a cold stone floor, I strolled slowly behind my equally distraught offspring headed out of the crematorium door. The events playing out as they, me and a host of other family and friends (while stood a foot or so from her coffin) had just bode a final farewell…
Tag: tribute
Maternal Memories
Today’s literary offering is the 2,500th blog I’ve written and published on my website strachan.blog . To celebrate this achievement I enclose a trio of pieces from the scores I’ve penned about my recently passed mother Maggie during the six years since yours truly started scribbling these journals. The trinity of essays below are partly…
She Was Beautiful
Seconds after our mother’s final breath the song Cavatina’s opening lyrics “She was beautiful. Beautiful to my eyes….” played out on my sister Helen’s Chill Music playlist. Although not planned, this coincidence providing a fitting commentary to not only how our newly deceased mother comported herself throughout her life, but also how Maggie conducted her…
Mally’s Bar
After a COVID induced fourteen month hiatus, I’m once again sat writing in a White Rose (WR) Centre coffee house. Most of the staffs visages have changed, but the friendly service and rejuvenating qualities of their strong coffee beans continue. In the wake of the ending of this enforced absence, my breakfast of a basic…
Half Mast
While my mother sits in her armchair watching today’s funeral of Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, I’ll be shredding a pile of documents in the matriarch’s kitchen. Like jet blasting muck from patios, yours truly find the wanton destruction of confidential documents a cathartic experience. The bank statements, tax code documents and delinquent insurance…
Goodbye To Another Hero
Indelibly etched on GJ Strachan’s life canvas is the verve resultant from 1960’s/70’s football commentator David Coleman exclaiming “Lorimer. One-nil!” A regular childhood soundscape heard as a Leeds United number seven Peter Lorimer power driver thundered into an opponents net. The ball striking the netting with such ferocity that if the crowd roar hadn’t have…
Angela
Yesterday, there was no narrative forthcoming from the pen of yours truly. Understandably, attendance at the funeral of a good friend’s mother held dominion over every other action on 1st October 2020. Coincidently, yesterday would’ve also been my mother and father’s 60th wedding anniversary had cancer not came calling for Malcolm Strachan in October 2017….
Love At First Sight
On Sunday, my mother will reach the grand old age of 80. A milestone she’s reached with her rose coloured glasses firmly intact; along with her viewing life events from a baseline of positivity. This despite more than her share of episodes where serendipity and karma have proved the most capricious of suitors. Mum (Maggie)…
Big Jack
Saturday reveille brought in it’s wake the melancholic news another of my boyhood footballing idols had passed. Jack Charlton becoming the third Leeds United legend to’ve died in just a matter of months. The one club footballer, who for nigh on two decades represented the club with distinction in on over 700 games, joining recently…