The Spangle Maker

I’m not a superstitious person. I don’t have any routines or beliefs about black cats or knocking on wood. We were taught to salute a magpie when we were kids but I’m not sure why and I stopped doing it decades ago. I’m not religious either. I tend to require scientific or empirical evidence for the existence of things and religion doesn’t fit into that for me. I understand why religion works for other people and I can see why it brings comfort especially when dealing with death and questions about the afterlife. 

I was out cycling on Sunday morning. I try to get out on my bike every weekend and do a couple of hours on the roads. One of my routes can bring me back past the cemetery where Isaac is buried. From one of the roads, especially in winter when the hedges are bare, I can see him from the road more or less, the line of graves at the top of rise clearly visible. At first I couldn’t cycle past without stopping and going in to see him but now I can ride past, look to my right, nod or wave, and keep going. We usually go down to see him once a week anyway so I don’t feel compelled to call in on him every time I’m riding past.

There’s a bus route that runs down the road too. It drops people at the end of the road near the cemetery and then carries on towards Lymm. Isaac loved public transport- buses, Manchester’s trams, trains all ticked his boxes- and it’s amazing how many times we’ve stood at his graveside and seen the bus run past in the distance, all the more amazing because there are only two an hour. It always makes me smile to see it, and in a way it’s become Isaac’s bus (I know that the appearance of the bus is entirely coincidental, that it's not appearing because we are there or because of Isaac. Confirmation bias is real).

When Isaac died a friend gave us some wind chimes. She said we should hang them in the garden and when the breeze makes them move and chime, we’d think of him. Which they do and in a good way. 'Oh, hello Isaac', Lou sometimes says when she's out in the garden and it happens. Again, I don’t think that the chimes are actually Isaac trying to make contact from beyond the grave but it does happen as our friend said and it’s a nice reminder of him, one that brings a smile.

On Sunday morning I wasn’t planning on going to see Isaac as part of my bike ride but hadn’t fully decided which route to take to get home. I stopped at some traffic lights on the outskirts of Lymm and immediately a white feather dropped out of the sky and landed on the road right in front of me. I turned my head to the left and in the hedge next to me was a robin, looking at me. It fluttered and flew off. Some people believe that white feathers are a sign that someone is watching over you, a message from the deceased. Some believe that robins are the dead visiting us, that they appear when loved ones are nearby. 

My scientific head tells me that neither are very likely (and that if Isaac was trying to contact us he wouldn't necessarily appear as a white feather or a robin) but the combination of the two at the same time startled me a little. A mile or two further on I pulled into the lanes that run near the cemetery and Isaac’s bus appeared from round the bend in front of me. At that point I took the signs for what they seemed to be- ‘alright, Isaac, alright' I thought to myself, almost saying it out loud, 'I’m coming'. I cycled to the cemetery, said hello, had a little tidy up of his grave and then headed for home.

The Spangle Maker

The Spangle Maker was on a Cocteau Twins EP from April 1984, a slow burning sea of noise that breaks into a crashing, swooning torrent of reverb, guitars and Liz Fraser's otherworldly voice, a song that almost feels like someone making contact from another realm.