Finally an answer

It's been a weird, weird few weeks. I think, in fact, the last few weeks have been the weirdest of my life... It started with a terrible tragedy – we had to have Oscar put to sleep. It progressed with the sudden death of an old friend, which snowballed into some awful revelations for her flatmate. Then it was capped off with my kids receiving a suicide note over Skype from a friend of theirs (he's eleven! But no, it wasn't a joke, and yes, he's OK and getting the help he needs now). And those are just the "highlights."

I mentioned in my last post that Oscar had been diagnosed with epilepsy this last year, and also commented that it's been a bumpy ride... Well, he hit one bump too many after he ate something he shouldn't have, it got stuck in his stomach and it became clear he needed surgery, but the stress of his illness and inability to keep his medication down set off a massive cluster of seizures. In spite of truly heroic efforts (and doses of various medications), the vets were unable to stabilise him and just weren't going to be able to operate. He just didn't stand a chance and on their advice we had to do the kind thing and end his suffering.

As a parent, I think death is one of the worth things you have to deal with. Just seeing their faces crumple when the realisation hits. The emotions, the questions. It's certainly harder when it comes to losing a human member of the family – like their Papa, last year – but that's not to say it's easy when it comes to the furry members of the family. As wonderful and enriching as it is to have a small menagerie in the house, it's always upsetting when the inevitable worst comes to the worst for one of them.

Poor Oscar wasn't yet three years old (it would have been his third birthday come Monday, in fact). It was just after we got him that I discovered a lovely woodland not far from our house that I hadn't known existed until my neighbour pointed me in that direction, and it soon became a favourite place of mine (and Rosie). Rosie loved it so much it even inspired her to poetry, so it was devastating to find the whole woods completely cut down only a couple of months later. It went from this:

To this:

In the blink of an eye.

At the time we didn't know what had happened – as far as I was aware there hadn't been any notices about logging in the area or anything like that, though I'd assumed that a commercial purpose was the likely cause. Well it turns out that wasn't the case...

I hadn't walked that way in quite a while but I suppose, with Oscar gone and Mungo all on his lonesome (no one will play Bitey Face with him in the morning now...), I was feeling a little nostalgic about our walks out that way. As a puppy, Oscar was terrified of water so he'd refuse to cross the shallow part of the stream you had to cross to walk deeper into the woods. His attempts at being brave and big were cute, with the noises he'd make like he was telling himself off as he tried and failed to muster up courage, and it was a big day when he finally succeeded in taking that leap into the unknown and got his paws wet.

So off I went with Mungo this afternoon, wondering (hoping) if they'd maybe replanted yet, and as I walked passed I noticed that there were a bunch of signs up everywhere. The signs explained that the trees were cut down due to a disease that's been spreading through larches in the area, and the only way to treat the disease is to cut the trees down. The signs said that quick action was needed, explaining the unceremonious nature of the logging, and they described what the disease is and how it's spread. And that in time, the woodland will be replanted.

It's a small consolation, I suppose.

The roll call of the dead

For only the second time since I became a Gaelic Polytheist I have a family member to add to the list of ancestors I'll be honouring at Samhain. The first was my granddad, who got to meet his first great-grandchild (my son) before he died only three months later on New Years' Day, 2006.

Now I get to add my father-in-law, who died earlier this year. It was very sudden – and tragic and awful – and it's left us all in an aftermath of differing proportions. My mother-in-law lost her husband of nearly 50 years, my husband lost his father, my kids lost their Papa. To me, he was more a father than my own ever was.

The best we can tell, he fell head-first down the stairs. He didn't try to stop his fall or cry out, so it seems likely that he lost consciousness and it was only when his head met the floor that his fall came to a very sudden stop. He lost a lot of blood and sustained a massive head injury, but the way he landed also meant that his chin was pressed into his chest and he was unable to breathe. He was without oxygen for at least 20 minutes, as far as we can tell, probably closer to 30 minutes. By the time the paramedics/EMTs arrived his heart had stopped, but they managed to revive him – somehow. He never regained consciousness, however. A small mercy, I think. After it was confirmed he was braindead, and his immediate family had managed to come to his side and say their goodbyes, life-support was switched off. He died at 11.55pm on June 15th, 2016, after only a matter of minutes.

It's been a difficult time since then, in some ways. We've all had to navigate our own grief while accommodating each others', trying to be understanding and sensitive to everyone else's needs as we reach different stages of grief ahead of, or behind, other people. The first night he was in hospital, while Mr Seren was by his side and they were still hoping that there was some hope left, I went outside and prayed (throughout the whole ordeal I stayed home with the kids; we felt it was better for them to remember him as he was, and the days were just too long for them to handle anyway). I prayed and I felt a presence at my shoulder, a brush against my hand, and then a stillness and a peace. I knew then that he was gone. He wasn't coming back from this.

Acceptance was the easy part for the adults. My father-in-law was a complicated man and he was hard to know in some ways. He was a man of many passions but life had worn him down. Towards the end he was an unhappy man – a little lost after his retirement, depressed and lacking in purpose, angry, in pain from his bad knees, and unable to play the music he so loved. He'd given up in many ways. He was struggling and didn't go out much. In that respect his death has come as a relief and a release. As tragic as it was, he was ready, and in some ways that's a comfort. At his funeral, it was standing room only. Over 150 people came to pay their respects. That was comforting, too. Flawed as he was, he touched a lot of people's lives.

None of that's offered much comfort to the kids, though. My son, in particular, is having a hard time parsing the loss of his Papa. He's found it difficult to go to his grandparent's house knowing that he won't see his Papa there, even though all of this things are still there. The ghost of his memory hangs heavy in Tom's mind, and he found the funeral a little overwhelming, not knowing what to expect, not knowing how to deal with his emotions. We talked and tried to walk the kids through everything that was going to happen, but I suppose for a child hearing it and living it are very different things. It was a humanist service and the stories that were told were not stories of the Papa the kids knew, really. The Papa who went to seminary but left, the Papa who cycled the Highlands every weekend, and who met Nana at an archaeological dig. The Papa who left the house and did stuff. The Papa who was young once. That wasn't the Papa they knew.

When I broke the news of their Papa's death to the kids – the morning after, when they were supposed to be getting ready for school – they were shocked. We'd prepared them as best we could and had told them that it was going to happen, but again, hearing it is different to living it. Aside from asking how and why, Tom's only comment was, "But I didn't really know him yet. It's not fair!" The funeral only compounded that.

The family is planning to go over to Derry at some point – where my father-in-law's mother came from – so we can spread his ashes in the place his mother was born, per his wishes. Hopefully it will help Tom come to terms with it all and find some closure, but in the meantime, with Samhainn approaching, I'm trying to think of things to do to help him (and Rosie) keep processing. He finds it hard to talk about his emotions at the best of times so it's a fine line between helping him open up and picking at an open wound.

This is the first time we've had someone to add to our ancestor altar, as a family, so I'm going to try and involve the kids in what we'll be doing – finally getting some photos printed so we can set up a small altar to our ancestors, sharing stories (including old favourites like The Time Papa Got Stuck in the Bath, Twice, And Only The First Time Was Really Accidental, followed by The Time Papa Decided To Remove A Wasp's Nest, Drunk, And Surprisingly Fell Off A Ladder), and each of us adding a stone to the cairn out in the garden. We've been working on some decorations (Rosie's crafted a clay headstone with "RIP Papa" on it), and we will have our usual feast (Rosie has requested stovies, a speciality of Papa's), and leave a space for our ancestors to join us. I'm also planning on taking the kids to the beach so we can each pick a stone to bring back and place on our cairn. Knowing Rosie, she'll probably want to decorate it first.

So as always at this time of year, the ancestors hang heavy in the air. But this year, one more face joins the crowd, and now the kids have something more tangible to frame what, exactly, "the ancestors" really means to them. One more face joins the crowd. Goodbye Papa.

Saying goodbye

One of the first things I think I wrote about at the start of this year was about our old and ailing dog Eddie:

My dog, really, since I've had him since he was a pup. 

Although he'd begun to slow down and seemed to be struggling with hills at the start of the year, a change of food seemed to bring something of a revival. For how long that would last we didn't know, but as long as he was happy we decided to carry on.

This last month or so he'd begun having trouble with his eyes constantly gunking and then crusting up, which he wouldn't let me clean no matter what I did. In spite of a healthy appetite he was losing a lot of weight, as well, and his back legs were becoming a lot weaker. The pads of his feet seemed to have lost any kind of traction on smooth surfaces so unless he was in his bed or on carpet he'd get himself stranded if he lay anywhere else - usually in the kitchen, where the floor is tile or wood, so too slippery for him. A couple of times I had to rescue him at 4am or so and put him back to bed.

We had him checked over at the vet and she gave him antibiotics for his eyes, and noticed that there was a growth or mass of some sort near his back end. It was clearly painful and he wouldn't let her take a close look, but the writing was on the wall. Presumably that had a lot to do with his sudden decline. With the weightloss he was heading towards becoming dangerously underweight, and given his age and condition he wasn't going to survive any kind of surgery, whatever the problem was. I wouldn't want to put him through that, anyway. 

So he came home with antibiotics and strong painkillers, with instructions for us to bring him back the next week. For the first few days he perked up a lot, and seemed to have a lot more energy, but we didn't kid ourselves - it was never going to be for long. The aim was to make him more comfortable, and that was it. It wasn't clear how long he had, but at least we could hope that he wouldn't be suffering.

The antibiotics helped improve his eyes, but it wasn't enough to cure it. The next week the vet decided not to continue with them, because it was only going to end up leading to a resistant infection, which would make the situation a whole lot worse. In spite of our best efforts, he'd lost yet more weight and was now at the point where he was borderline. The vet said we could try giving him some puppy food, but while it would be high in calories, it was also high in protein and that would put a strain on his liver and kidneys. If we wanted to try it, we could, but either way with the infection and the mass... it was time to have the conversation and think about what we wanted to do for him. If he lost any more weight then he'd be dangerously thin. She tried having another look at the mass and said it was likely his prostate, but by this point there could be other things involved. Without further tests it was hard to say.

We brought Eddie home again, with more painkillers for the next couple of weeks before we had to take him back. And I thought about what to do. My main worry was his weight, because at a certain point his body would basically be unable to support itself, and I didn't really have any way of knowing where that point was, I just knew it was close. If the weighloss continued at the rate it had been, he wouldn't last a week. Another worry was the mass, and the obvious discomfort it was starting to give him. Even with the strong painkillers he'd started to randomly yelp out in pain when he moved. It wasn't long, once he was off the antibiotics, that his eyes started to gunk up again, which was making him miserable. I decided I couldn't let him suffer. I couldn't watch him decline even further just for the sake of a few more weeks, if that. As much as he still loved to go out for walks, as much as he still liked to sit out in the rain for hours on end, it was obvious he was tired. So, so tired. 

And so I made the call. I booked him in for a few days later, when Mr Seren happened to be working from home, so he could take us to the vets. And those few days were awful. There were a lot of tears, and a lot of effort put in to try and keep the kids from knowing, because it seemed unfair to put them through that. Sometimes, just for a moment, I'd convince myself we could put it off, because look! He's all happy to go walkies! And then he'd yelp. He'd collapse down in his bed and look fed up as he nuzzled at the fabric of his bed to try and clean his eyes. As soon as I tried to clean them he'd just cry mournfully. 

The day before we took him in, I took him and Mungo for a long and final walk, through the woods and then down to the beach. More than anything, Eddie loved to swim. In his younger days he'd go out and rescue stick after stick, my little selkie dog:

His mass of fluff and fur would slick down and reveal his small frame and his skinny legs with his silly feet, tufts of tan fur that always stuck up between his toes no matter what. 

But rivers, canals, ponds, the sea - you name it, Eddie would swim in it. His first time swimming in the sea was when we were staying with my mum down in Suffolk, and my sister and her family had come down as well. We went for a trip to the beach and my brother-in-law spent hours with him in the sea. Eddie drank a little too much sea-water that day, and as we were going through an amusement arcade the sea-water came right back up with a full English breakfast my brother-in-law had snuck him that morning. Eggs, bacon, sausages, baked beans, mushrooms... Probably a bit of fried bread and tomatoes, too. Eddie must've inhaled it instead of chewing it, and no wonder he was so thirsty. But as the incriminating evidence lay on the floor for all to see Eddie just grinned and wagged his tail as I told my brother-in-law off. Dogs eat dog food for a reason, Jeremy. 

To be fair, though, Eddie never tried drinking the sea again. 

When Eddie wasn't colluding with my brother-in-law or rescuing sticks he would be singing the song of his people:

A proud and happy song of excitement and (probably) sticks that needed rescuing.

So I decided it was time for one more trip before the inevitable. He had a wee bit of a swim, but mostly doddered about while Mungo did Operation Rescue Stick. It's not that it's December now and he had a sudden burst of common sense about freezing his bits off in the water all of a sudden, he just wasn't up to much more than doddering around. Common sense has never been Eddie's forte. 

He sang his song one last time:

And chewed on a stick (the only way to stop him singing his song) before we took one last stroll over the rocks. I stopped for a while and said some prayers for him - to Manannán and Clota of the river and sea, and to Donn - and made some offerings to them before we came home. It was a thankfully quiet day so we weren't disturbed.

The next day, after the kids went to school, we took him in. The vet checked him over and shaved a bit of his foreleg, and then gave the injection while I stroked and fussed him. He went quickly, and peacefully, and a fair bit of my snot got blown into tissues as I said my goodbyes. And that was it. It was a moment I'd been dreading, being there as he died. Seeing his lifeless body. It's not how I wanted to remember him, but at the same time I felt I had to be there, as an honour to him. We'd been through so much together, how could I not? Mr Seren offered to go in with him, or else the vet would have done it without us. But I couldn't not be there. 

The house is strangely empty and quiet now. No more little snuffles and snorts, or incessant sneezing and snuffling as he's being fussed. No more happy noises as you find the tickly spot on his belly. Mungo's been subdued, wanting to be left alone in between reassuring cuddles; I'm not sure if he knows what's happened, really. Part of me wonders if he's sulking because Eddie's obviously having a really long walk, and it's not fair, or maybe he's worried he's going to be next. Grumble (the cat) is sulking because now there's one less dog to torment or steal food from. The kids have taken it well, though. I wasn't expecting Tom to be as upset as he was, but I think it's more because he knew how upset I was than he was feeling sad for himself that Eddie had gone. There were tears, and questions, but they'd known it was coming at some point soon so it wasn't a total surprise. 

He was 15 years old, a good age for a dog. Especially a dog like Eddie, who did his damnedest as a puppy to give himself as short a life as possible and may or may not have given himself mild brain damage after choking on a bead (twice). Before I took him on, I hasten to add. At the time, the vet said not to expect him to live beyond seven or so, given the neurological deficits. I think in the end it turned out he was just not the brightest dog this world has ever seen...

He's been with me longer than Mr Seren has, and he was with me through some particularly tough times. And I wish I could think of something deep to finish off with, but all I can think to say is that I miss him already. But at the same time I'm glad for him, because I know he's not in pain anymore. He's not suffering, or struggling, or wasting away before our eyes. As I said to the kids, it's just the way things go, isn't it? We live, we grow old, and sometimes we get to do the kind thing for our pets. 

I'm still pretty agnostic when it comes to the whole afterlife deal. I'm not keen on the whole eternity thing, really. On the one hand, I can get on board with the whole reincarnation idea, though. On the other, I kind of like the vagueness of just "going west," out across the waves to the House of Donn or wherever else it might be. It's certainly easier to think that Eddie would be out there, frolicking in the waves.

Maybe the next time we're down at the beach we'll hear an echo of his song. I do hope so. My little selkie dog. 

Newgrange

I might as well keep going while the laundry pile is slowly being reduced...

After a short break back at the heritage centre, we traipsed back over to the bus stop, pausing to take in the view of the Boyne and its clear waters - here's a view of the river downstream this time:

We got on the bus and headed to Newgrange. I'd heard from a lot of people who've visited the site before me that the place is pretty disappointing in some ways; a lot of folks aren't too happy with the reconstruction, either because they disagree with the way it's been done, and/or because the place feels a little too precise and neat. A little clinical, with all the straight edges and tidy walls, when we're used to things being a little slumped and lumpy when it comes to ancient monuments.

Personally, I'm not massively keen on the reconstruction, but it's not that it's "too tidy." It's that it just feels like a little bit of the spirit of the place has been trodden on, picked up, and stuffed back in, if that makes sense. The monument itself is truly impressive to look at:

Personally, I tend to err on the side of the quartz having been on the floor originally, and as my mother-in-law (also an archaeologist) commented, "Well I think we can all accept that Newgrange was a big mistake." But regardless of where you stand on the issue of the quartz walls, it's a really impressive site, whether you're far away or close up:

On a sunny day it's probably even more amazing to look at...

The quartz doesn't go all the way round, as you can tell from the wide shot. The back is similar to Knowth, with a protective ledge jutting out over the stones, but above the ledge there's a continuation of the wall (though not as high) in a grey stone (I'm not sure what kind):

If you want to compare and contrast the old and the new look, this is a picture from the early twentieth century:

Which is itself after an attempt at tidying the place up during the nineteenth century. Before then, it looked like this:

The whole mound was badly collapsed, so whatever your view of the reconstruction, it was never going to be an easy job. This is a picture of the entrance today:

From what the guide said, if I remember right, the grey limestone they've used here in the reconstruction isn't original to the monument itself. It doesn't seem to be the same stone from the early twentieth century picture, anyway.

You'll notice that the famous decorated stone there completely blocks the entrance, so you can't just walk inside. You have to climb over the stone to get in, and this a feature at Knowth and other sites of this type. The theory is that it forms a physical as well as psychological barrier between the space of the living and the dead. A literal as well as symbolic delineation.

You can also see the light box above the entrance, which lets the sun right into the chamber during the period of the winter solstice at around 9am (it doesn't just happen on the solstice, it happens for a few days before and after as well, for about a week. The solstice is the peak period of time where the light shines in. Assuming there's any actual sunlight, and not just cloud...). There's a theory knocking around at the moment that suggests the light box could have been adjusted periodically, to let the sun shine in at other times as well, but I've not seen much discussion of the arguments for or against the idea to have much of an opinion on it at the moment.

When you're bused over to Newgrange, you go in groups of up to 50 people or so. The guide takes you into the chamber inside the monument, but because there are so many people you're split into two groups so everyone can fit in. It's still a tight fit, and you're instructed not to touch the walls or wear your bag on your back in case you accidentally scrape against anything. You're not allowed to take photos inside the chamber, and the guide insisted that this was out of respect (completely ignoring the fact that the chamber has been installed with lights and electricity cables, and she regularly invites groups of 20 or so people to come and gawk inside an ancient burial place that's been thoroughly disturbed over the years). The guide at Knowth (where photos are absolutely fine) said to ignore whatever excuse the guide at Newgrange gave; the restriction on photos was purely practical and due to time constraints. Because it's so crowded when everyone's in there, it's difficult to get any good pictures and people would end up hanging around and waiting for everyone else to leave, thus resulting in a game of burial chamber chicken... Fair enough, I suppose.

But anyway. When you go inside, you start off making your way along a very low, narrow passage until you reach the chamber, which has a corbelled chamber (like a beehive), and you can stand up comfortably again. The chamber is cruciform, with a shallow recess right at the back and recesses to the right and left as well, making a cross shape. The recess on the right (as you're facing inwards) is the largest and most heavily decorated, and it contains one of those large stone basins that I included in the waffle about the displays at the heritage centre, yesterday. The basins are so large that the people who built the place must have set them in position first and build the chamber, passage, and then mound around it. Although the chamber was heavily disturbed by the time it was excavated, they found the cremated remains of four or five people, mostly on the floor but possibly originally in the basins.

The chamber is nicely lit when you first get there, but after a little introduction the guide switches off all of the lights to give an idea of what the solstice sunrise rise (using a specially placed light). At this point the guide began speculating about the meaning of the light as it works its way inside, and she began going on about the ancient mother goddess and sky god, to which I let out a quiet sigh and banged my head against Mr Seren's shoulder...

Back outside there's a little time to have a look around by yourself (we were part of the first group to go inside), and it's apparent that there isn't as much decoration on the stones as there is at Knowth - pretty much every stone is decorated there, but here only a few are. Whether that's because most of them have been robbed out and then lost or destroyed over the years, or because that's just the way it is, I'm not sure. I know some of the stones were robbed, at least.

Although you see the same kind of circles and spirals as you do at Knowth, there are also a lot of geometric shapes at Newgrange, giving a very different look and feel to the art (or symbols, if you will):

These pictures are of one stone, it was so large I took two pictures just to get the details. There's also this one:

Again, what these symbols mean, we can only guess. Of course, the most spectacular stone is the one at the front of the tomb, and it would be remiss of me if I didn't give you a close up:

The detail is truly amazing on this one, and I could happily trace those spirals all day long...

Before I finish up, let's take a look at the surroundings. Like Knowth, Newgrange is situated in a spot that commands a fantastic view of the area around it:

Though not quite as expansive as the view at Knowth:

You can see a lumpy bit in the field there, and that offers a reminder of the fact that the passage tomb at Newgrange isn't isolated. There's a huge amount of Stuff (it's an official archaeological term, honest...*ahem*) surrounding it, it's just not as obvious, or accessible, today as the Knowth complex is. That's a big shame, and it's not something that the guide spoke about either. But we can't really consider Knowth or Newgrange in isolation, in and of themselves. They're part of a bigger ancestral landscape, as the heritage centre went some way in showing, and although they're very much a part of the time they were built and then used as passage tombs, they're also both very much a part of the Iron Age and beyond, up until today. Even after they fell out of use they remained significant and were tended to and revisited again and again (although at some point Newgrange was "forgotten" and then accidentally rediscovered in the seventeenth century). Knowth became a settlement, and people continued to inter their loved ones into the mound of Newgrange - or Brú na Boinne, to give it its proper title - and made offerings there. 

The two sites are pretty close together and have their own legends and myths attached - Knowth is said to be the resting place of Buí, while Newgrange is the home of the Dagda or Oengus. There's also another passage tomb nearby, Dowth, which isn't included in the tours on offer (unfortunately), and which we didn't manage to visit - though you can if you can find it. Signposting is often rather haphazard in Ireland (as is the driving)... But we have to consider the bigger picture: Their position and relation to each other, as well as their relation to other nearby sites like the Hill of Tara and the places we don't know any more, or don't know as much about. It's all a part of a landscape we only have glimpses of, really. We're missing so many of the pieces today, which is frustrating, but we also know more today than we used to. But we'll never truly know what these sites meant to the people who built them. It's unlikely that we'll ever be able to read the symbols as they were meant to be read, or understand the kinds of rituals that were held at these places. We can speculate, and we can generalise and imagine. 

But most of all we can look at these sites and know what they mean to us today. Whether they're a home of our gods or ancestors, a testament of human achievement, a symbol of a nation's heritage... They're something that will always fascinate and inspire us, however we think of them, and whatever they mean to us on a personal level. 

Insomniac blogging

You don't need to know the finer details of the digestive distress I've been experiencing lately (the medication I'm on for my back now officially hates me. Woe. Oh woe is me), nor the fact that it seemed prudent to stop taking said medication so now my left leg is having a party independently of the rest of my body at inconvenient times of the day and night...

You don't need to know that, but it's my blog so I'll bitch about it anyway. But at least the stomach's doing better.

But still. Seeing as I have nothing better to do, why not waffle on about something to take my mind off things? Why not indeed. So here we go.

Part of the busy run up to the Christmas period involved a spot of decorating, just like the year before when I redecorated the kids' bedroom. The plan then was to give the kids something a bit more suited to their age – less babyish – with a view to preparing things for when they would eventually have separate rooms. So Tom, who would stay put, got to pick the colours and went for a combination of light mustard and what was disturbingly akin to Communist-China-red. Which was... vibrant.

Tom also wanted bunk beds, which was fine by the both of them because Tom got the top bunk and Rosie got the bottom bunk, which she turned into a sort of nest. Nana made some purple voile curtains to go around the bottom bunk and enclose the space, and she also got a tea set so Rosie could have tea parties with her teddies. It ended up that any kind of random 'arty' crap got hung off the top bunk as she felt like it, including the cros Bríde Rosie made.

With Tom being an early riser and Rosie being very much not, however, she ended up deciding to move into her own room a little sooner than we were anticipating, so she could get an extra hour or two in the morning without Tom interrupting. This meant following through with the promise that she could have it decorated to make it 'hers.' Naturally Tom decided that he wanted a revamp again, and seeing as he couldn't think of anything else he wanted so dearly for Christmas, I relented. After much deliberating Tom went with a space theme and he picked out the darkest blue he could find and asked for myriad glow in the dark stars (and a glow in the dark moon. There had to be a moon). It was better than the plane crash idea from last year, so that was easy enough, and voila:

He eventually decided he wanted the glow in the dark stuff concentrated on the wall opposite his bed, so that he had a whole wall of night sky. He has the rowan charm at the window and now he has a cross up as well, from earlier this month. I made him a moon-and-stars plaque to hang up on one wall (the clay didn't dry flat for some reason so it's a bit skewed but he still liked it), and after knitting Rosie some hearts for Samhainn, which I turned into a rowan charm for her, Tom asked me to knit him some stars. He picked out some yellow wool and I set to it – picking out a six-pointed star pattern because the five-pointed pattern required fancy needles I don't have...Except when I finished it, I realised that the particular yellow and the star pattern looked disturbingly like the Yellow badge a la Anne Frank. Oh dear. Mr Seren strongly agreed and I can't bring myself to let Tom have it hanging in his room, so I've said I'll have to think of something else.

My mother-in-law had given Rosie some curtains she'd made for my nieces but never used, and she also gave me the spare material. Tom decided he liked the fabric so asked for curtains (I had to make blinds in the end). After much loud swearing at the sewing machine, which refused to sew, I ended up having to do it by hand. They haven't fallen apart yet, which I consider to be the height of my achievement in adult life so far, but I should probably confess that neither do they draw up as well as they could if someone who knew what they were doing made them. But Tom's happy, and that's the main thing, right?

Rosie's room was a different kettle of fish. Initially she decided on a space theme like her brother, but with a BIGGER MOON. Then it was an under-sea theme, and there had to be dolphins and a mermaid please. Then it was back to space with the built-in wardrobes painted to look like the TARDIS so she could put her favourite teddies into it at night, so they could have adventures while she slept. But then she decided on a delightful combination of chartreuse and coral pink, which was fine until I realised she'd picked out the most expensive paint possible. So then it was orange and red, please, until we got to the DIY store and Mr Seren convinced Rosie that the colours would clash horribly. So, under Mr Seren's guidance, we ended up with this:

'Mango' and 'Jellybean Green,' with 'Jazzberry' to bring the two together. Rosie briefly contemplated having a pink ceiling, to bring together the walls with the curtains, but I vetoed that one on the grounds that she'd already exceeded the two-colour limit. Also: Grounds of taste. She wanted some pictures up on the wall, to create a "Wall of Wonder," so I offered her some spare frames that weren't being put to use. She ended up deciding to keep the pictures that were already in them, so in the end only had to choose one more picture for an empty frame. She wanted a picture of the dogs, Eddie and Mungo, and we put up the cros Bríde she made last year and some other bits and pieces she liked, to break up the photos:

The one Rosie chose – of the dogs frolicking – is bittersweet considering our oldest dog, Eddie, is starting to struggle a lot. He's coming up to 15 now, and since Christmas he's become basically incontinent. This past week he's not been able to manage more than a toddle up and down the road close to the house without being absolutely knackered, and while he's happy enough in himself to sit out in the garden while it's raining (I've no idea why he loves it so much) and merrily pee all over the place, a decision will have to be made pretty soon as to whether –when – it's a kindness to let him go than linger. It's one of the most inevitable things when it comes to looking after a pet, but it's no less gutting.

In the meantime, the kids are ignoring the fact that the inevitable is likely to be sooner rather than later and are pinning their hopes on being able to get a husky puppy (not bloody likely), because cute and fluffy is a happier thought than old and decrepit. They've been keen to know where he might go, once the end does come, though. Tom likes the idea of Eddie hanging out at the beach, while Rosie likes the idea of him coming back again, because then we might meet him again. Coming to terms with having to let go is hard.

Saying goodbye

Holding an impromptu funeral for a hamster wasn't exactly something I had in mind for the weekend when I got up on Saturday morning, but alas, poor Hamish, he is no more. He is an ex-hamster. He has shuffled off this mortal coil. Expired. Demised. Gone to meet his maker...

Poor wee Hamish.

As much as my 90-year-old nan has anticipated otherwise for a long while now – she's been saying things like, "Of course, I shall be dead soon," for the last twenty years or so now – up until Hamish's passing the kids hadn't really had to deal with death themselves (beyond a goldfish). It's something we've talked about, as you do with your kids, and it's something that Rosie in particular likes to talk about every now and then because the concept of not existing anymore is fascinating to her. Tom, on the other hand, has something of a shit happens kind of attitude towards death, and if he has any deep thoughts about it then he tends to chew them over himself late at night.

Rosie takes it quite personally that Tom got to meet my granddad (who I called "Poppy") before he died, even though Tom was only a baby at the time and doesn't remember anything. But as far as Rosie's concerned, Tom has had something that she hasn't, and that's not fair. In processing these feelings, spurred on by recent events and Samhainn just gone, Rosie snuck a poppy home on Monday –one she'd made at school as part of their Armistice Day topic for the day. She made it specially, dedicated "To Poppy, From Rosie."

But alas, poor Hamish. Tom was out with a friend at the time of our discovery, and Mr Seren was working so it was just me and Rosie when we found him. We'd taken the dogs out and stopped off at the rope swings in the woods to make up for the fact that she hadn't been invited to the cinema with Tom (something she also took quite personally), and on our way back Rosie asked if we could get the hamster out for a spin in his exercise ball. Upon our return, we went to his cage to get him out and found him tucked up snug but lifeless in his wee house. I'm guessing he died in his sleep, so there are worse ways to go I suppose.

There were tears and denials at first. There were gentle goodbyes and tender scritches behind his lifeless ears. I cleaned out the cage and found a wee box to put him in, and then after Tom got home and Rosie broke the news to her brother, we went into the garden and laid Hamish to rest. It took some persuading to convince Rosie that we needed to do something with him – she didn't want to face saying goodbye at first – but eventually she agreed that we could bury him. While I dug the hole between the rowan tree and the ancestor's cairn in the flower bed (which I built just after we moved here), Rosie hugged the little box protectively and chattered nervously. Tom...basically avoided acknowledging the situation and played with Mungo as if nothing extraordinary was going on. He was a good hamster, and it's sad, said Tom. And that was about the end of it as far as he was concerned. Outwardly, anyway.

Rosie insisted that she should do the honours and lay her little friend to rest, so once the hole was ready she put him gently in it and said goodbye, and talked about what a good hamster he was. He'd always poke his head out of his wee house when we sat down for dinner, and he'd always come out or go in to his house through the window instead of the door for no apparent reason. He preferred climbing everywhere instead of using the tunnels. He liked to terrorise Mungo, who jumped on the sofa every time he saw Hamish's ball heading towards him, and would whimper pathetically until the ball went away. He liked to run through a see-saw, over and over again, when he had a run around in his play pen. He was indeed a Good Hamster.

We covered him over with soil (and a brick, just to make sure the dogs or foxes don't go digging), and I said some words too, and then we went back inside to the warmth for hugs and snuggles and looking at pictures of Hamish. The kids were both a little quiet but seemed to be processing things; Rosie decided she was happy that he was buried in the garden, because now he can make friends with the worms, and they're good for the soil so Hamish must be too, and she can go out and say hello every now and then and check he's OK. He won't be lonely, and that's the main thing.

Late last night, as I was attempting to wrangle some cake decorating, a butterfly began flying around the kitchen. I've no idea where it came from or how it got into the house but there it was, a small tortoiseshell fluttering around the kitchen at gone 11pm on a November Tuesday, hovering around the sideboard where Hamish's cage used to sit. In Irish belief, a butterfly is often said to be the soul of someone who's returned to the place or people they loved. Maybe that applies to hamster souls as well as people...

Frankenstein's ancestors...

Now here's something that's really interesting for you...

Ten ago the remains of several mummified corpses were found during a dig on South Uist - something that was exciting enough on its own, perhaps, but not least because they were then found to date from the Bronze Age. The evidence suggested that the corpses had been deliberately mummified, and had been placed in a bog for at least a year before being removed and then kept for many generations before they were finally buried.

Aside from being unique at the time, the find was exciting on a number of levels - providing evidence on Bronze Age burial practice, giving clear hints at what was presumed to be ancestor worship, as well as the implications as far as a belief in an afterlife are concerned, amongst other things.

The bodies were identified as male and female. Recent testing, however, has revealed that the mummies are in fact composites, made up of several different individuals and not all of the same sex:

A team from the University of Sheffield first uncovered the remains of a three-month-old-child, a possible young female adult, a female in her 40s and a male under the prehistoric village of Cladh Hallan.

But recent tests on the remains carried out by the University of Manchester, show that the "female burial", previously identified as such because of the pelvis of the skeleton, was in fact a composite.

It was made up of three different people, and some parts, such as the skull, were male.

Radiocarbon dating and stable isotope analysis showed that the male mummy was also a composite.

From the Beeb

Aside from there being implications in this new discovery as far as ancestor worship/veneration is concerned, it's also thought that:

"These could be kinship components, they are putting lineages together, the mixing up of different people's body parts seems to be a deliberate act," [Prof Parker Pearson] said.

(Somehow I doubt the various body parts came together by accident, so er, yeah...definitely deliberate). So not only is there possible evidence of ancestor worship here, the mummies could also be evidence of how social bonds were formed and maintained within a community - or one way in which that was done, at least. The find also raises some interesting questions about sex and gender in Bronze Age communities - is the mixing of sexes significant, relating to their function? Or perhaps the sex of the various corpses that were incorporated was incidental, and their status or role in the community was more significant...

Who knows. It's speculated that there are other mummies out there that may have been overlooked in the past - due to the state of their preservation, or whatever (once they're put in the ground, the mummified flesh wouldn't survive unless the conditions were just right, so you wouldn't necessarily realise that straight away). But given the fact that Bronze Age burial practice is something that seems to have continued into the the early Iron Age, there are some interesting questions there too.