It's All Right, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

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He not busy being born is busy dying...

No relation (as far as I know) but related. Jack was my father-in-law Alec's climbing partner back in the '40's. They were climbing in Snowdonia, having driven up from Birmingham two-up on Jack's motorbike. At some point after their days outing on the crags and riding back to their digs, they decided to swap driver for pillion and Jack ended up on the back. On a bend somewhere between Capel Curig and Llyn Ogwen, Jack came off the back of the bike and was killed. Alec rode to Bethesda and rang the authorities from the Douglas Arms, the first place he came to as he got to the village. Jack was eventually buried in Glan Adda Cemetery in Bangor - I found his grave after having worked at Bangor Crematorium on their broadband. One of the guys there was able to locate the grave from my description. This isn't what I started out to write, but there you go... It was David Hockney's comment about birth being the cause of death that made me think of the Dylan lyric, but I think a mention of someone unknown to most of us who died randomly at 28 years of age is probably appropriate now, in this time of Job.


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