Friday, July 20, 2007

Burying Body Parts.

Read in today's Telegraph that Glamorgan batsman, Mike Powell has had one of his ribs buried at the Sophia Gardens cricket ground in Cardiff. This may seem a drastic way of developing a closer relationship with his home pitch - but it seems that he happened to have a spare rib to hand, after an operation to remove a blood clot last month. Heard of sportsmen putting their 'heart and soul' into the game - but this is the first time I've heard about a rib. All seems a bit macabre to me but Glamorgan's form has been so dire over recent seasons that it can't do any harm.

Come to think of it, I'm sorry that I didn't ask for Mrs D's old knee, when Stephen White, her consultant cut it off a few weeks ago, before fitting her up with a prosthetic. I know that some people look to this blog as a way of checking on Mrs D's progress, so I should add, in passing, that she is as good as new now that the replacement has settled in. But it would have been nice to plant the old knee in the garden somewhere, with some sort of plaque to mark the spot. Apart from the odd tooth, the only part of my body that has been surgically removed (when I was treated for colorectal cancer) wouldn't add much appeal to any garden.

Burying body parts, or even bodies in the garden can prove to be a problem though. I was once approached by a constituent who had buried the ashes of her husband on a site overlooking the house where they had spent many years together - but she wanted to move them because she always felt that he was watching over everything she did. And then I had another case where a widow had buried her deceased husband a few feet in front of the neighbour's sitting room window - on a piece of land, the ownership of which had been in dispute for 20 years and had led to them not speaking except through solicitors. The neighbours reckoned they could here him laughing when the night was very still. There are a lot of very odd folk around.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great Glyn -
Puts me in mind of a similar “odd” occurrence. Many years ago, the caretaker of Merthyr TEC, as it was then, died, he loved the place and asked that his ashes be scattered there when he died. So once October morning the staff assembled in the quadrangle, and his wife handed the urn over to principal Taylor to scatter.
As he did so, a gust of wind came from nowhere and blew the ashes into just about everyone’s faces – it was farcical people were coughing spluttering and rubbing their eyes – one way of getting in your face I suppose

Anonymous said...

a rib tickling post glyn and it will be interesting to see whether glamorgans form improves now

Glyn Davies said...

And we had a friend in Devon who kept his wife's ashes in a cat basket