Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Put is like this, Bono will not be doing the reading at my funeral. Nor am I having the nation’s favourite funeral farewell song played. My Way? No way.
Bono did his thing at the funeral last week of Pogues front man Shane MacGowan. It was an event not short of celebrities and political leaders. The miracle of MacGowan was that he got to 65 after a lifetime of dissipation and now he’s even going to have the Christmas number one.
Fewer of us, unlike Shane MacGowan, are plumping for traditional funerals these days. The Archbishop of Canterbury admits the fact that 50 per cent turn down the chance of a religious farewell.
Justin Welsby warns we as a society have forgotten how to cope with loss. More likely it’s a reflection of an increasingly secular society — and the cost involved.
I know people who want to keep it simple, or have a woodland burial without great ceremony. I’ve got one of those funeral plans they advertise interminably on daytime television. I took it out years ago, long before my thoughts turned to my departure.
Assuming no-one has run off with the cash, it takes away all the responsibility from friends and family. Just a quick circuit of the crem and, if anyone wants to say a few words, that’s fine by me.
I’m not a churchgoer. I’ve always kept my options open, putting “agnostic” on forms that ask for my religion. It’s a fraud really. I should be honest and say “none of these”.
The Archbishop is also being a bit of a fraud when he blames our inability to face death by shunning traditional funerals. It reminds me of a famous poem by Philip Larkin entitled Church Going and its double meaning, either about attending church or churches fast disappearing due to shortage of congregations.
The worst job I ever had was as a young reporter, standing outside church taking the names of mourners at the funeral of a local worthy. Some presented name cards, others mumbled their names. Others simply pushed their way past, rushing to be at the front of the tea queue.
It was impossible to catch them all, particularly when another 100 were let out of a side door. In my early reporting days, great lists of attendees were published, along with their MBEs, OBEs and any other decorations.
Monday morning I was hauled before the editor. Two notables had been missed from my report. A stern reprimand ensued. “Oh, how I hate funerals,” I thought. “I’m never going to have one when it’s my turn.”
I belong to the Phyllosan generation
My journalistic friend, of similar vintage, describes us as the “Phyllosan generation.”
This may mean nothing to Gen Z, the younger generation, but to older readers it will immediately spark memories of the adverts on TV and in the newspapers proclaiming “Phyllosan fortifies the over 40s.”
Can you still get it? I heard a whisper that it was, until relatively recently, available on prescription. Phyllosan, for the blissfully ignorant, was a tonic containing various vitamins and ferrous fumarate, an iron derivative said to revitalise the blood, improve circulation and restore lost energy.
Are there OAPs secretly dealing Phyllosan at the drop-in centres? What do people do nowadays? Probably sneak into Boots for some little blue pills that, it’s claimed, reach the parts that other medications can’t reach. Personally I’m sticking to black pudding for my iron supplement.
In my parents’ era, tonics were all the thing. Wincarnis was a famous tonic wine, some swore by Sanatogen or Horlicks before bed, and as a child I was given Minadex as a pick-me-up after colds and flu. No doubt other tonics were and still are available.
One well-known advertisement for Phyllosan back in the day urged the middle aged to take the tablets in order to “compete with your children at tennis with a grin on your face, without breaking sweat even when you have passed 40.” Was that the age of 40 or the score of 40-love?
We think that life today is full of stress like never before. So much more is heard of the importance of mental health and rightly so. But in 1937, according to an advert in the Daily Mail, people were suffering from stress, anxiety, nervous and mental strain, “undreamed of by former generations”. The answer? The miracle pill that would help you compensate for the trials and tribulations of modern life.
Phyllosan was advertised on television certainly up to the 1960s. “If your energy is flagging, concentration difficult and work a burden, start taking Phyllosan tablets today,” they said. Doctors supposedly recommended them. Nowadays if you are flogging a device to revitalise your aching legs, you send for Sir Ian Botham. Now, as then, it’s somebody selling something to the health conscious.
I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of Phyllosan as I’ve never taken it. As for fortifying the over 40s, well it’s a bit late now. I must settle, as my pal indicates, for merely being part of the Phyllosan generation which we old timers remember affectionately in our ever-decreasing numbers.
