The Un-bear-able Lightness of Being

That's Debby. She's a Polar Bear. And after the one in The Golden Compass or the one on top of a Fox's Glacier Mint, she is one of the most famous Polar Bears in the world. Debby is famous because she is considered to be the oldest Polar Bear in the world. I say "considered" because we can't know if that's true*. We haven't met all of them. And they don't register their births. But we do know that she is the oldest Polar Bear in captivity. At least she was until she died this week.

Debby had a degrading kidney condition (Don't we all?) and was a "guest" at the Assiniboine Zoo in Winnipeg, Canada for many years. She was forty-one years old when they "euthanized" her. I'm hoping that was a lot longer in Polar Bear years. Not just for personal (age-related) reasons. You see, I've actually met Debby.

I lived in Winnipeg for a couple of years in the early Nineties and during my stay there I paid a visit to their rather large zoo. I was visiting because Ling Ling and Wong Wong** the Chinese Pandas were on a state visit but I did make it over to see the Polar Bears. And unlike our pee-stained yellow Polar Bears, the Canadian ones are actually white**. This is possibly because they are from up the road (and not from the Phoenix Park).

Either way, I hope you had a happy life Debby. You were way more interesting than the Pandas. And you'll make a nicer rug.


*And only religious people are that certain of anything.
**not actual names or colours.

Ayre today... gone tomorrow

A recent conversation (yeah, it was drunken!) reminded me of Eighties comedy poet Pam Ayres. I don't think we have comedy poets anymore. Or maybe there hasn't been a suitably fabulous one worthy of our attention. Check out Pam's, ahem, talent here:

Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath,
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.

I wish I'd been that much more willin'
When I had more tooth there than fillin'
To pass up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers
And to buy something else with me shillin'.

When I think of the lollies I licked,
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My Mother, she told me no end,
"If you got a tooth, you got a friend"
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin'
And pokin' and fussin'
Didn't seem worth the time... I could bite!

If I'd known I was paving the way,
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fiIlin's
Injections and drillin's
I'd have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lay in the old dentist's chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine,
"Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there."

How I laughed at my Mother's false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath,
But now comes the reckonin'
It's me they are beckonin'
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.

Okay, maybe it's not quite as "genius" as it seemed in the those days. Maybe we had less money then. Or maybe we have more vocabulary now. Either way, you might need to hear her in all her Westcountry glory to get how wonderfully weird she was.

Gawd, we miss you Pam. I think.

Feel the fear and do it anyway

I remember as a school kid, studying a poem called Death Be Not Proud. It had a strong impact on me. Mainly because my grand mother had recently died and I had never faced the mortality of those I loved before. It was the only poem I actually "learned" for class: we were meant to learn them all! I still remember most of it.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for,
thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death,
nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from
thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with
poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better then thy stroke; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleep past, wee wake eternally, And death shall be no more;
death, thou shalt die.

John Donne's poem talks about death's power over us being a fallacy. We can "overcome" death. Of course, what he really means it that once we die we go to Heaven and death "thou shalt die". It's a very religious way of looking at things.

Over the years, I have learned more about death and I've learned more about life. I've learned that we most definitely cannot overcome death. But most of all, I've learned that aspiring to reach heaven values death over life. It devalues our short and mysterious existence in favour of "life everlasting".

As an atheist, the most difficult concept to broach is that when we die, that's it! Within the context of the several billion year old Universe, our short visit is frightening. It is this fear that religions feed upon. Or rather, it is the smug notion that we can somehow cheat death that drives religion.

On that point, I can never understand how Christians position themselves as pro-life when, by their very faith, they are pro-death. As indeed is Islam (hence the endless procession of Islamic fundamentalists willing to die for their place in this so-called heaven). Both religions await the coming of the end of the world and the rewards that will come to the faithful. Getting there quicker is almost a good thing!

We all face the fear of death but why this fear has to be channelled in to "cults of death" is beyond me. Maybe we should face the fear, rather than pretend it doesn't exist. Admit there is a problem, as a therapist might say. And then we can get on with living. (As Phillip Larkin said, "Death is no different whined at than withstood".)

Maybe it's time we realised that we are powerless to do something about death. And that this somehow makes life even more precious. And life thou shalt live! It might actually make life better (than the Bible, Koran or Talmud ever did).

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.

I heart the Olympics

The Olympics are very important to me! I'm crap at most of the sports that we used to play on the street when I was kid... but the sports from the Olympics are a different matter. For a start they are a lot more glamorous. There's synchronised swimming and diving (where I would kick-ass if I could only swim properly). Also, I can out-ribbon most people I know doing my rhythmic gymnastic and I'm not even classically trained. Actually I'm not trained at all.... I taught myself to control this very "difficult" piece of sporting equipment as part of Shirley Temple Bar's entry in 1997's Alternative Miss Ireland. Needless to say, Shirley won that year and the rest is historical....

All because the lady loves the Olympics. Yes, I heart the Olympics. But still I don't do competitive sports.

You can hang out with all the boys...

One of the first records I ever owned was the disco era classic Y.M.C.A. It took the world by storm in the late Seventies but now I suppose it's cheesy pop at its horrifying best! Weirdly, I see this record on children's party albums all the time. Strange; if you consider the song is about men hooking up with men in the showers of the local Y.M.C.A. (And Jesus wept.)

As a kid, I never identified The Village People as gay. (And since it was my mother who bought me the record, I'm guessing she didn't figure that one either!). The "I'm a little teapot" dance moves and the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" costumes clearly worked well as a smokescreen!

Looking at the men now, they seem strangely assexual. Like H from Steps or that children's TV presenter from Rainbow, I wouldn't wanna "do" them. I certainly didn't want to "be" any of them. I guess that's why I didn't end up becoming a construction worker when I grew up. Or a Policeman. Or a Cowboy. (Now, Wonderwoman.... she was aspirational!)

You can hang out with all the The Village People when they play Tripod on Sunday 21 September.