A wonderfully worthwhile trip to the London Marathon, despite the giant buggies and tube crush
✒ We went to watch the London Marathon last Sunday. I was in grumpy old man mode and hated the crowds on the tube, the people carrying bikes on to the trains (isn't that cheating? You're supposed to run the whole way) and the parents wheeling gigantic six-wheel buggies along pavements that were already narrow and further constricted by fencing, sound equipment, walls of bottled water for the runners, and approximately a zillion signs advertising Virgin, which was sponsoring the run and is, no doubt, "Sir" Richard Branson's solution to overcrowding on his trains: make us all run to Manchester.
(Did you see that there is now a new, £1,200 superbuggy? It too could be dropped into Libya to provide armoured transport for the rebels. The biggest John Lewis in Britain, in London's Oxford Street, is selling them at the rate of one an hour. Why don't they just paint "Eddie Stobart" on the side and have done with it?)
We were there to support our niece, who was running for cancer research. We stood where we were bidden, just east of the Tower, where the road is divided between those who'd started earlier, and were already at mile 23, and the amateurs and fun runners, who were just hitting 13.
On the far side of the road were people who looked like real athletes, in proper kit, loping along in a relaxed kind of way, knowing the finish now beckoned. On our side were the panting people, the walkers, the game old folk, the men with one leg, plus a few runners who were really trying for a good result. And, of course, the people dressed as Wombles, Rubik's cubes, polar bears and all that leaden British whimsy with which we are so familiar. The Goon Show was very funny in its day, but it has much to answer for.
And then our niece was upon us, and her tears ran down with her sweat. Her feet were covered in blisters, but she was, somehow, enjoying it. "I've only been passed by one rhino!" she said with pride. There were hugs and photos and congratulations, and she was on her way. We adjourned to a café for beer and snacks, and felt it had all been wonderfully worthwhile. And she finished in six and a half hours, raising more than £3,000.
✒ In a family-oriented week, we went to Exeter to lay my wife's stepfather to his rest. As a rear admiral he might, perhaps, have been buried at sea, but this would be difficult for most of the congregation, so he had Exeter Cathedral instead. It is nearly 800 years old, and the first dean in 1225 was called simply Serlo, which sounds like a quango (south-east regional labour office) but shows that the fashion for one-word names is not new. The brilliant sunlight through the windows drenched the choir (or "quire" as they call it), the 400-year old organ blasted Nimrod out to us and the tourists by the west door.
The eco-sensitive wickerwork coffin arrived (he would have hated the idea of his widow spending money on a fancy wooden coffin fated to rot in the ground). It was draped in the white ensign, with flowers, his ceremonial sword, his admiral's hat and medals on a red velvet cushion. Hard, I found, to hold back a tear, and the goose pimples were not from the cold because it was a hot day, even in the quire.
One of the encomia recalled how he had, in his 80s, abseiled down his local church spire, even pausing to wave to the photographers. And at much the same time, he had asked to be taught rock climbing. While younger men floundered, he had made his way up to a crag as briskly as he might have walked the quarterdeck. At the top, he poked his head up like a meerkat and said: "that was fun!" which would be a good epitaph for anyone's life.
✒ At the wake, held in another part of the cathedral, there were instructions for the solemn Maundy Thursday ritual of foot-washing. At the bottom was an instruction: "Women will find the ceremony much easier if they do not wear tights or stockings."
✒ Next day, at my mother-in-law's invitation, the men of the family pillaged the admiral's wardrobe. Some people find it terrifically distasteful to wear dead men's clothing. I have no qualms at all, especially as he had good taste and was more or less my size. In a way, I'm quite proud to be able to pull on, say, one of his sweaters, as if by some atavistic, sympathetic magic I'm attaching his own lost qualities to me.
✒ Time for more dotty labels, signs etc. Patrick Gallivan bought a packet of Seabrook Canadian ham crisps – "vegetarian". I like the addition of "Canadian" as if some incredibly clever chemist had detected that his fake meat tasted quite different from, say, Wiltshire ham. (There used to be a car ad in America that promised seating made from "Corinthian leather. Why not the best?" There is no such thing. You might as well advertise Birmingham mohair.)
G L Parkes bought some shelving at B&Q. "Warning: wood product, may contain splinters," it said. Godfrey Eland found a bottle of Morrisons chip shop vinegar, which says helpfully, "ideal with chips". Bernadette Urtz has a sign in her workplace: "Stairs not suitable for wheelchair users". Or Daleks, it might have added.
My favourite comes from James Hutchinson, who bought a bottle of skin lotion: "Avoid contact with the brain." He asks if they're afraid people might be tempted to open their skulls and pour the stuff in. Then sue when they needed a lobotomy.