A sticky legacy

I was musing today on the fact that Queen Elizabeth lost her Dad when he was in his fifties and, as the result, was catapulted into a life of service. My Dad also died in his fifties and thoughts of him got my nostalgia glands working. 

Dad was a very talented artist and craftsman. He was a man who loved tradition and he was passionate about his homeland of Cornwall. And one of his many hobbies was making walking sticks - but not the curved handled kind you see pensioners stooped over. I mean a countryman's walking stick used for hundreds of purposes, of which keeping you upright was just one.

You could use one with a kink in it as a bundle stick to carry things over your shoulder. A specially curved one - a crook - was used by shepherds. You could use a heavy-ended stick to humanely despatch a wounded animal or freshly-caught fish. You could use your stick to fend off badly-trained dogs and keep stroppy bulls at bay. And you could use it to knock down apples, damsons and other wild treats. You'll rarely see a true countryman/woman without one.

Here he is in 1983 apparently trying to insert one of his creations into a corvid (I have no idea what's actually happening here but I can promise that it would not have involved any cruelty).

My Mum - now in her 80s - has recently moved house and when I was down in Cornwall recently she asked me if I wanted Dad's sticks. So I came back to the Chiltern Hills with a bundle - some he'd bought and some he'd made. And today I took one of them - the same one in that photo from nearly three decades ago - out with me on my lunchtime dog walk.

It felt strangely comforting to have it with me, knowing that it hadn't touched country soil for over 30 years. And it felt right standing and watching one of the local farm fields being freshly ploughed, with stick in hand and knowing that the handle had been partially worn smooth by Dad's constant use. 

And then I knocked down some fat damsons to munch on as I walked.

There was a lot of nastiness being posted online yesterday by anti-monarchists who showed a contemptible lack of empathy for a family of fellow human beings that had lost a mother, grandmother and great grandmother.

And for a woman who lost her father far too soon. 

I can relate to their pain.

Today, my loss seems particularly heavy.