Father's Day walk
Today, the Sunday when this was written, marks the first Fathers day since my dad, Alan, died. While we never particularly celebrated the day it’s hard not to think about him. So I went on a walk and wrote this.
Fathers day 2024, that means it's almost been a year.
I don't need to exorcise the demons as much as brush the dust off the attic door. Fathers day, solstice, his birthday and then the first anniversary. Like an ancient trackway it needs walking down for the memory to persist. The chaos of the past year has made it difficult to sit with the feeling of loss, too much is changing.
I'm being called to Farringdon. Latent memories in the concrete and tarmac. Former offices that contain his spirit. The buried river Fleet, as so often flowing water is, a magick river. The layers of city that have folded him into it, I need to peel them back to see him again.
The weather is warm as it should be; the rain abating for a few hours to remind us it's still summer. An overshirt (one of Dad’s old shirts) for the incessant breeze. Usually I would ride into the city, especially given the weather, but today needs boots (trainers) on the ground. Connection.
“As it was in the beginning / So shall it be in the end”1 Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Bob Marley and Miles Davis in my headphones. The music continues on. His small part in bringing the music he loved to the UK, the incessant ideas of colonial coercion put to the back of my thoughts for a brief moment. Always the live version of No Woman, No Cry, maybe that's why I love live recordings of songs. Three little birds sit by a widow outside Farringdon station. I walk.
Plunging deep for a memory I have from this area. I was young, there was an office, I was given a toy, a business venture obviously, I remember his joy. I find the original Clerk's Well - from which Clerkenwell gets its name. A lead pipe of insanity. Opposite is a faded picture in a plastic folder tied to a lamppost. Crumbling flowers. A death not forgotten. Unexpected layers found from stepping out without a plan. “Everything's gonna be alright”2.
Passing old factories that have been creative studios since the 90s. I feel close. Windows down into an airy cream coloured basement. Something. Prior research ruins the exercise. I want to trigger memories that I've forgotten. I want to fill in gaps I didn't know existed.
Spa fields, this is an ancient area of renewal and healing. The bad health has worked its way through the family and ended up with me. I need a dip in the holy waters, something to wash it all away. A church spire rises elegantly above, a finger pointing to god. The tarmac cracking to reveal the cobblestones beneath. The physical world is unable to keep it from bubbling up as I feel something rise within me.
I circle round and down into the valley. I've lost the trail and it seems like I'll never find him here. Maybe the lesson is that I needed more information. Maybe it's that our own mourning is more about us than the person we've lost. I move on, trying to find no shame in who I am, in how I feel, in what I have and haven't done.
The breeze is strong, as much as it can still be called a breeze. I arrogantly step into it rather than let it take me. In Hatton garden, on the edge of Fagin's London, the scent is truly lost. Dad's London is as distant as a Victorian novel and here I am walking through it, the concrete ribs of a fossil giant.
There is true silence to be found in the city on a Sunday afternoon. I hear the rustling leaves in the rare trees. There is peace, and calm.
I let myself slip back down into the valley of the Fleet and the current carries me down Farringdon street towards the Thames. Dad's ashes are going to be spread into the river that is the heart of London, a reunification of man and city, my mystic twist on his afterlife, or at least that's the plan. At the grief group I go to, some interesting suggestions were given to other ways we could spread dad, to ignore littering laws, to put parts of him in sandwich bags, dropping him like trouser dust in The Great Escape. His physical remains aren't mine alone to make decisions about, so I walk.
I'm greeted by low tide on the Thames and stairs down to the rough beach. All manner of detritus built at my feet, things that at one point or another meant something to someone, ground down over the years to sand. Hauntingly, from across the river, the voice of an opera singer is carried on an echo. I see the worn wooden remains of a jetty, so slowly being taken back by the river, lick by lick. Yet it remains there as long as I remember it.
Granddad's profession is gone from the river. Dad too is taken back. Still the singer's voice carries across the oddly calm and quiet Thames. The city takes back what it once gave life to, and, in return, gives us music for our dues.
Everything is gonna be alright.
Be Happy.
Lyrics from One Love by Bob Marley
Lyric from No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley