All Hallows and the stories we tell ourselves

There's always a few jobs to do after a funeral. On Tuesday I went to the cemetery and crematorium to move my mother's funeral flowers to my grandmother's grave. 

Can't say I'm fond of formal flower arrangements myself, but the cross was right for my mother, and I liked the colours and the personal significance of the Michaelmas daisies. 

My grandmother's grave had some Herb Robert growing on it, which I'm fond of and would have left growing, but I know my aunts aren't and wouldn't have, so I did a spot of weeding and put my hand on something spiky. It turned out to be a tiny holly bush that had probably self-seeded from a Christmas wreath, so I took it home and planted it up. It felt like a gift from my grandmother, thirty years after her death, and I hope it will eventually grow big enough to produce berries - if it's female - and attract blackbirds and thrushes.

I also had to catch up on other jobs that had gone undone over the previous month, like an oil change for my car. On the way back from the garage, I walked over Horfield Common, which was looking beautiful in November sun. 

 

I always look to the skyline for the familiar landmarks, and there they are: to the left of the pair of trees, Freezing Hill (which I still haven't visited); to the right, Kelston Roundhill (which I have).

I spent a little time wandering through the churchyard of Holy Trinity with St Edmund (Horfield Parish Church), and I realised that it must have been years since I'd walked right around it, as there was a beautiful monument I hadn't acquainted myself with before, even though it's been there long enough to have acquired a smattering of lichen and moss. 

Jenny Nicholson was murdered on 7th July 2005 in the London bombings. She was 24. The inscriptions are a quotation from Sonnet 116, and another from Charlotte Bronte: 'I am no bird and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will'. 

In between these jobs, I drove my daughter back to her home on the south coast. As it happened, St Wulfran's Church at nearby Ovingdean had popped up in my social media feed that morning, so we diverted for a quick picnic in the sunshine. 

The village was the birthplace of Charles Eamer Kempe, the Victorian designer and friend of William Morris, who was closely involved in its 'restoration' in the 1860s. It was at this time that he designed the painted ceiling.

The reredos was also designed in the late 19th century.

Most of my photos of Kempe's windows, which were donated to the Church before his death in 1907, didn't come out too well; here's a few that were OK. 

We wandered around outside for a bit looking for the Kempe family vault but failed to spot it. I found a very early primrose growing on an unmarked grave, however ... 

... and an instruction to badgers with opposable thumbs.

In an extension of the churchyard there was a view of the sea ...

... and another memorial to a life that ended abruptly amid much publicity. 

I've been thinking a lot lately about the stories we tell ourselves to give shape to our lives and those of the people closest to us, but how hard must it be to find that shape if someone you love dies when their lives were just starting? 

A Literary Trip around West Yorkshire

Offspring number 1 having just graduated from Leeds University with a degree in English, it was high time she visited the local literary landscape, so I took her on a repeat of a jaunt I really enjoyed a few years ago. 

Here we are outside the house in Mytholmroyd where Ted Hughes lived till the age of seven.  The good news is that it's now owned by the Elmet Trust and can be rented as a writer's retreat.  The bad news is that the nice black embossed plaque has been replaced with a tinny (and already defaced) blue one.


And here is Offspring number 3 at the canal where lurked the famous literary 'Pike', and where I read the poem.  I remember being excited at an impressionable age by Hughes' use of a noun as a verb - 'green tigering the gold'.  Those four words made me want to study English at University and become a poet, but my teacher told me I wasn't good enough - pffft!

Next stop the steep, cobbledy village of Heptonstall, high above Hebden Bridge (where we would have stopped had we been able to find a space in a car park).  We had a scrummy lunch in the Cross Inn, served by the very friendly landlady, along with her two equally friendly dogs.  

It was a lot less bleak than the last time I visited in February 2008.  This is Heptonstall Old Church seen from just outside the newer one.  

It's impossible to negotiate the site without treading on gravesh (tough they were like this when we got there). 

These fine examples are from the mid 18th century, and 1601 respectively.

Of course, this was the grave we'd really come to see.



It's the custom to leave votive offerings here for Sylvia Plath, and I found a small silver and gold mosaic mirror in my bag which seemed an appropriate gift for the woman who wrote a poem from the point of view of one.  Liz left her a Citalopram, carefully buried so that it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands.  










I liked the way the mirror became a portal by reflecting the sky.  

Then it was on to Haworth, another quaint, steep location much visited by literary pilgrims.  The Black Boar pub is reputedly haunted by Branwell Brontë.

After visiting the Parsonage, which houses much Brontë memorabilia, we wandered around the churchyard.  Again, it was less dispiriting than the last time I was there, in part, possibly, because the exhibition about the appallingly unsanitary conditions in which the townspeople lived in the mid 19th century was no longer on display (which is a shame).  It is estimated that 40,000 people are buried there, with records dating back to 1645, and the graves still seemed to crowd in on the idle bystander - just in much leafier surroundings this time of year.  

This grave seems pretty typical of a town where, in 1850, 41.6% of children died before they were six years old and the average life expectancy was 24.

The Brontë family would have enjoyed more sanitary  conditions than most, although it is speculated that their water supply, like much of the village, was contaminated by poor sanitation and surface runoff from the vast cemetery, and that this would have made them more susceptible to the illnesses which killed them.  Mrs Maria Brontë, the children's mother, died of cancer in 1821, the year after her husband took up the post of Perpetual curate in Haworth.  She was followed by Maria and Elizabeth, the two eldest offspring, who died of TB in 1825.   

Of the four children who survived to adulthood, Branwell famously died an alcoholic and laudanum addict at the age of 31; Emily died aged 30, reputedly on the couch in the room where 'Jane Eyre', 'Wuthering Heights' and 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' were all written; and Anne at the age of 29 in Scarborough.  They all perished within a year of each other, reportedly of TB.

Charlotte lived until 1855, when she died aged 39 of TB, possibly complicated by typhus and her pregnancy.  Patrick, their father, outlived them all, dying in 1861, aged 84.