Authors Electric

"The curfew tolls the knell of passing day The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me." Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray (1716-1771) Ramsholt Church by Jack Merriott (1901-1968) All Saints Church, Ramsholt,stands alone at the top of a low hill overlooking the River Deben. It may have been a watch point to give warning of invasions from the sea and it’s impossible to sail past in either direction without looking up at it and feeling recognition. My father’s ashes are in the churchyard and my mother plans to be buried there as well. Even Francis, non-Suffolk-born and a non-believer, has said he would choose Ramsholt to be his resting place. The church yard is unkempt and full of wild flowers, either blooming, delicate and colourful, or withering and dying, gently, in due season. The round tower has buttresses that make it appear oval. I wonder whether...

Mary "great with child" Mum can’t remember the Christmas story any more, she thinks.  “Who are these people, Jul?” she asks, looking at one of the Christmas cards she’s chosen. We set out her nativity crib with the same little figures and animals that she arranges into stories every year.  She is delighted at first but then she begins to worry: “People will expect me to know what it’s about.” In a deeper way she does still know. It’s only the names and events that have gone, not the feelings or the insights. We look at Mary on her donkey and I remind Mum that Mary was “great with child” at that moment. We love that word “great” and look at the folds of Mary’s robe to see how big she is really, how far advanced in her pregnancy.  “She can’t be very comfortable,” says Mum, making an imaginative leap into Mary’s aching pelvis on the long slow journey towards Bethlehem. Mum's de-mentia, this deconstructing of her mind, would be fascinating to observe if it were...