Cycles

The cycles of life line up. My youngest son, Ben, is 18 today. Happy Birthday my darling.

My weekend so far - we have another day, thank-you Patricians of the past for giving us poor Proles a day off work - has been spent painting things blue, the bathroom, the toilet, the kitchen. The loo and bathroom are duck egg blue and the kitchen a Wedgewood. I am excessively obsessive about colour. Now there remains just one bedroom and then Laurence's flat.

On the way to church this morning, there was a dead skunk in the road. This is unusual, you normally smell the skunk rather than see the body. There seemed to be no smell. For the longest time after coming here, I had only ever seen dead raccoons, never a live one. But death is evidence of life.
In my dragons programme, which I am piloting this year, and have taught a couple of times, I ask the children what evidence we could have to prove that dragons exist. I hope for the answers scat, scales and bodies.

This is the time of year when Nature starts to power down. When death stalks us. I was thinking in church of how we anthropomorphise death. More than that, we personify death before we can anthropomorphise. Usually as a 'he'. Women bring humans from the spirit world into this one, and in some cultures, women also ease their parting, in others, men do this.

Terry Pratchett's Death always speaks in capital letters. He has a scythe and a sense of humour. And an apprentice. Markus Zusak's Death, in 'The Book Thief' has a soul, a deep sense of sorrow for the suffering of humans.
Perhaps it's that need for company on the lonely and unknown journey. The Ferryman.
The Chess player.

It's harsh. The last taboo. Long after we were able to talk about every aspect of sex, we still couldn't mention death and its causes.

The Montbretia is a herald for me, just as daffodils herald the spring, Montbretia heralds the autumn.