I was at a funeral recently, a work colleague, a nice lady
Her father had passed away
I was surprised to learn that she was an only child
And that her Dad...her Dad was a 'steeplejack' of all things
Yea he used to climb up and repair church steeples or build church steeples, whatever steeplejacks do
I wondered amusingly Did he ever try and get her in on the trade
"C'mon up here Sarah, there's a great view from up here" He! He!"
Later on in the service one of his nephews got up to give the eulogy
He talked about what a special man he was
I thought to myself, You'd want to be a special man to be a steeplejack
Me! I get dizzy standing on a chair
You'd want to have your head ******* on the right way doing that job
One mistake and you're... you're history
I thought his poor wife must have been a nervous wreck waiting for him to come home
He'd lived into his nineties (90's)
His wife had died just a few years previously
He sounded like... like quite a character.
I was reminded then of an old school Pal of mine... Tom from primary school (kindergarten)
When we used live by the sea
Tom was a great swimmer he'd won loads of trophies
There was an outdoor swimming pool in our village
And you'd often see him heading up to the pool
He'd have his towel and togs under his arm
He used to walk on top of the sea wall when he'd be going up the village
And there was this part of the sea wall that was very high
There was about a 15 to 20 foot drop onto the road on one side
And an even bigger drop of 30 to 40 feet onto the rocks on the other side
And the width of the wall was just around a foot and had little ruts in it (uneven surface) that you could easily trip on if you weren't careful
And he used walk on this like a tightrope walker yea!
And we used to watch him in awe with our mouths wide open in amazement
Asking ourselves 'How could he do that ?
What the hell was going on in his head that he could do such a thing ?
If he fell he'd be killed outright or certainly crippled
And no one would ever say anything to him, they'd just say "Oh! That's just Tom"...
One day coming home from school he took me into the swimming pool
He knew all the people who worked there
On this day they were cleaning the pool and had emptied out all the water
So what does Tom do but go out onto the 'diving board ' and starts bouncing up and down on it
And there's a drop of 20 to 30 feet onto the hard cement of an empty swimming pool
If he fell he'd be breaking his neck or his legs
Crazy!
He came to our house one time, now there used to be this big rocky outcrop that used come right up to the back of our house
We used to call it 'the Cliff', it was made up of all these big rocks and loose slatey type rocks and sand
It was as high as the house itself
We were all soccer ⚽ mad in those days, we used run up the steps to the back garden to play (was on top of the cliff)
We'd be looking over at the chimneys on the house
Tom came visiting one day, when we went out the back and he seen the Cliff
He announced straightaway "I'm going to climb that"
We said "You're crazy!"
We left him there bemused and went off to play our game
About 30 minutes later Tom appears at the side of our soccer pitch having climbed up from below...
And he could hardly kick a football, he just wasn't interested in that... wasn't interested
Inside his head he had...he had his own way to go.
Just thoughts that came to me at a funeral (the same funeral as in the poem 'Second Coming"