Julia Darling

I heard about the death of Julia Darling yesterday. I have not heard of her before but the poem - End posted as the last entry of her blog is beautiful - lovely in that way which makes all people say how good it is whether they are hardened anti-clicheists or standard flowers-and-trees types. It has also struck me while reading the rest of the blog that I was reading her life backwards, later entries first. I haven't gone too far back but I maybe want to stop reading as logically there is the potential to go right back to Julia's first scribbles as a child. That somehow denies her death. I have often had this idea that if the Universe is cyclical in a real time-reversal sort of way, then we don't die in the Universe, only in our time-limited experience. As far as space and time is concerned we are all here at every moment - not that there are moments. Of course that arch Anti-clicheist, Mr Amis did all this in Time's Arrow though I am certain there was no comforting emotion due in that reversal of the Holocaust.

I don't want to get morbid and as all this makes me think (sadly and happily) about my own demise, I will end on this subject now.

To lighter things. After my post on the swearing Clanger, I turned on the TV yesterday in the middle of an interview with Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin in which they did indeed confirm that the stuffed Clangers say "Oh sod It! The bloody thing's stuck again." I was going to bring our one in today but my wife complained that everyone would play with it, the battery would wear out and it is not replaceable. Result would be one disappointed small boy who loves his foul-mouthed, space-dwelling thingy to bits. I bet I could replace it; just needs a bit of sewing afterwards. No!