I can never show him this, but writing it helped me feel better anyway

Dear Vella,

Recently you have been PMSing, excuse me, irritable and blaming a great many things on your eldest son and your eldest son’s girlfriend. While both these people admit they are hardly stainless innocents, there are some things that they rightly refuse to accept responsibility for.

Things that are not Eagle’s fault:

• Your leg ulcers.
• Your summer flu.
• Faruque’s bad habits.
• The bloody oppressive summer heat.
• The fact that Ash sometimes calls when you want to talk to Eagle. This is made especially pertinent by the fact that you keep slamming into the room, yelling for thirty seconds, then leaving for ten minutes or so before coming back in and yelling again. If you have a point to make, then MAKE it for goodness’ sake instead of ranting vaguely and then storming out. And if you leave, you cannot expect Eagle to not assume you are done with the conversation and find something else to occupy himself.
• The fact that when you vehemently tell him to do something, then five minutes later and just as vehemently tell him not to do it, Eagle just sits there like a lemon blinking confusedly.
• Your forgetting to use a condom, approximately twenty-one years and eleven months ago.

Things that are not Ash’s fault:

• Your leg ulcers, summer flu, Faruque, etc.
• The mess in Eagle’s room. Amazing though it may sound, Ash is not capable of making a mess in a room at the other end of the fucking country.
• Any and every defect in Eagle’s character.
• The fact that she sometimes calls when you want to talk to Eagle. You hardly have a schedule or some such that she can avoid.
• The fact that Eagle does not always agree with you.
• Eagle’s lack of ‘respect’ for you. That has more to do with the fact that it’s hard to respect a total whackjob even if they are one’s father.
• Original sin, bird flu, the destruction of the rainforests, the high price of butter and the common cold. Despite your claims that she is responsible for ‘everything’.

Things I Have Decided About My Funeral

(My grandfather's funeral was the first one I have ever been to, and so I went into it with the manner of someone investigating a New Experience. I do not know whether or not it was typical, as funerals go, but it certainly made me formulate certain definite Ideas about what I shall arrange to have happen after I croak.)


• No leaving the planning to my widow and kids. People who’ve lost a spouse or parent have enough on their plates as it is. I will put away a lump sum for the purpose and leave instructions in my will.
• Black is a good colour, and there’s something to be said for tradition in this regard. However, to my mind it does not go far enough. Everyone in attendance should be encouraged to dress Goth.
• No fake flowers.
• No hymns. Particularly no ‘dur, dur, dur’ ones. I demand decent music.
• No Bible readings or other compulsory Christianity.
• If anyone takes the opportunity to feel up my grandkids under pretence of comforting gestures, I’m coming back and haunting them.
• No embargo on mentioning my fuckups and less attractive qualities. Everyone can bitch as much as they want about me; I won’t be in a position to mind, and anyway it’s stupid giving people rave reviews as soon as they shuffle off this mortal coil.
• No damn quiches and penance sandwiches. The funeral feast shall be a hog roast. And there shall be free beer, too.
• On the subject of food, before the funeral everyone must get together and anyone who wants to can have some tea and cake and Breton biscuits to tide them over till the pig. It’s too hard to have a ceremony if your stomach is rumbling.
• Having charity donations instead of relatives spending money on flowers is, I admit, a good idea. However, part of the funeral funds must go to at least one big bunch of tiger lilies.
• The whole thing must be outdoors.
• As soon as it gets dark, let off some fireworks.