Tag Archive: Philip Larkin


Olive Kitteridge, again and again

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Movies, Parenting, Television — Leave a comment
August 30, 2022

‘Olive Kitteridge’ (2008) and ‘Olive, Again’ (2019) by Elizabeth Strout

‘Olive Kitteridge’ directed by Lisa Cholodenko (HBO mini-series ,2014)

How many books really stick in the mind? Frequently, I struggle to recollect plots and characters of novels I know I have read, even those I have enjoyed. 

I first read ‘Olive Kitteridge’ soon after it earned Elizabeth Strout the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 and casually decided to re-read it after watching the excellent HBO TV series based on the novel.

I immediately continued to the follow up, ‘Olive, Again’ and feel now slightly bereft that this is the end of her story (unless Strout decides to write about the first 60 years of her life!)

I was struck by just how much I had forgotten or completely overlooked in the original novel. In revisiting it, the theme of ageing now resonated more fully with my own life.  There’s quite a difference between reading this book in middle-age and now I am at an age (approaching 65) regarded by institutions and individuals as officially old. You can soften this with terms like ‘silver surfers’ or speak in terms of the ‘third age’ but the hard truth is that I am (if I’m lucky) entering the last couple of decades of my life.

As I get older, mortality is no longer an abstract concept  but a harsh reality. This is the first full year without my mother who died on Christmas Day 2021 aged 93 (my father passed away in 1986 aged 60).

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When you’re gone you’re gone

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April 23, 2018

Dad

My Dad : 20/4/26 – 16/9/86

There’s something sobering about reaching the same age that my Dad was when he died.
He passed aged 60 in 1986 of stomach cancer after being diagnosed just 6 months earlier. Prior to that I never recall him being sick. Being in good health and then being gone is one of the scariest things. More so than those who die after what the newspapers euphemistically call “a long illness”.
I suppose, on balance, it’s better to go quickly than becoming a burden to your loved ones. Dad would have hated that.
I’ve recently found that I suffer from high blood pressure despite my virtual straight-edge lifestyle and relatively stress-free work. This has caused me to find articles about ‘the silent killer’ of a heart condition you don’t know you have until it’s too late.
I don’t smoke, drink in moderation, exercise like a demon and eat what I like to think is a healthy plant-based diet. Maybe I drink too much coffee so I’ve now virtually cut that out too.
I have begun to envy those who don’t seem health conscious in the slightest yet don’t seem any the worse for it.
Most books on ageing and dying refer to the consolation of faith at some point but I don’t believe in an afterlife or in reincarnation so these are useless to me.
The way I feel is that my heart or some other vital organ will give out sooner or later. “Most things may never happen:this one will”, wrote Philip Larkin in Audabe so when I wake in a cold sweat I can’t console myself that I’m worrying about nothing. It’s the very nothingness that is most chilling.
My Dad suffered briefly and then was gone. As a dodo or a doornail.
For now I put morbid fears to one side and keep on training and jogging. I know full well that however fast or far I run the grim reaper will catch me one day but I don’t intend to make it easy for him.

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Don’t fear the reaper – watch movies

Filed under: Movies, Poetry — 1 Comment
January 17, 2017

amour“Death is no different whined about than withstood” wrote Philip Larkin in his desolate poem Aubade. In other words, whether we live paralysed by fear or accept it, the grim reaper will get us one day.

For obvious reasons many prefer not to think too much about the subject at all and regard those who broach the D-word without good cause as morbid (“Can’t we talk about something more cheerful?”).

In movies the topic is widely viewed as box office poison. People go to the cinema to be entertained not to be reminded of their mortality.

This is why many will studiously avoid Michael Haneke’s ‘Amour’ like the plague. Haneke is known for turning a unflinching eye on ‘difficult’ subjects. In Funny Games we are forced to watch two sadistic psychopaths on a murderous mission, in Caché he exposes the guilty secrets that tear apart a well-heeled couple.

In ‘Amour’, the Austrian director presents the story of a woman who suffers a stroke which partially paralyses her and then another which takes away her ability to move or speak. Despite this trauma, it could be construed as a love story, hence the title, because of the way the stricken woman’s husband cares for her and tries to comfort her. Continue reading →

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Life Before Death

Filed under: Atheism, Photography, Poetry — Leave a comment
April 2, 2008
Wellcome Collection poster

The tag line for this Blog is ‘Give me some truth – make me feel human’. The series of photographs by German photographer Walter Schels for the Wellcome Trust’s Life Before Death exhibition in London fulfill this criteria. The portraits are sobering and very moving. It reminded me of the last time I saw my Dad when he was in hospital dying from cancer. When I asked him how he was he replied “how do you expect me to be” – he knew he was near the end even if I and the rest of my family didn’t want to acknowledge this.

Schels and journalist Beate Lakottasay, who collaborated on this project, say how they were struck by how alone his subjects were. Even when they had visitors, no-one wanted to face the reality of their situation, they preferred to chat as if they’d soon be up and about again. It’s interesting too that Schels saw nothing to change his agnosticism.

It brought to mind some lines from , what remains for me the most powerful poem about death I have read, in Philip Larkin’s ‘Aubade’:
This is a special way of being afraid,
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

Such reflections may not be upbeat or comfortable but they give an urgency to our being alive now and to cut out the crap that leaves us feeling less vital.

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