What lives are

Whilst Ka was up in Aberdeen, staying sober at her friend, Gillian's, hen doo, I had a pretty quiet, mellow weekend. It all got off to a significantly melancholic start with a funeral. My Unle Tommy's Dad passed away suddenly last week so I joined the rest of the family at Our Lady Of Lourdes Church for the funeral service, followed by tea in East Kilbride's old Village Torrance Hotel.
Having only met Tommy's Dad a few times at family parties,or gatherings, on the odd occasion, I can't pretend to have known the man well, but what I did make of him seems to be on the right track from the way people spoke of him on Saturday. Like all funerals it made me wish I'd had the chance to get to know the man a little better. Tommy Senior seemed a very pleasant, gentle, friendly man. From what I remember at the family gatherings, he would always be found sitting back, comfortable in a couch, taking in the jokes, conversations and banter with a placid ease, taking joy in relaxing in the family environment whilst not neccessarily contributing vocally. Certainly not something the Reids are known for.
So it was with great sorrow that Tommy and his family said goodbye to Tommy senior. Tommy said that although obvioulsy upset by his Dad's passing, he felt some ease in the fact that he was there, in the hospital, at his father's bedside when it happened. A quiet closure, being with the relative at the time, that some would be grateful of.
That's always the worst aspect of a relative passing, and of funerals. The great feeling of a missed opportunity in saying goodbye in the last moments.
Sitting in the church, on these occasions, always reminds you of people now gone. It made me think again of my grandparents, the Reids, who had passed in the last few years, and the Sloans, who I sadly barely registered the passing of due to my youth at the time. There are others too, of course. Aunties, uncles, friends and other relatives that you wish you could have had the chance to talk to once again.
It's only when these people are gone that you miss them, you come up with interesting questions to ask them, jaunts to take with them or good things to say. Interesting or meaningful things to say, not the trivial or unimportant matters that you used to talk about. Well, I know I did anyway. I write a blog for pete's sake. Talking about trivial things comes quite easily to me.
But then, I suppose it's the trivial things that all pile up to make, big, mad, staggering towers of important things, and they are what lives are and what life is all about.

Volatile thoughts and hot ice cream

Hot ice cream?! That's impossible! Ice cream withstanding oven temperatures?! How can this be?! The answer, my friends, is Baked Alaska. A layer of ice cream protected in a meringue shell atop a fruit and sponge base. A dessert, I like to believe, only a few can successfully recreate. My very own multi skilled mother being one of them. After much shouting, blending, stirring and beating Mum emerged from the kitchen with a Baked Alaska which only just made it to the dinner table after a failure of kitchen blending tools. Thankfully Dad came to the rescue in building the new advanced blender at the last minute, a new piece of equipment that had lay dormant in the kitchen cupboard until last night, when it answered the emergency call. Mum is still bemoaning the breakdown of her old blender - her original number one blender and presumably this was why she has never used the new device considering the original, the best. I asked her if she buried it in the back garden and surprisingly she nodded with a yes. A vision came into my head of her holding a service for it, a gathering in the garden, singing 'Blend us together lord'.
Before all this Ka and myself had the laziest Sunday Ever. Nothing. Sheer, unadulterated, nothing was done. No gym, no painting, no shopping, no visits, no internet, zilch. Merely the odd chapter of my latest read. We did not get to bed till half six this morning mind you getting back to the flat at approximately half four only to find the living room overrun by Ka and three of her mates after a work night out, all lounging around the couches drinking vodkas, eating pringles and generally putting the world to rights.
Before this Chaz and myself had been in Glasgow, starting off in the Merchant City and ending up in Glasgow's Royal Exchange Square having a catch up over some drinks where discussions got slightly dark and deep with subjects such as life, death, religion, Richard Dawkins and Sambuca. Well, the sambuca wasn't so much talked about, just drank, quickly and sent my stomach into strange, volatile movements with which it slowly recovered after some medicinal vodkas. A trip to the casino followed and then a taxi journey home with Big Raymond from the Auldhouse at the wheel. Raymond was one of the locals from the Auldhouse bar, the famed small country pub I used to work in through my student years, and we done a bit of catching up with him on the way home. Once again the main subject of the conversation being the cheery "who was now dead and who wasn't" like that rather melancholy game they used to play on Radio 1 when listeners had to phone in and tell Simon Mayo if a certain famous person was dead or alive - a major kick up the arse to any work quiet, listening celebrities that were accused of having passed away.
Obviously, since the events of last week, the subjects of death and loss have never been far from my mind. Hopefully thoughts and conversations will get a little cheerier with time.