I mentioned my plan to my friend Hat, a fellow recent inhabitant of Planet Grief. Hat thought it such a good idea, she decided to do the same for her husband’s birthday, which fell a few days before JS’s, and in a touching gesture, bought a second balloon for JS.
Being somewhat remote from a Clinton Card shop and gas canister, Hat procured her balloons in advance, in hindsight a tactical error. By the time she took them up the Welsh hillside for the big launch, they had deflated and defiantly refused to take off, cue sobby trek back down the hill clutching a couple of wilting airbags. Life is hard enough without your balloons deflating.
Based in central London rather than rural Wales, I was able to get my balloons (£2.50 each from Chapel Market in Islington) on the day: a burgundy heart for JS, and a pale pink star for Hat’s husband. The cheery lady on the stall put them in a big plastic bag, I took them home, wrote a message on each tag and in the late afternoon June sunshine, took balloon bag, messages, scissors, camera and The Hound to the Heath for the grand send off.
As I walked along, the balloons were bobbing up and down in the bag, threatening to escape like a buxom woman’s boobs in a too tight bra. As The Hound and a German pointer stopped for a mutual bum sniffing session, its owner said, ‘Balloons! How lovely! Are you having a party?’ I’m still prone to terrible bouts of verbal Death Diarrhoea, i.e. telling complete strangers what has happened, even if they have just asked me the time at the bus stop, so I told this man in great detail why I was letting off the balloons, and then, seeing his shocked face, wished I hadn’t. I need some sort of Imodium for the brain-mouth connection.
By the time we get to the venue for the big send-up, it’s windy. I wrestle the balloons out of the bag, stand on the ribbons and the shiny things go mental, weaving in and out of each other like some crazy, ecstasy-fuelled Maypole dance.
I still have to get the tags on the balloons, which, because of the constant ducking and diving proves impossible, so I implement Plan B: shortening the ribbons by kneeling on them whilst I try to attach the messages of love and hope. The Hound decides this is a game and launches himself at the balloons, jumping on them and barking. Laughing, I push him away, increasing his excitement and turning him from dachshund to demented collie as he tries to ‘round up’ the balloons and kill them. If there is anything worse than a deflated balloon, it’s a punctured one, so I go back to Plan A. I stand on the ribbons whilst being constantly head-butted by a couple of foil shapes and watched by the Heath Police (who have parked up behind me), and accompanied by the sound of frenzied barking, I manage to tie the messages on, but give up trying to separate the balloons whose pink and white ribbons are now bound tightly together.
Then I get my scissors, cut the strings, say what I want to say and watch as the balloons soar gently up into the blue, cloud-dotted sky. There is a brief panic when a small plane appears to cross their path – not unexpected as there are more planes in the London sky than sparrows – and I have a flash of terror at the thought of my balloon being sucked into a jet engine, the plane plummeting over London and my being responsible for hundreds of new inhabitants of Planet Grief; but then the balloons continue their gentle flight, at first familiar and recognisable, then just dots and then – nothing.
As I search the sky with teary eyes, I think to myself, ‘I know they’re out there.’ Only moments ago, I was holding them. I could feel their form and energy. I could see them and they were bright and shiny and fun. Even when I let them go, for a while I could watch them. But now, however hard I look, however carefully I scan every inch of the skyline, I can’t see them. They may have gone from my sight and my touch, they may soon be punctured and in a change of shape, end up hanging in a tree or be swept up and binned, but I know that in some form, they’re still out there.
And I’m not just talking about balloons.
EGGS AND THE CITY
I just can’t bring myself to cook for myself. I feel like we had such fun cooking together, what is the point on my own? I look round the supermarket thinking, ‘Just buy anything that you fancy,’ but I don’t fancy anything, so I come home with tins of beans. ~ Linz
It’s June 2011, and after a meeting in town, I find myself wandering along Marylebone High Street. JS and I once fantasised about moving to this fabulously stylish area a stone’s throw from Selfridges, but a world away from the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, until we realised we were hopelessly out of touch with the housing market, and prices had shot up after Waitrose moved in. It’s now très fashionable with a wonderful mix of independent stores, nationwide chains, cafés and specialist food shops. I used to see Caroline Quentin in Waitrose. She always looked stressed.
Living on Planet Grief, I find I am no longer interested in stylish boutiques (those familiar with my wardrobe will be gasping at such a bold statement) or Chi Chi home accessory emporiums. Where once I would be in The White Company salivating over zillion-count Egyptian cotton sheets (before going home to John Lewis non-iron poly-cotton), I now shun such fripperies. The Emma Bridgewater shop no longer beckons me like a mermaid on a rock, and I haven’t the attention span to be interested in the tomes on the shelves of Daunt Books. In any case, I already have a huge and mostly unread collection of books about grief, the afterlife and how to live frugally on a small income. (Chickens and churn your own butter, apparently.)
But, sometimes it’s sunny and you’re stumbling along and your brain is on autopilot, and like scores of times over the years, you find yourself walking through the doors of Divertimenti, a wonderful Aladdin’s cave of super-stylish cookware. And then you stand there surrounded by things which only weeks ago would have had you eager to rush home, don a pinny and get cooking before you remember, ‘It’s just me! What’s the point? Why am I even in here?’
Before my unexpected trip to Planet Grief, I loved to cook. The merest sniff of a get together and I’d take Jamie, Nigella, Gary, Rick and Gordon to bed with me, along with a pile of fluorescent Post-it notes and start to plan the menu. The duvet flattened by hardbacks, I’d constantly interrupt my husband’s reading by asking him what he fancied (in a culinary sense), pushing recipes under his nose for inspection and late-night discussion.
But now those cookbooks taunt me. Like a eunuch surrounded by pornography, I have a vague memory of the urge, but little desire to do anything about it. I no longer cook. I pierce, I open, I assemble, but I don’t cook, and nothing in this cuisine-barren landscape makes me feel more like flinging a Le Creuset family-sized casserole at the wall than my ancient copy of Delia Smith’s One is Fun! right down to its perky exclamation mark. The sight of Delia’s dreamy stare on the cover as she presides over a table set for one: a candle, flowers, wine, a white linen place mat and a platter of fruit, as opposed to the bleak, drained stare of the recently bereaved facing an empty kitchen, night after ruddy lonely night, had me banishing Delia from my bookshelf within weeks of JS’s death.
Rejecting the delights of Divermenti, I stumbled out and, trying not to sink to my knees in the street, turned into a side alley to pull myself together, only to find I was standing outside The Ginger Pig.
The Ginger Pig is a wonderful butcher’s shop selling rare-breed meat and mouth-watering charcuterie. Once, I nearly had to be given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by the butcher when he told me how much four lamb loin chops were, but as I have the appetite of an anorexic gnat at the moment, I thought that something tasty from The Ginger Pig’s deli counter might tempt my comatose taste buds back to life.
I stand behind a couple that are choosing what they want. They’ll have a little bit of this and some of that and how about two of those, and, ‘Oh! They look wonderful, don’t they darling? Shall I get four? Two for today and two for the freezer?’
Other than the fact that the man is a porker and the woman has a shockingly obvious facelift, it could be JS and me deciding what delicacies to purchase. We loved food shopping, though before you have visions of us as a modern Johnny