Din among the Dead or No peace for those who rest in peace!

The other day I went to the cemetery to pay my respects at my mother’s grave, as I have done for many years now since she passed away, and what met my eyes and ears was, to put it simply, a scene of commotion and convulsion. For a city of the dead, there was a high level of activity going on, shattering the peace not only of the dead but of the living too. All around changes had been wrought in the landscape since my last visit there some weeks back, evidently to accommodate more dead persons within an area of land that had remained the same as the numbers of the dead had grown over the years; naturally, if there's one thing that the living never stop doing it's dying! That's why undertakers will never be out of a job. But I digress...

Entrance to the World of the Dead

The changes that had come about were so great that I hardly recognised the landscape around me. Since my mother had been laid to rest there in 1987, more and more land that up till then had been unused and unoccupied, covered in grass and trees, had had to be brought into use to accommodate more graves. When my dear mother went into the ground well before the biblical three score years and ten, the section of the cemetery she was buried in was only about half full, if that. Over the intervening years I have seen that section fill up with graves till it could take no more and I have then seen another site across the way and over to the right denuded of its vegetation and opened up for fresh graves. As that site too has spread and filled up, another patch, on higher ground immediately opposite the site where my mother is buried, has been commandeered for further graves. The turf has gone, the trees have been felled, and the grateful dead have moved in to populate it.  And so it has gone on. With every further visit of mine there, the necropolis before me is ever bigger, enhanced by an intake of many more deceased who have come to the end of a road that we all must take and which leads to the same place. Gosh, I wonder where I'll end up?!

But on this last visit of mine, there were major changes afoot, substantial reconstruction and expansion, re-alignments and fencing-off, upgrading of simple rustic paths into mini-roads, one-way systems, and embankments. Added to that was the ‘refurbishment’ of the Jewish section, with a stockade-like perimeter filled with thousands of stone fragments and encased in a wire enclosure around the perimeter wall. A long low edifice of marble, with rows of compartments that I supposed were ossuaries inside it, fronted by small glass doors and vigil boxes, that curved its way from the catholic section round to the orthodox section has sprung up - a veritable Roman-style structure that somehow looks out of place with its surroundings. There's been a newly enclosed area of sunken ground housing the very old graves which are still being preserved, perhaps because of their historical significance, I’m not sure. And new routes have been cut through the cemetery to accommodate the motor-car and avoid congestion; yes, folks, even in a graveyard there can be traffic jams!

Sunlight upon tree-shaded graves

With all this renovation and reconstruction going on, the landscape was peppered with diggers, trucks, cement-mixers and earth-moving equipment in general, all accompanied by an infernal din calculated to wake the dead and unhinge the living! The place was more a construction site than a place of rest, and with a funeral then taking place to boot, there was more activity and noise in the damn place than on any high street or school playground! The dead must have been turning in their graves! 

Anyway, I then did what I came to do. I lit a candle, after several abortive attempts thanks to a lusty wind blowing the match out each time, and positioned it in the vigil box, placed the flowers I had brought in various locations around the cross, re-arranged more neatly what was already there and generally tidied everything so that I left her grave neater and sprucer than I had found it. After a brief prayer, a few words of reverence and a moment of silence, I slowly moved off and made my way back to my car. A few minutes later I had left behind me this noisy bustling metropolis of the dead and was driving back home through… noisy bustling streets! I would be back soon, hopefully as a visitor still rather than as a resident (!), though who can be sure of anything  when one is no spring chicken anymore and has more reason to look back than forward! In life we are constantly aware of death but are never ready for it.


Rest in peace/Requiescat in pace, Mother... I've missed you, the time we had together was too short and your life too brief.

Easter and a Visit to the Barber's!

I was originally going to do a post about my three-monthly visit a couple of days ago to my barber’s who’s always talking dirty and telling me sick jokes (and who on this occasion nicked me just below the ear!), but then I thought that as Easter had caught up with me, it being Good Friday today, it would be more in keeping with the moment if I said something about the paschal season, though what exactly I’m not sure. Hey, that was an awfully long sentence!

I say it's Good Friday today but in literally a couple of minutes we lurch into Shopping Saturday and it's farewell Good Friday! So I've just made it. But now I've got to get my thoughts together and say something awesomely profound and thought-provoking about this specific moment in the year, second only to Christmas in this part of the world but superior to Christmas in other parts. It's really six of one and half-a-dozen of the other because if Jesus had not been born (Christmas) Christianity might never have come into existence. On the other hand, if Jesus had not become the Christ and then risen after being crucified, it could have had the same result again. So it's hard to decide which of the two is more important and perhaps there's no point in even trying to do so. Both conditions are indispensable for the outcome that we want and for Christianity to exist. 

My Barber

Have you ever wondered why the day on which our Lord was vilely abused, lashed, tortured, and cruelly put to death by crucifixion is called Good Friday? No, not the ‘Friday’ part, clever cloggs, the ‘Good’ part. I mean, what’s good about all that? Well, there are a couple of possible explanations and they're all available on the Internet, as is everything else, so don't expect me to waste valuable virtual paper and real time setting them out here. Just take a virtual trip to the virtual place that provides information on this... virtually! And remember: if it ain't virtual, it ain't real!


I could say that I went for a haircut so as to smarten up for Easter, and I'm half tempted to say that, but the truth of the matter is that my head of hair, though slightly thinner at the top than it was a few years ago, was taking over my head and face and I was beginning to look a bit like John the Baptist without the beard and moustache. At least I assume he had a beard and tache because we're led to believe they all had that in those distant days, especially the prophets (though not the women, I should add!), as it gave them an air of gravitas and wisdom and was also all the rage at the time. Apart from a few fugitives from the 1960s, who think that a long untidy mop of hair is still in fashion, most blokes nowadays are either purposely bald or have a number one haircut, which is the next best thing to a bald bonce! Of course one day they will all end up bald or as good as and won't have the option they have now, but it seems we never miss it till we've lost it.

But coming back to the Easter theme, Holy Week doesn't seem to deter killers and terrorists from going about their usual business of... well... killing and terrorising! If one watches the news bulletins, it's business as usual all over the world and general all-round beastliness is not suspended even in nominally Christian nations. The business of aggression and assault is too important to break off, even for a day or two. There are too many people to kill and terrorise to let a backlog build up. Besides, it could set a bad precedent for the future and end up interfering with the wicked ways of evil men, a breed that abounds in the world and always has. 

Easter Party for Druggies

Well, there you have it, loyal readers, just a few of my random ramblings, a new angle on Easter and a quick word on my haircut and on my delightful toilet-mouthed sex-fiend of a barber! How are they related, you may ask, and, though I confess it is a tenuous link, a link it is nonetheless and it is that of coinciding chronologically. Haircut Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday. It all ties in. And if you think this all a little odd, just feast your eyes on the rocambolesque scene in the picture here which would have done Alice proud as she wandered around her Wonderland! It's all going on here and it rather resembles the unchecked lunatic content of some sick sod's sleep-induced imaginings!


As I drove home from the barber's sporting a brand new haircut, I thought long and hard about the Easter story in the context of the state of the world today and it was then that the seeds of a blog post began to germinate in my sick mind. The state of the world was a subject that was bottomless and fathomless, but my visit to the barber was not. Christ's suffering and sacrifice were clear enough and his overriding message was clear too. My silly haircut was not so easy to understand and wasn't even worth contemplating. When I got home and looked in the mirror, it looked even sillier and I had no wig in the house to cover up my embarrassment. If long hair was good enough for Jesus, why was it not for me? Can you imagine the Messiah with short back and sides? Had he worn his hair short, as short as I wore it then, the course of Christianity might have been very different. Indeed, Christianity might never have taken hold! And that is just too awesome to contemplate!! 


I look forward to Sunday morning when Christ the Lord is resurrected, though it is painful to think he will be put through all of it again just a week later for the benefit of Orthodox Christians, a sort of ultimate double whammy! If I needed to visit the barber's twice in the space of a week or so I'd be hopping mad - how much more for something a trillion times more serious than a silly haircut! And if you saw the haircut I got, you would think it silly too! In fact, this past twenty years or more, all my haircuts have been silly and embarrassing, no matter what barber I go to. Perhaps that's the difference between a barber and a hairdresser?