Friends in high places

Jonathan  (all photos: Gigi, album)

 

"The gull sees farthest who flies highest."

(Richard Bach)  

Sometimes, it can seem that the very people we care about or lean on leave us, whether voluntarily or reluctantly. Affinities, vows, rings, paper and words; the things that are seen to bind can fall away quite suddenly. And sometimes, animals seem to appear through the cracks in our daily lives, nudging their way into our conscience and our consciousness. Even long domesticated animals remain wild at heart. We may cage them, harness them, clip and tag them,  ply them with treats and catnip, but they still choose whether or not to love us. It's true that some animals see their humans as a consistent supply of ready meals, yet even so they may never develop a brand loyalty to us. And the unsolicited and unbound companionship of a truly wild and free creature is always a precious thing. 
Jonathan Seagull didn't so much nudge as muscle his way into my life, bill first, through the catflap I inherited from the previous home-owner. Ginger from next door has only just mastered it, after more than two years of cajoling, nagging and motivational pep talking from me. It has a Perspex flap, so I can see which neighbourhood scally-cat or fearless fox has come calling.
Very shortly after I moved into the little house, I heard an insistent and quite irritated tap-tapping at the catdoor one squally night. It spooked me. Peering from the darkness of my kitchen on my hands and knees, I saw a wild-eyed gull staring back at me. I looked. He looked. Suddenly he flapped and bashed the catflap again. In true Hitchcockian-blonde-I've-seen-"The Birds"-style, I screamed. He screamed back. After a while, he hopped onto my garden bench, setting the security light off. From the back window, I could see what a big bird he was. Herring gull; full grown, sharp eyes, impressive bill. And a gammy left foot which he couldn't quite put down. Just as he was about to give up and started to spread his wings, I opened the back door.
"Hello Mr Seagull. How are you?" Even I realised how pathetic this sounded. The bird lowered his wings, cocked his head and surveyed the human he'd chosen to call on, resplendent in mini leopard print bathrobe and flipflops. I'd never seen a gull look disparaging before; I've now become familiar with that look.  "My name's Gisele, Mr Seagull." Seldom in my life have I felt so foolish, which is saying something.
"Mr Seagull" would quickly became "Jonathan", after the title character in one of my favourite books. Richard Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" is a soaring analogy about spirit; the story of a seagull's search for perfection through flight. After feeding him oven chips that first night, I assumed he would never return to my staunchly vegetarian home, but I did hope. My Dad used to rescue and tend to injured birds back in south London; most of them returned to the skies. One distinctive and clearly grateful pigeon called "Roucal" returned to my Dad's nesting box and bird-table for many years. But I had no real experience of seagulls.
I couldn't get near to his sore foot of course, but as he snapped at the chips I gathered that it was tender underneath. I realise now that he wouldn't have been able to swoop for food or perch properly to eat it. It was raining persistently when Jonathan first arrived and there were muddy puddles forming in the cracked cement in my backyard.. As I scattered his second serving of chips, I thought I might try a few drops  of TCP in the puddles he was hopping through. I had no idea if this might be beneficial in any way, but eventually I realised he was staying relatively still in one doctored puddle.
He stayed for about an hour, until there were no more fresh chips and he'd tired of my wittering. He flapped up and out into the darkness, leaving me and my bathrobe drenched, starving and startled by the whole episode. The next morning I ventured out to clear up any soggy leftovers and possibly a copious amount of droppings. A splutter of feathers rushed down from my back roof. I assume he'd slept there overnight.. Still largely balancing on one leg, he ate my breakfast crumpets with unconcealed disdain. He flapped off skyward after another hour and I headed off to the laptop to Google the life and culinary loves of the herring gull.
Jonathan's foot healed over the next couple of months. We discovered that he liked raw broccoli but not asparagus, was partial to cat biscuits and over-ripe tomatoes and would tolerate my vegetable fingers in the absence of fish.  He loved salmon flavoured cat treats but spat the cheesy ones out at me with ferocious accuracy. His love of all things spud rivals my own; maybe Jonathan had an Antrim mother too. As he healed he was able to sit on my garden bench and table and perch on the old shed. As his landings and take-offs became more adventurous, he terrorised the other garden birds and traumatised next door's cat. He monopolised my large basin birdbath, sometimes completely up-ending it during crash and splash landings.
He's even ventured into the kitchen when I've left the backdoor open without properly acknowledging his presence. He's filled my front and back guttering with moss and more unmentionable things as he's gradually commandeered the whole of my roof. His bad-boy landings in a confined space have destroyed pots, plants and lanterns. He quickly learned how to manipulate the security light and will still tap at the catflap from time to time, his calling-card. 

 

  

Out front, Jonathan will sit on random parked cars outside my window and flap about while I'm on the 'phone. Unattended for too long, he will crap all over the cars, from bonnet to boot. He craps on my garden bench and table, on my neighbours' washing and even on the cat if possible; and once on me, which I feel was memorable for both of us in differing ways. I know this is said to be lucky, but it feels terribly unfortunate at the time.

More than two years since he first knocked at my catdoor, his visits have become far less frequent but I now know not to worry if he doesn't appear for a month or more. People nod sympathetically when I say I know he'll always come back. Herring gulls have been known to have long memories and can live for twenty to thirty years. Jonathan seems quite determined to me and I probably seem quite devoted to him. I think he was the gull equivalent of a sulky mid-teen when he first arrived. Although I've learned that they're not pack creatures, he's sometimes landed with a couple of smaller but quite hooligan mates in tow, as though I've opened a Wild Bean Café in the garden. Ginger the cat has been jittery for days afterwards.

I love the ubiquitous presence of seagulls in this city. It's possible to feed them by hand along the seafront and they're a natural alarm clock. Some gulls are screechers, some are squalers, others laugh. Jonathan Seagull is a particularly loud laugher. "Ahahaha!" announces his arrival or passage overhead, pitched somewhere between machine gun rattle and a young Sid James. A couple of months ago, he sat on my roof for over an hour, periodically cackling at a friend and I as we attempted some DIY in my garden.

This summer, he felt comfortable enough to bring his lady-seagull to my roof, copulating quite noisily and somewhat precariously on top of my chimney pots. Of course, he laughed all the way through sex as well. I tried to carry on painting my plant pots as best I could, embarrassed but incredulous at his stamina and her forbearance. Herring gulls tend to mate for life, unless one of them falls off a chimney pot.in the throes of passion.

I appreciate that not all Brightonans are as fond of our increasing seagull population. I've often heard the expression "rats with wings"; it's true that the omnivorous gulls are natural scavengers. Brighton is a city of seaside kiosks and pavement cafes, spawning kerbside binbag collections and overflowing communal bins. As the gulls become more urbanised, they see rooftops as handy inland cliffs. This summer, hundreds of gull chicks had to be rescued by local conservationists after sliding of roofs (the chicks; hopefully not the conservationists). Over the past couple of years, the pond in Queen's Park has become a seagull nursery, with some kindly residents keeping a wary eye on dozens of chicks while the adult birds are off being hunter-gatherers.

I've never really liked the word "pet" as a term of possession. I'm as much Jonathan's human as he is my gull. I'm probably not his only human, but his presence in my garden and in my life is pretty special. On the absolute downside, Tippi Toadlet seems to have disappeared and I often fear for the smart slow-worm (called Norris, of course) who frequents the far corner of the garden by the fig tree. But the friendship of Jonathan Seagull has been an unexpected blessing.

During the bright, hot days of August, Jonathan sat on the lowest part of my roof for an hour or so, cackling and posing for photos, which I've shared here. This weekend, grey and dank, he turned up again; watching me watching the cat watching him. In the midst of the unpleasantness from some featherless neighbours, he's been an untethered yet calming presence. However, his decision to crap on my neighbours' washing line yet again can't really have eased the situation.

He can and will always fly away. With the graces of flight and speed, he travels to places I will never see. Yet somewhere on the map of a seagull's life, I'm one of the points called home. I've often thought it fortunate for Jonathan that God directed a beleaguered seagull to an animal loving potato eater. I suspect Jonathan knows that I'm the fortunate one.



 

 "Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with those gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed."  

(From "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", Richard Bach)

  

 

"Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect. -And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."
(From "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", Richard Bach)

 

"Bird On A Wire"  The Neville Brothers (version)

 

 

"God loved the birds and created trees. Mam loved the birds and invented cages." 

(Jacques Deval)

 

 

"The first of a million kisses"

"Take spring when it comes and rejoice.

Take happiness when it comes and rejoice.

Take love when it comes and rejoice"

(Carl Ewald).

 

"And think not you can
direct the course of love,
for love,
if it finds you worthy,
directs your course."

 (Khalil Gibran)

 

Walking rather carefully across town today in the midst of an aggravating and aggressive dispute between Brighton Council and the city's refuse and recycling teams, I saw two families working together to clear the pavement and wash down the road themselves. Having accidently poured soapsuds all over my sandals, a lovely girl explained that her nan is getting married tomorrow and the reception will be held at her family home. The wedding was originally planned for Thursday 13th June - my own parents' anniversary. I explained this to Sarah and that was that really. Three fairy cakes, a pot of tea and a dozen introductions later and I finally stumbled back onto the Lewes Road to buy the stuffed vine leaves and olives I'd left the house for earlier.

I didn't meet Sarah's nan as she'd been taken to have her hair set and be generally pampered before her big day. Hella is marrying the typical "boy next door". Literally. The pavement in front of Hella's house was being almost surgically scrubbed by his two great-nephews. Hella's next door neighbour has never married and is now in his late eighties. I met Derek in Hella's front room, having one hand manicured ("emphasis on the Man bit you know"), while eating his fairy cake with the other. A seemingly confirmed bachelor, he moved next door to Hella and her first husband more than forty years ago.

Although he got on really well with the couple, he fell head over heels in love with Hella. Unable to say or do anything about his feelings and genuinely fond of her husband, he remained their loyal neighbour and best mate as the couple's three children presented them with four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He was their rock as Hella survived cancer twice and throughout her husband's catalogue of falls and strokes and his final illness; they nursed Derek through depression and after an almost crippling car accident.
They tended each other's back gardens and even had a gate installed in the back fence for ease of access. Derek will now live in Hella's house and her son, Sarah's father, will move into Derek's house with his wife. Hella is in her early nineties now and not very mobile without a steadying hand and a lot of cajoling; her son and his wife had always intended to move closer to her when her husband died. Derek said he didn't want the hassle of selling his house and this way the two gardens can just become one. He thinks of the children as his own and his siblings are happy for everything to stay in the family.

When Hella's husband died last year, Derek sat with her, cried with her and cooked her roast dinners. He spoke at his friend's funeral and was stunned when the will revealed that he had left him care of his "most precious loved thing" - his wife. Apparently, Hella's husband had known of Derek's unspoken devotion for nearly half a century. In turn, he felt that his totally loyal wife had always had a soft spot for Derek. It took Derek two more days before he could find the words to tell Hella her husband had seen the truth. He said she cried, blew her nose, told him she loved him too but had liked and respected her husband and believed in marriage "Till death do us part". Now that it had, she said, Derek had better pop the question before one of them popped their clogs. Also, she wanted to catch up with Coronation Street that evening.

The couple decided to hold the wedding after the anniversary of Hella's first marriage, in April. It was postponed from 13th of June when the families realised that one of the many nieces would be in hospital that day. I was interested that they had originally chosen the thirteenth of any month; 13th June was the date that Derek moved in next door to Hella and her family so many years ago. I'd managed to maintain an element of composure until Derek told me this: I'd been thinking last week that my Dad wold have been married to Mum for more years than he'd actually lived.
I told Derek I'd been to see Bruce Springsteen at Wembley Stadium last Saturday and taken Mum's photograph so that she could somehow be there, many years after she last saw The Boss play there, with me. This lovely old man, with his sea-coloured eyes and a penchant for having his plumber's hands manicured, told me that sentimentality was the echo of love and loveliness. He told me never to knock it; let it jolt you and you will always know you're still alive.

Beautifully, both families are delighted by the union. Derek was worried that Hella's son and daughters might think he was after her "for one thing". Money? He has his own. Her house? He already had too many rooms for one person, next door. Derek was concerned that as a lifelong bachelor, Hella's family might think the boy-next-door would be sniffing around for physical creature comforts. Derek said Hella soon sorted him out about this: "I don't just want to hold hands you know," she told him, "The kids would much rather I was tucked up here with you than going on the Lonely Hearts." Indeed.
People often trivialise the physical or even emotional power of relationships between older or elderly lovers. That upsets me a lot; I believe that love makes even a failing heart beat faster. Romance and sexual love only have a sell by date if the relationship hasn't been blended properly. It's true that as you age, you can fully appreciate that com-passion is the sustaining flame born of communication and passion.

I'll be working when Derek finally marries his Hella tomorrow, although I may pop along for the reception and more fairy cakes. Derek told me they're not going away from Brighton at all, because every day will now be a honeymoon and also because for them, Love lives in their steep little street.
I asked him if forsaking bachelorhood might be difficult: he said it would be "interesting"; seeing that Hella had found someone before him had been extremely difficult, but not being with her when she was on her own would have been unbearable. He said he was an old dinosaur but he just wanted to be loved; I immediately thought of the Edward Monkton poem that featured in the recent wedding of the youngest daughter of my friends, Ellen and Tom. I'd never heard it before, although I'd seen some of Monkton's greetings cards and cartoons. I've included it here as a childlike celebration of unconditional romantic love, with all it's simplicity and intrigues. We're basic creatures but capable of the most noble sentiments.

I didn't get my dolmades after all, although I think I found something much richer and more filling today. The deli had sold out; I was still a bit teary-eyed and I think the kind Turkish shop-keeper thought I was upset about my failure to gather supper. He gave me some veggie pate for free instead. I tried to be honest and explain but it made me blub again and he started to look wary. I thanked him, smiled and took the pate. Which was delicious with pitta and olives. See: basic creatures.

  

 

" A Lovely Love Story"

(Edward Monkton)

The fierce Dinosaur was trapped inside his cage of ice.
Although it was cold he was happy in there. It was, after all, his cage.
Then along came the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
The Lovely Other Dinosaur melted the Dinosaur’s cage with kind words and loving thoughts.
I like this Dinosaur thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
 Although he is fierce he is also tender and he is funny.
He is also quite clever though I will not tell him this for now.
I like this Lovely Other Dinosaur, thought the Dinosaur.
She is beautiful and she is different and she smells so nice.
She is also a free spirit which is a quality I much admire in a dinosaur.
But he can be so distant and so peculiar at times, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
He is also overly fond of things.
Are all Dinosaurs so overly fond of things?
But her mind skips from here to there so quickly thought the Dinosaur.
She is also uncommonly keen on shopping.
Are all Lovely Other Dinosaurs so uncommonly keen on shopping?
I will forgive his peculiarity and his concern for things, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
 For they are part of what makes him a richly charactered individual.
I will forgive her skipping mind and her fondness for shopping, thought the Dinosaur
 For she fills our life with beautiful thoughts and wonderful surprises.
Besides,
I am not unkeen on shopping either.
Now the Dinosaur and the Lovely Other Dinosaur are old.
Look at them.
Together they stand on the hill telling each other stories and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs.
And that, my friends, is how it is with love.
Let us all be Dinosaurs and Lovely Other Dinosaurs together.
For the sun is warm.
And the world is a beautiful place.
 

 

 

 

"Love Monkey", a five minute film based on the book by Edward Monkton.

 

 

 

  

"Allelujah"  Fairground Attraction

  

"Your smile is a prayer that prays for love
and your heart is a kite that longs to fly;
Allelujah here I am-
Let's cut the strings tonight,
and we'll kiss the first of a million kisses"

( Mark Edward Nevin) 

  

"You don't have to go looking for love when it's where you come from."
(Werner Erhard)

Boys will be men

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

(Mark Twain)

Yesterday was Father's Day. With every passing year, my Dad becomes ever more the yardstick that any man who should come into my life in the future will be held up to. With every passing year, he has also become the mirror I hold up to myself.

Father's Day was originally inaugurated in the United States early in the twentieth century to compliment the celebration of Mother's Day. Most probably founded in 1910 in Washington by Ms Sonora Smart-Dodd, a member of the Christian Women's Temperance Society. She had told her pastor that fathers should be honoured as well as mothers; her own father, a veteran of the Civil War, was a widower who had raised his six children on his own. 

The first celebration was on 19th June that year; Sonora's father's birthday was a couple of weeks earlier. Initially, public acknowledgement was vague and variable; Americans resisted the innovation for some decades, viewing it as a mainly commercial venture. Finally, after two failed lobbies, President Johnson issued a presidential proclamation in 1966, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. As recently as 1972 , Richard Nixon passed it into law as a public holiday in the States, finally following the annual celebration of motherhood.

On a recent visit to the doctor's surgery, I realised I had interrupted quite a busy antenatal clinic. I'm accustomed to seeing very young mums-to-be in Brighton; often with one or two other small children already attached. In a city with such severe housing problems, seasonal employment and a burgeoning younger population, you often note the pattern of four year gaps between pregnancies. A "career mother" may necessarily escape the often demoralising job-search and fortnightly interrogations at the local benefits office. I asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to do when she left school and this bright and confident child promptly told me she wanted to have her first child at eighteen and a sister or brother at around twenty two. But I readily admit that I know very young and very devoted single mums, who love their kids obviously and unconditionally and who appreciate that parenting is both as tough and as good as it gets. But what of the young fathers?

Sat opposite me at the surgery was a young, skinny boy of seventeen, flanked by his seriously pregnant girlfriend, two years older, and by her mother; seemingly three feet taller and broader than both of them. His trainer laces were undone and his coach's cap was back to front. Both of these affectations appeared to be deliberate, unlike his presence at a prenatal clinic. He looked terrified. 

The granny-to-be glared at me as I made conversation with the couple. I asked him if he was looking forward to being a dad: he shrugged and muttered that he didn't even know his own father yet. This nearly broke my heart but earned him a threatening scowl from uber-gran. She told me being a father was a "piece of p***"; that her own kids had three different dads and she'd managed without hearing from any of them. The lad shuddered, as if he too was wondering if she'd disposed of a stream of baby-fathers. 

I disagree with her utterly: it's true that a boy can easily father a child, but it takes a man to become a dad. We pressurise our boys to man-up even though this often encourages eternal laddishness. We smile indulgently as little Mikey struts around after his big brothers with his water-gun in the park but tut unsympathetically and from a distance when an older but not wiser Mick confuses assertion and aggression at the football pitch. Is it any wonder that many teenage boys prefer to steer clear of the minefield of open emotions, theirs or anyone else's? 

While society may not actively encourage boys to be promiscuous, the sowing of the male oats can still be seen as an unspoken rite of passage. Determinedly chaste at twenty five, I was considered a scared, silly or at worst frigid female. One of my dearest friends around then, a confident and funny gay man who was a virgin in his early twenties, was simply seen as some kind of freak. Pressurised into sex with his first boyfriend, he was diagnosed with AIDS at the age of twenty three.

Traditionally, little girls are not dissuaded from developing nurturing skills from an early age. Generally, I don't believe we wholeheartedly prepare little boys to expect and embrace fatherhood: toys, games and the media are still very gender-centric. 

The lad at the surgery told me he'd not really ever thought about being a father and had known his girlfriend three months before she fell pregnant. He looked as though he was being punished, although the girl and her mother professed themselves to be over-joyed at the news. His possible mum-in-law-to-be nudged him and said at least he was "in working order" and that the hardest part was over for him. I wanted to tell him that actually being a father could be the biggest, bravest, brightest part of him. I wish I had: I wish someone had told him long before he was pulled into an antenatal clinic with his laces undone and feeling that his future was all stitched up against him.

"By the time a man realises that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong."

(Charles Wadsworth)

 

"For a New Father"

(John O'Donohue)

As the shimmer of dawn transforms the night

Into a blush of color futured with delight,

The eyes of your new child awaken in you

A brightness that surprises your life.

Since the first stir of its secret becoming,

The echo of your child has lived inside you,

Strengthening through all its night of forming

Into a sure pulse of fostering music.

How quietly and gently that embryo-echo

Can womb in the bone of a man

And foster across the distance to the mother

A shadow-shelter around this fragile voyage.

Now as you behold your infant, you know

That this child has come from you and to you;

You feel the full force of a father' desire

To protect and shelter.

Perhaps for the first time

There awakens in you

A sense of your own mortality.

May your heart rest in the grace of the gift

And you sense how you have been called

Inside the dream of this new destiny.

May you be gentle and loving,

Clear and sure.

May you trust in the unseen providence

That has chosen you all to be a family.

May you stand sure on your ground

And know that every grace you need

Will unfold before you

Like all the mornings of your life

"This is my most important role. If I fail at this, I fail at everything."

(Actor Mark Wahlberg)

"Father and Son" Ronan Keating and Yusuf Islam

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was."
(Anne Sexton)

Postcards from the edge

"A person without a sense of humour is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road." 

(Henry Ward Beecher)

Due to medical treatment, work and IT problems (never anything by halves, the GigiOnSea motto), I've really fallen behind with posts on this little blog! I seem to have several posts in the pipeline but none of them have made their way out into the sporadic sunlight; a bit like most of my bright ideas, hopes and wishes. Pleasant diversions are so often a downfall; but there's always much to be gained from a smile which costs nothing. Various friends have sent me "seaside" saucy-postcard humour over the past few weeks and I thought I would feature some of them as a personal encouragement to British summertime.
British publishers were first granted Royal Mail permission to manufacture picture postcards in 1894. The earliest cards featured famous landmarks and picturesque views or photographs and drawings of celebrities of the times. However, as travel by steam locomotives proved increasingly popular and affordable, British seaside destinations generated their own souvenir industry; the "Wish You Were Here" picture postcard became a staple product. 

In the 1930s, saucy postcards were at the peak of their popularity, selling around 16 million a year. The cartoons traditionally relied on innuendo and double entendres; stereotypical characters such as vicars, nudists, hen-pecked husbands and larger ladies featured heavily (no pun intended). I've inherited my love of what I'd call "Carry On" humour from my Dad. It's probably why I'm so taken by Brighton's own Max Miller. Yes, a lot of the humour centres around the human body, it's functions and frailties and our related sensitivities; but it's a naughtiness rather than obscenity. There's a simplicity and infectiousness in laughter that is ever-ready. I think naivete in humour, as in affection and even in faith, can be a delightful and humbling quality.

In the 1950s, the Conservative government of the day was concerned with an apparent deterioration of British morals: it decided to crackdown on saucy postcards.... A decade later, in the more liberal and seemingly swinging 1960s, the cartoon postcard was revived and even gained a new reputation as an art form. A further demise has occurred in more recent years as the artistry itself and certainly the humour has deteriorated. There's certainly a finely drawn line between bawdy and obvious bad taste; seaside humour was intended to nudge all, not wound some to tickle a few. Many original saucy postcards are now collected as works of art or kitsch, but they also document social and economic history as well as fluctuating values.
High on the Conservatives' moral hitlist in the 1950s was London artist Donald McGill, known as the King of the Saucy Postcard. He was educated in Blackheath in south London, close to my convent school. He married the daughter of the owner of the local music hall in Greenwich and spent most of his life in Blackheath; a Blue Plaque now commemorates his previous home there in Bennett Park. He was originally a naval draughtsman, whose hand-drawn greetings cards for his family gained wider acclaim. 

In 1954, then in his late seventies, McGill was targeted by the censors and tried under the 1857 Obscene Publications Act. He was found guilty and fined; it devastated the burgeoning saucy postcard industry. Many cards were destroyed and several companies were bankrupted. When he was in his eighties, McGill would give evidence before the House Select Committee which was set up to amend the 1857 Act.
One of his designs, featuring a bookish young man and the caption: "Do you like Kipling?" still holds the world record for marketed postcard designs, selling over 6 million. He produced tens of thousands of designs; many are now auctioned as works of beauty and historical commentary. Yet Donald McGill earned no royalties from his work; when he died in 1962, his estate was valued at just £735. He's buried in an unmarked grave in Streatham Park Cemetery, south London.
There's a wonderful quote about humour from American psychologist and writer William James, brother of novelist Henry James. He likens the sense of humour to common sense in dancing mode. I think this really applies to the earthiness of saucy postcards. Personally, I've never bought the idea of God as a detached, sombre old man. Creation itself is filed with God's humour: He constantly does the impossible in unexpected ways and with the unlikeliest people. He created sex as a natural urge for pleasure and procreation; sex may well make fools of many, but I'd rather it was a source of mirth, not misery.

"Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing."

(William James)

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour."

(William Ralph Inge)

"She Moves In Her Own Way" The Kooks (Brighton's finest seaside skifflers!)