Drilling Round Corners
This might be the last time I see you
Sometimes things happen that make the universe shrink slightly, the lights dim a little. The grief feels like coming up on mushrooms, although it ought to be called coming down on mushrooms, because everything feels like it’s sinking down. A heavy, tired feeling, mentally exhausting, slightly nauseous. A visceral physical reaction.
Grandad died on Saturday evening. At the time, Daniella and I were staying in an AirBnB in Warminster, watching Don’t Look Now - Nicolas Roeg’s seminal study on grief (irony not missed). Dad called around 9pm and I could tell straight away from the slight waver in his voice what he was about to say, “Not very good news I’m afraid”. Even though I knew it was imminent, I didn’t expect to hear it at that moment. I’m not exactly sure what I thought, something along the lines of, “maybe there’s more time”, and then there wasn’t. I suppose also, that I might be lucky enough to be there to say goodbye. But I get it, he did a French exit and slipped away. Saying goodbye is really, really hard, especially when it’s total.
He looked at me right in the eyes and said, “This might be the last time I see you”. After a short pause, during which I tried to find some collection of words in response, but very quickly realised that the entire dictionary fell short, I gently held his hand and locked eyes back. As we hung, suspended in the most sublime moment, he began to smile and I smiled back, slowly at first and then broader until I felt as though I was going to start laughing. Not nervous laughter, but a happy laughter of relief. He had this cheeky grin on his face and a glint in his eye, as if he knew there was nothing to worry about - acceptance. I told him I loved him and I hoped this wasn’t the last time I would see him. It wasn’t a long moment, but it was enough. I didn’t know then that was a final goodbye, but I do know now, and it was about as perfect as it could be.
He was a courageous man, stubbornly independent until the very end. He would always say, “That’s the nature of the beast”, and during Covid, “I’m not ready to go yet” - and he wasn’t. Still gardening in his 90s, still looking after himself. When Grandma got Alzheimer’s, he cared for her twenty four hours a day, for years and years until she finally took a turn for the worse during lockdown and was cruelly rushed into isolation. When she passed, one of the nurses in the care home told us that Grandad had written to her every single day she was in there. Seeing him kiss the head of her coffin with tears in his eyes broke my heart.
My fondest memories are in his garage, teaching me how to silver solder, join wood, operate a steam engine, identify mineral samples. Down the allotment picking runner beans and marrows, that Grandma would stuff with mincemeat, and executing slugs. Once he rigged a pulley system in the tree so I could winch myself up into the canopy with just one finger. I remember him showing me photos of his travels to Sardinia, Egypt, Turkey, Saga holidays - so many photos. One Christmas Day, we went out for a walk and he was still wearing the plastic pearl necklace he’d won in a cracker. He had this excellent full head mask of a werewolf that he’d sometimes dress up in, and when my sister refused to finish her dinner he’d threaten her with a big plastic funnel. Every time I’d leave, he’d give me a tenner and say, “Buy yourself some fags”. Just the once, he tried to get me interested in The Masons. He told me that if I wanted to join I would need money, but that he could sort it for me. Also, that if I were to be initiated in Bristol, it would be spectacular.
Grandad’s tales of wartime youth were both terrifying and exhilarating - find an unexploded incendiary bomb detonator, put it in a vice and hit it with a hammer. This is exactly the kind of stupid shit that I used to do at that age. His thumb had a chunk missing. At the time he lived in Wimbledon and recounted how occasionally the classroom windows at school would blow open before the explosion of a V2 rocket could be heard rattling through the building. When the menacing noise of the Doodlebugs would suddenly stop, you would just stand still and pray. He was evacuated out to the Welsh countryside and sent to a new school where the teachers were obviously not up to standard. By slowly inserting a splint into a lit bunsen burner and pulling it out to reveal a teardrop shape of unburnt wood inside a ring of char, Grandad proved his point that the centre of the flame was actually cold. This act made his teacher look like a tit and got him expelled, so then he went to work helping the local milkman on his float.
Grandad used to make wrought iron stuff for Harrods and did National Service as a tank engineer. He was a King Scout and knew all his knots and went canoeing a lot (another unexploded bomb story on an island in the Thames). He rode a motorbike and drove Grandma, Dad and Sue all across Eastern Europe with a caravan. What a man! Fuck, I’m really sad he’s gone, devastated in fact. But I’m grateful to have known him for so long and so happy to have had that relationship - what a gift. So when I feel sad, I will remember all that inspiring stuff, and go out there and do you proud. Thank you Grandad, I’ll miss you.
P.S. I still have that attachment for drilling around corners - you always brought me cool shit from the middle of Lidl.
Recommended:
Dina Ögon - Dina Ögon
This is what music is supposed to sound like. In their own words, “Dina Ögon is the bastard love child of Eric B. & Rakim , Fleetwood Mac , Selda Bağcan and Ted Gärdestad. Hailing from Stockholm, Sweden aswell as Istanbul, Turkey and Cali, Colombia. Old timers in the game. For your eyes, for us all.”
Listen here.
Current and forthcoming works:
Michael Gianan & Andrew Neil Hayes - Louisiana Basement
This Thursday 4th Dec!!
Marking the release of their debut 7” release on Skew Note, Michael Gianan & Andrew Neil Hayes will be playing a solo set each, before coming together for a collaborative duo set.
Tickets here.