Jay

Jay's funeral yesterday.

It was difficult, all of it: R had taken a day off to attend, booked a BA flight from Edinburgh to London in the morning...and found it cancelled. BA were shit as is now their usual service, he got a replacement flight but it arrived too late. So I represented us, and the day was a little hard not only through sorrow, but because even this small act of respect was made hard by the general rubbish of things. Jay's wife is in hospital and has dementia; they lit a candle for her and all who couldn't make it.

Mahendra Jayasuriya was around 20 years old when I was born. He was the child of a very proper post-colonial family in Sri Lanka, and the stories were many, of cheeky 'party-boy' pranks with relatives and friends, of an effervescent but deep personality as he grew older, an excellent father and husband, a great friend, a loved and loving man, if woefully resistant to the demands of diabetes. He loved his chocolates and a little red wine, and he had a fine taste for good whisky; he was a profound gent as well as a merry one, taking his freemasonry very seriously. I was sat in a pew of them, and have decided that this will do as a collective noun for the order.

The service had the addition of what might have been a fascinating sermon from the venerable Mangala, a buddhist monk who spoke, not only quietly but from behind a white and gold fan. I hope his words pleased the family, for apart from those moments when he would begin; 'The Buddha said...' not a word reached the back pews. The white cloth was placed upon his coffin, later to be offered to the monk, as I understand it, and later still to be stitched into holy robes. Water was poured from a vessel to an overflowing cup to symbolise transferring merit to the deceased in the realms of rebirth/atonement... I cannot say much about these things, knowing little of Buddhist ritual, and even less of its Sri Lankan forms. I hope that wherever he is, he is happy. For one moment in my mind's eye, I saw him like a giant looking down on his family full of love. He was smiling.

Jay's three sons stood before us, all grown, the pride of their father, their faces like those of little boys, and for some reason it is this memory that brings me tears. A thing I found strange; no children there, though a tape of the final poem being recited by the eldest grandson was played. At the end, the little voice shouted 'We love you Grandpa!'

What songs were chosen for or by him? Raining in My Heart by Buddy Holly, Smile by Nat King Cole, Time to Say Goodbye by Bocelli and Brightman, Loving You by Randy Newman, You're My Best Friend by Don Williams, Bridge over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, Always Look on The Bright Side of Life by Monty Python, and finally Bring Me Sunshine by Morecambe and Wise. Those choices probably say more about Mahendra than any eulogy.

Goodbye Jay.

The Zoo

And another entry...

So much has been happening and I'm so tired I've barely kept up, so before Ramblin' Man I want to get the key points down.

The Zookeeper for a Day experience wasn't really much about zookeeping. We mucked out the zebras, fed fresh mint to the giraffes, made up the food for the pigs, deer and camels and put together enrichment toys for the meerkats. Everything else was a guided saunter through the zoo and into some of the less dangerous enclosures. Stars included the galapagos turtles and coatis. The former were fantastic, simply not worried about us at all and very comfortably in charge, the latter were fascinating; for them we sat in the enclosure while the keeper threw crickets in front of us (I haven't told my mother about this yet, as she may well faint from horror; to her a cricket is just a cockroach with good PR.) Anyway, crickets thrown, the coatis were let out and happily rootled around in front of/around/ on top of us to find them. Three crickets hid under my fleece on the floor. When I left, I placed wood chips above them, to give them more of a chance. I couldn't feed one live thing* to another live thing. Nature and all that... but death needs no encouragement.

Things I learned: Meerkats are little shites. London zoo has had three keepers in hospital due to meerkat bites not just because they're vicious but because their mouths are very dirty. Get bitten by a meerkat, get infected by a meerkat. I like to think of it as mongoose lycanthropy but apparently I'm just wrong. Camels are category A in terms of danger, because they have canine teeth that could spike a human head; they just don't bother. Under those circumstances I don't mind them spitting and moaning a bit.

But I can't quite enjoy the zoo. It is a marvellous prison, but prison it is. Necessary? Probably. The mass extinction event occurring is all down to humanity; even in places like Botswana, there seems to be a craving for bright lights big city ('why should you have the wealth while we get the dangerous animals? And are we supposed to keep them for you so you can pop over and offer us some scraps?') Some are as ready to destroy as we have been, and won't be happy until, in their striving for Vegas, they get Detroit. As for groups like XR, I get impatient with them. If there is no tourism to Africa (and yes, that means airflights) just say goodbye to pretty much all the larger species across the continent, and many of the smaller. Take gorillas; in Rwanda or Uganda, the license for one person to be in gorilla territory for one hour is around the $600 mark, which for sure is expensive... And makes those gorillas worth keeping for the locals. No flights, no profit in tourism, gorillas become bushmeat, bang, finished. It may happen anyway. But stopping this stuff takes a lot more thought than flashing your tackle for the cameras.

Anyway, I get that we need good zoos involved in conservation for all these reasons. But of course, not all zoos are like that. And they are all, on some level, prisons. I have a problem with it.

*though I have fed bloodworms to fish, now that I remember. But it didn't feel the same.