The telephone call I no longer have to make
and the riddle of 8th November.
and the riddle of 8th November.
We live “calandated lives” and when I’m as rich and famous as Elon Musk I’ll finally trademark and patent this expression. It’s mine and mine alone, until of course I’m as rich as a man firing rockets into space and taking the human species to Mars, then, and probably only then, shall I cast this phrase in granite stone and for the rest of the human family to enjoy.
Think about it: from the very first day of a New Year (calendar date — calandated lives), we gambol our way through that year’s calendars via the arrows of love on Valentines Day through the Ides of March, Mothers and Fathers Day(s), school holidays, yearly vacations, Easter and other religious days, weeks and even months of either reflection on skin colour, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and before you know it we’re here at the time of writing, the schools have returned from their mid term holidays, we’ve lit bonfires to a failure, sent unfathomable amounts of fireworks skyward in celebration of the same failure and after Halloween we have the entire month of November for men to grow fancy facial hair in an effort to defeat cancer and then we have the countdown to Christmas, the holidays, and another New Years Eve before our calandated lives are scheduled to start all over again.
If you need further convincing on the merits of my making up a word that doesn’t exist and a phrase the human lexicon will sadly never see nor appreciate, consider the innumerable sombre days (dates) of reflection such as VE Day, DJ Day, DD Day, the date of 9–11 and the vast number of dates that have become forever burned into our consciousness as “that day”.
The 8th November is such a day, but I no longer have to make a heart rending telephone call to a cantankerous and misunderstood elderly lady who would always state, without fail, “I’ve had my little cry today Stephen”. I’d follow the script of decades long past, that I too had my cry of the day, and that I was thinking of the man we both grieved for, and for far too long. We’d reminisce about apocryphal stories and legends, lament at the glorious grandchildren he never saw and that another year had passed since that fateful night we were all together in the same room for the final time.
My Mum seemingly had this incredibly perceptive way about her (the old schoolers would probably term it as a “Mother’s Intuition”) whereby when she asked you how you were she’d narrow her eyes in concentration at your answer, my answer, and know I wasn’t entirely being truthful. She could even do it when we spoke on the telephone, I could see her eyes narrowing in my mind’s eye before she’d say something akin to spill the beans sonny, or what’s really wrong?
I wish I could tell you Mum
and I wish we could still reminisce about Dad together too.
Me and my beautiful shadow
and some words across space and timemedium.com
Salah at the double to defeat a woeful Spurs. Reds climb to 8th.
Tottenham Hotspur 1 Liverpool 2, 6th November 2022.medium.com
Baseball season is over Bubba!
Philadelphia Phillies 1 Houston Astros 4, 5th November 2022.medium.com