Jones - 7th September

Argh.

This marks a bad week. Went back up to 18st 8.75, through another combination of bad habitry, buggerall-discipline and general gittishness.

Of particular note this week was a memorial to a friend of mine, the mother of one of my best and oldest friends. The mother, known almost universally as simply "Jones", was not so much 'vibrant' as 'bloody-mindedly lethal.' She left her mark, like 4ft-spit of the world's own fury, on many of the lives of people of my generation in South Wales, as teacher, decidedly odd intellectual, magnanimous party-host for a bunch of reprobate but probably good-hearted teens, and German-spitting but even-tempered archery coach. Never really happier than when battling the Guardian cryptic crossword, prannying about with delapidated Land Rovers, or traipsing about through dank woods with very strange men, she was and always will be simply Jones. Or, to a reasonable few, Jon-es, pronounced with the J as a Y. The last three decades or so of her life were probably among the happiest of her times, as she met a bloke who, while freely admitting to being a bit of a prat some of the time, really, truly adored her.

There are people for whom it is wholly inappropriate to hold, say, a minute's silence. Jon-es was one of them. Sian, whose mother she was, put the word out: "Piss up around Merthyr, in memory of my mother!"

It was really rather gratifying. Sian, being one of those types, came down to Merthyr on the day and did a very long, very stupid run from Brecon to Merthyr, before changing gear and coming out for the night dressed in an evolved version of her outfits from 25 years before - the period to which we were all really throwing back our minds. Karen, who shall be forever known as Pulley, checked her medication schedule, and joined the gang. Sue, who always moved in an orbit more her own back in the day, by virtue of being In A Proper Couple with then-boyfriend Neil (then husband Neil, and now-ex-husband Neil, who advised he couldn't make it), but with whom I've rekindled a strong friendship since coming back to Merthyr on account of her being a) a big old geek, b) a comedy fanatic, and c) my business banker(!), gave the night a great sarcastic twist, while fully engaging in the thing. Simon, of whom I have a seriously dim-ass recollection of being jealous back in the day (probably something to do with all the people I fancied fancying him instead. Teenaged grr...shrugs) had come over from Swansea way, having spent most of the day wrestling with a bath...apparently. Steven and his fiancee, Karl, came up the valley, which was cool - haven't seen Steven for a decade and more, and had only heard of Karl through Facebook. Paula turned up from much further afield and I immediately covered myself in ignominy by getting her name wrong...not once, but twice (did I mention the dim-assery of my memory these days?). And Will, one of the many strange men with a penchant for hitting Saxons in the head came to raise a largely non-alcoholic glass in memory of Jones.

Great night, during which the following was proven:
1) We are so very far from being teenagers any more.
2) That's a very, very, very good thing.

In Disappearing terms though, a day of admission of temporary defeat - the day before the thing, I gave up trying to breathe in my 36 inch jeans and bought a new pair, a bigger pair, so I could sit down and breathe simultaneously on the night of the memorial. As I say, temporary defeat, and I daresay, were Jones still here she could give me a military reference from the Peloponnesian War to perfectly illustrate the idea of a strategic withdrawal in order to triumph another day.

As it happens, she's very much, unsentimentally gone - body to science, annnnnd that's about all. But in the night we had, and in the fact that we all have unique and shared memories of her, the won't be fully gone till the last of us stop thinking and telling stories about her. And her granddaughters aren't likely to do that any time soon.