The Widow’s Cry

The monsoon rains had, thankfully, fallen heavily that morning so the heat was not as sweltering as it often can be on an August day. Bangladesh doesn’t do ‘drizzle’ so when rains come they usually fall as though the heavens themselves are angry, throwing the water like a weapon and growling in the clouds. This morning had been no different and somehow it seemed a fitting response from above for what had happened overnight.

We wandered around the maze or roads and paths until we finally found the village where the funeral was taking place. Bina was there already and said she had noticed us coming from a distance and came to greet us. In fact, I suspect she had been waiting anxiously for our arrival. We had, by accident of being there at the time, become somewhat important in this event because without us her mama, her uncle would not have been returned. No one likes taking dead bodies in a car or a vangari, so they all charge crazy amounts. For us, it was affordable. For Bina it was a few months wages.

Bina leading the way, we entered through the mud doorway into the shared courtyard area where two or three mud dwellings shared the same outdoor space for cooking and cleaning. Usually there would be various utensils and benches scattered around but now all the household items had been replaced by just one large bed, draped in white cloth. I was surprised when I saw just how many people were here and I felt S. squeeze my hand tighter as he too registered that there must have been close to two hundred people sat cramped into an area not much bigger than someone’s front room. I squeezed back to reassure him that he was safe. He doesn’t startle easily and always assumes that the entire world is his friend but sometimes I forget that he is just seven and that we ask him to deal with some heavy situations for much of the time. Just sometimes, we see a crack in his composure, but never for long.

We were led to the far side of the courtyard and to the veranda area, removing our shoes before entering and were greeted by a friend of V.’s who took us to the far end overlooking where the bed had been placed. I felt nervous as I was offered a chair, conscious that everyone else sat on the floor and that all in that area under the veranda were women. I looked to V. for confirmation that it was alright that I was here and, picking up from my face the panic that was mounting she turned to her friend and quietly spoke Bangla to her. She nodded her approval and motioned to me to sit and that all was “thik ache”. V., J. and S. had, by this point sat themselves down on a smaller bed at the end.

In all of this, there had been so little sound from all around that it came as a shock and gave a fright when suddenly a wail came from amongst the women sat before me on the veranda. Dazed by the force of the cry breaking the silence, it took me a while before I located the source, a woman who, judging by her clothes, age and look of utter anguish on her face must have been the wife of Bina’s mama. Convinced the cry was my fault I was horrified.

Oh my God, I thought, what have I done? Have I caused offence?

The widow’s cry spread like a ripple amongst the other women who, I now realised, were all on the verge of tears, holding back the distress only as long as everyone else continued to do the same. Some of the more stoic and wise older women there, having seen death countless hundreds of times before, comforted and calmed the widow but still she sobbed. Respectfully, I turned away so that she did not need to feel stared at by the strange (and solitary) white man and looked at the clean white bed in front of me.

It was then they brought the body out, cleaned, washed and dressed, laid out in white, garlanded with flowers and laid on the bed. I was now so close I could have touched his naked feet, this man whom I had only met the once and that only days ago when he came to the hospital with the very problem that was to take him ultimately. I felt an intruder, a fake. Had Bina just been polite to invite us all and really expected a polite refusal on our part? We seemed so out of our depth, with no other bideshis to look to for cultural advice. Two years here and many invites but our first funeral in a Santal village and none the wiser for all of that.

The widow broke out into another anguished scream and this time no wise comforting from friends were going to stop the floodgate of emotion that just had to gush from everyone there. Suddenly we were surrounded by dozens and dozens of women sobbing, crying out, rocking, looking to the sky as though pleading. The force of the emotion hit me every bit as hard as a wall and I found a wave of sadness overwhelming me.

As the tears filled my eyes my British reserve fought the temptation to allow even one of them to fall.

What is this? I thought. They can’t all be feeling so much pain, can they?

I heard sobbing by my shoulder and turned to look behind me. J. was streaming with tears, unable or unwilling to prevent them whilst S. leaned on his mother’s side, arms around her, looking sad but with wise understanding in his eyes that told me that he knew this was not about him, not time to play up or wriggle but to be quiet and still for others. V. herself was trying to hold back the tears but increasingly failing.

I turned again to the body. Now began the smearing of the face, hands and feet with holud, a turmeric paste, starting with his widow, then daughter, then other family and important people followed by all well-wishers. I had not expected this and thinking about it led me down a much deeper path than I desired.

Why turmeric? I wondered. Normally this paste is used at wedding parties where everyone has much fun smearing others with it after the bride-to-be has been covered by as many as wish to. I’ve seen grown, dignified women chase young men, grabbing at their clothes to catch them so that they can smear this putty onto their cheeks. The normal taboos for men and women ignored as the sense of celebration and expectation takes over. Here it was being used not for a new chapter in life but for death.

But are they so different? I wondered as I watched woman after woman smear mama’s face with the holud and their tears. Surely they are just two sides of the same coin. We don’t celebrate air because it is always there, never lost. All our lives it never leaves us. But each and every one of us will face death and will probably experience it happening to those around us first. It is precious and can never be taken for granted. We can lose it in a second. And here, in this remote part of  North Bangladesh, the presence of death is felt keenly, meaning that everyone, Muslim, Hindu, Christian share a common bond – to grasp life, value it and appreciate it at every opportunity. The taking of life makes the giving all the more important. I do not know the religious meaning behind the holud. But for me I cannot put it on another’s face again at a wedding without some part of me thinking this is not just fun. This is not just rejoicing. It means much, much more than that.

A wretched cry tore me away from my thoughts. This was not the same voice as before. It was not the widow this time but Rupali her daughter who had struggled through her time of applying the holud. Something had snapped and she had rushed back through the crowd standing, staring around the bed. Caught just in time by one of the men leading the ceremony as she attempted to fling herself upon the body, instead she was grabbed by another man and a woman who both held her and held her back as her body crumpled in grief.

This was too much. I could hear J. sobbing behind me now and suspected I could hear V. sniffing. I turned and saw that S., ever the empath, had seen one of our young friends breaking down and had gone over to her, sat with her and just held her as she wept on his shoulder. I wondered if we should go. Was this too much to ask my young children to bear? Yet it was fascinating, not just because of how different the ceremony was, with the body uncovered and pawed by so many people but also because the depth of emotion that was just so totally foreign to me.

The British in me was appalled. The cynic in me was doubtful. This is not, I thought, how the dignified behave. Such theatrics are for the TV, not a funeral. Almost as soon as I thought these words, unbelievable guilt rose up inside and I felt ashamed. This was no fake display. These people were feeling the most incredible grief. You could see disbelief in every face. “How could this have happened?” they seemed to say. Every cry of the widow or her daughter was one that seemed to realise, as if for the first time, that the man in their life was not coming home anymore.

I could not help but ask myself why did I not feel this for my own father? He had died only last December and not a day had gone past that I had not thought of him, not a week gone by when I had not played music I knew he loved and remembered who he was. Yet, at the funeral itself I did not feel this intensity of emotion. There was no holding back the tears as I was now doing for this man I never knew before. I was, of course, deeply sad that the man I had known and loved as ‘Dad’ for nearly forty years was gone but there was no surging grief the like I was seeing here in this tiny village scene.

Was it perhaps because I could see others I know and care about – like Bina – being so overtly devastated? Teachers, ayahs, guards, children, shopkeepers – many I know well and who are special to me. Ordinary people who normally don’t mess around when there is a crisis but face it and deal with it calmly. To see a woman, normally dealing with problems with a stony face, now red-eyed and with quivering lips holding back such sorrow - yes, maybe there was something in this.

But another thought now occurred to me as men were raising the body and lifting it into a wooden casket in preparation to take it away and bury the coffin. As the crying and wailing arose, not just from wife and daughter but from all around as the pall-bearers left with the coffin the emotion physically hit me again. I was winded by the force, by the rush of grief. I suddenly realized the significance.

This man, husband, father, uncle, friend to many, had only died yesterday .Last night.

My father, by contrast, had been battling cancer for years. He had nearly died a year earlier. We had said our goodbyes and made our peace with him over anything that mattered long ago. When he died, there was nothing I wished I had said to him, nothing I regretted not getting out into the open. I’d even told him I loved him several times – the hardest thing for a British man to tell his father. Here was a man who was certain of his fate and where he was going and knew that all who were special to him would continue without him and in peace. He died trusting in the rightness of things.

But Bina’s mama had trusted that he would live. A worm, it was thought, nothing more. A simple operation and he would be just right. But when he went elsewhere for the surgery, he was refused. The previous diagnosis was rejected. Tests were done all over again and precious time was lost but doctors at that hospital would not commit themselves. Two days later and he was dead. Maybe he would have died anyway but that wasn’t the point. His family expected him to return home alive and free from the illness which had bloated his belly and turned his skin yellow. He didn’t.

Just hours later, they were burying him. It took over a week to bury my father. In that time I had composed a speech and a piano piece which I performed at the funeral. All the time in the world to come to terms with my loss, my way. And the no one was going to suffer materially when my Dad died, but here, who was going to look after his wife now? Who was going to pay for his daughter’s education? Who was going to provide them a wage when his wife had no schooling and no skills.

Slowly, we withdrew from the crowd as they moved to the cemetery area and left them to bury the dead in peace. Along the road we said nothing for a while, each of us reflecting quietly on what they had seen and heard and felt. Eventually, as we reached the busy main road where all the shops do their trade and vehicles thunder past, some sense of returning to normality came to us all. S. almost shook himself as if out of a strange malaise and ran off back to the house. V. and I discussed about what we had just experienced.

Deep inside I felt a sadness that something was missing from my own culture. In securing a ‘bright new future’ where we expect everyone to be safe and our loved ones to return home each day as our right, we have lost the urge to celebrate life as it is. Instead, we always seek more and struggle with discontent in our own lives. Day by day as our dreams become bigger and harder to achieve our lives seem to dwindle into a kind of passive ‘existence’. I envied the ones I had witnessed and their grief. I was jealous of their ability to ‘feel’ intently.

But in thinking of this I heard that widow’s cry and saw her anguish again in my mind’s eye and I thought of the very real troubles that are to confront her from now on; the overwhelming difficulty of being alive but also needing to ‘exist’. I can honestly say I have no idea which of us is more truly alive.

Ode to my Grade 10 Maths A Students

O my beloved grade 10 Maths class how I love thee,
Thou treasure of numerical delights doth feast upon my eyes and give water unto them,
Veritably I say unto thee I cast no punishment in thy directions for thou hast proven my love,
But wait, what is this I see before me? What dagger upon my eyes and my mind that casts no proper favour?
For I am forced against my wishes to betray in ink the very love I doth bestow upon you,
For in your victory I cannot give you that symbol of love that tis known through all worlds,
Instead, cruel irony of fate, I must bestow upon you that most odious of signs,
That insect upon a dog's fur,
That doth eat a feline's flesh.
All over your scribe's work I have penned this horror to mine eyes bringing forth a message I would not wish to be conveyed.
So know this, that my love is thine for this good deed, that which you have treasured unto me,
And that in turning my day into night
Thou has turned my night into day.

7 things the British ought to know about Bangladesh

For those of you who like lists, here are some facts about the country I live in now comparing them to the country I lived in then. For those who like something meatier, read on – I get a bit controversial towards the end…

1)      Bangladesh is the 7^th biggest country in the world but they hide it well! Statistically speaking, 1 in every 50 people you will ever meet around the world will be Bangladeshi. At just over 164 million people it is the seventh largest country in the world in terms of population. China, India and the USA are bigger but then so are their land sizes. Bangladesh is tiny (144 sq km compared to the UK’s 245 sq km) so that is an awful lot of people to cram into a small area! Ignoring countries with less than 15 million people in it, Bangladesh is the world’s most densely populated country with 1069 people per sq. km. The UK, by comparison, has just 255 people. I laughed when I read Bill Byson’s otherwise fantastic and well recommended book Notes from a Big Country and he said that Britain was very overpopulated. Oh no it’s not…

2)      The Great British Takeaway – the Indian Curry – is probably Bangladeshi. That is, the ‘Indian’ restaurant down your street is probably run by Bangladeshis. 65% of all Curry house in Britain are from Bangladesh, largely from the area in the Northeast of the country called Sylhet. This region is also well known for growing tea leaves! So have a cuppa with your curry next time, they should go together well!

3)      The language is Bangla. Well, no surprises there then! Except that it is, in one sense, only a few years old. What used to be known as Bengali which was the language of the whole area of Bengal from the days of the British Raj is, of course, much, much older. When Britain left in 1947 the Bengal area was split into India and East Pakistan until East Pakistan gained its own independence from West Pakistan in 1971. It was then that it became Bangladesh and Bangla became internationally recognized. It came at a terrible price though with a war that cost (depending on whose sources you believe) up to 3 million lives at a time when the population was just 75 million. Just think about this for a moment. At the end of the second World War, Britain had lost less than 450,000 people out of a population of 48 million (I’ll let you do the maths) yet ‘every town and village lost a son to the war’. How more so was this amazing land ravaged by this war? The issue that led to the war was the suppression of Bangla in 1948 when Urdu was declared to be the only permissible language. In 1952 on the 21^st February, several students were shot dead protesting this suppression of the language spoken by most of the country. This date is now the International Mother Language Day in memory of this event. Can you imagine having to fight just to be allowed to speak your own language?

4)      Bangladesh doesn’t exist. Well, you would think so from the way some people seem to think about it. I know some who still insist on calling the place India despite that not being the case for well over 60 years! But actually, in one sense, the land Bangladesh doesn’t exist because it is actually one big delta. In fact, it is the biggest one in the world. This is because just above it runs the 3^rd largest mountain range in the world – the Himalayas - and all the water from those mountains (including Everest) runs into Bangladesh. This means that most of the country is flat, flat as the proverbial pancake and is pretty much just mud (or silt if you prefer). Basically the people are living on a marsh. Problem is, if the sea level rises just half a meter, around 6 million people will lose their homes and if global warming causes more snow to melt off the mountains, unbelievably severe flooding will occur. This, in a country that already deals with dangerous floods every year as it is.

5)      You are more likely to die in the UK than in Bangladesh…just. This might come as a shock to many especially those who know this country well but, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_death_rate), the crude death rate in the UK is 10 in every 1000 people, whereas in Bangladesh it is between 7.5 and 9.3. So, come over to Bangladesh and live more safely then, yes? Not quite. The percentages may be similar but the reasons for death are very different. The vast majority of deaths in the UK are caused by problems related to old age and most deaths are of the elderly. In Bangladesh, according to which statistics you use, one in ten children born will die before they are five. Others die through heart disease, diarrhea, road and other accidents or even suicide. Death prefers the old in the UK but here in Bangladesh he comes to all ages and especially loves the young.

6)      Bangladeshis are amazingly friendly. Sometimes a little overly so it can feel if you are British and not used to the Asian manner. It can be disconcerting to stand waiting for a train with your family and have a crowd of around 40 men, women and children just standing and staring at you. The idea of personal space is very different too and claustrophobia soon kicks in. Likewise, you can feel a little cheated by the Rickshaw driver who smiles so nicely, works so hard and asks for such a small amount which you gladly pay when you find out later that he fleeced you for 10 times the actual rate that should be paid.

This raises one of the dichotomies of being here. Do you let the driver and the shopkeeper cheat you and demand much more money despite it being wrong and encouraging corruption (something this country suffers from in all the wrong places)or do you refuse and give only the correct amount knowing that these people earn less than a dollar a day and often are starving or close to it? And are they wrong to try? “We would be crazy not to” was the reply of one Rickshaw driver to a friend of ours. When you are the poorest of the poor and you know the white guy you are ferrying earns more in a week than you do in a year, is it wrong to expect him to pay more? 

But I digress. Once you have settled in and know just what you should be paying for things, then you get to see the truly friendly side of Bangladeshis. The people here are so warm and welcoming and make every effort to meet whatever needs you have when you are a guest in their home. From the poorest to the richest, according to their means, you will be offered the best and will be served the most delicious food heaped on your plate again and again until you cannot eat another mouthful and they will be delighted. This is no sycophantic attempt to get on your right side. This is a genuine desire to treat a guest (whatever their nationality including Bangladesh itself) with the greatest honour and deepest respect. How we have lost this aspect of our British culture. We became so obsessed with the task of weeding out corruption, injustice and inequality that we threw out honour and respect at the same time. Ironically, we still suffer from corruption, injustice and inequality in the UK, only it is better hidden and wrapped up in clever legislation.

7)      The British and other Westerners are still colonial in thinking about Bangladesh, only the poles have reversed. Ok, soapbox time. If there is one thing the Brits are good at, it is self-loathing. We’ve spent decades pulling our own society apart and denouncing old ways. And often, it must be said, this is entirely justified. But such is our horror of our colonial past that now we seem to think it necessary to ‘save’ places like Bangladesh by giving as much as possible of our own, advanced culture to bring them up to our level. Actually, isn’t this just colonialism all over again? Only this time, instead of stealing all this land’s riches for ourselves, we want to make them into mirror images of our own culture under the mistaken idea that somehow it is better than theirs.

Well, you know, its not. They don’t need our greedy business structures, our nanny state, our alcoholism, our broken relationships, our cynicism, our materialism or a host of other things I could mention. Bangladesh could, in many ways, do well without us – especially if this is all we offer. Don’t get me wrong. This is an impoverished country working hard to recover from centuries of abuse and war and doing a pretty damned good job of it. They need the good stuff as much as we – medicines, education, Energy supply and so on – but what they don’t need is the attitude that somehow they are inferior and can’t manage without us. The history of Bangladesh shows they most certainly can. I cringe when I see Western fashion increasingly paraded down the streets of Dhaka. I struggle with Bangladeshi youth desiring to learn Western Rock music instead of appreciating the depth of their own. I worry at the increasing number of homes with a television here, able to watch 24/7 American movies, soaps and chat shows. The West’s problems are increasingly become Bangladesh’s.

So why am I here if such influence is so bad?

I came here to help not because I was British, qualified, rich, from the West or in any way better than any Bangladeshi. I came here as a fellow human being because there is a need here I can fill as a person and for as long as my brother or my sister wants me here to work alongside them I will do my best to meet that need until my time is up. I am not throwing my money at the problems, I am not saving the world with my amazing powers. I am entering into a relationship with other people to stand with them as they continue to deal with their struggles. When I am gone, they will carry on without me and I will undoubtedly leave no mark, no tribute to me to stand the test of time and this is entirely right. But in the time I am here I will do my utmost to show, in my way, according to my own British culture, the same level of friendship, love, care, honour and respect that Bangladeshis have shown me.

I doubt I will succeed and I am sure I am getting it wrong. But, like Bangladesh itself, I keeping trying.

Thinking Aloud

Gosh, first blog!

What to write?

The problem is not so much "what can I think of to write?" as "which topic shall I choose first?".

The issue is that I tend to have my fingers in many 'pies' as it were. Even where I live or have lived causes problems. I could write equally about Parbatipur, Dhaka, Paris, Dordogne, Whitehaven, Cambridge, Egypt, Coalville or Wigan. Each of these places I have known and loved (and sometimes hated too) and can easily write about them. But why would you read them?

Why, for that matter, should I write about them? To 'get it off my back'? Well, that's not a bad idea actually! This is, after all, my blog. My first. My baby. Time to 'wax lyrical' about whatever I like.

Maybe I should not choose a place but a subject. My opinions about music perhaps? Or the state of teaching? Tips and hints for teaching or for studying? A trick or two? Hmm... no that will be no easier than choosing a place to write about.

Should I choose myself as a subject. No. Not yet - way too complicated and it is already late. Anything I was to write now would give you a very odd perception of who I am if you don't already know me. Still, in the future I will probably go there.

Could I write about others then? Yes, definitely. I spend hours thinking about others - who they are, what makes them tick, why they are who they are. This I can do. And I have met some amazing and interesting people in my time. Only, you know, most of them are children or very poor, lowly people. Do you really want to read about them? Well, I do and this is my blog after all. But it would be nice if someone other than just me actually read this thing...

Maybe, I should just write about all of it. Yes, lets throw it all in! And lets add politics and religion and music and books and language and, well, tons more. I'll write about it all. Eventually.

But not today.

Today, I just say hi. Welcome to my blog. Please come again and leave a comment or two. See what I have to say. Disagree with it, agree with it. Ask questions. Make me write more about something you liked. Inspire me, hopefully I'll inspire you. There is a lot I want to share with you but I want you to share back. That way we transcend mere 'blogger' and reader (bloggette?) and enter into some level of relationship.

And that, I think, is why I want to write. To connect. With you, with others, with...out there. Because it is only by forming relationships with others, however fleeting and superficial some may be, that we know we are alive. I don't mean existing. I mean really alive. If I do not touch my fellow human being and he or she does not touch me then I am all but dead.

So, here I am, thinking aloud, hoping to touch you in some way and hoping that you will touch me back even with just a simple 'hi' and, in this way, change each other for good. Let's think aloud together.

Here we go then. Good luck.

Dedicated to Whitehaven and all it's folk

Isn’t it odd that inevitably, as we grow up, we dislike the place we live in. I remember a student, when I lived in Cambridge, who had lived all her life there telling me it was a dreadful place because ‘there was nothing to do’. Cambridge! Cultural centre of the world!

Wherever I go I find much the same thing with children and young adults. The place of their birth is deadly dull in comparison to...well, anything really. But Whitehaven is considered so remote with so little going on there that when I was interviewed for a teaching post there I was grilled by a committee of three about exactly how I would spend my free time. They were worried I would find the place a terrible bore and leave very quickly. The truth, as they say, could not have been further away.

I fell in love with Whitehaven not long after I fell in love with my wife.

We were studying in Cambridge at the time so I had no idea, other than her accent, that she came from there. As it was, when I found out, like most of the population of England I had only the vaguest idea where it was.

“Is that in Scotland?” I asked rather apologetically. Having lived there for 10 years of my life I secretly curse when someone asks me that these days, but back then I was young and foolish. I soon learned from my soon-to-be-wife that there was a huge difference between being in Scotland and almost being in Scotland.

And that, I guess, is one of the major reasons I love Whitehaven. Not so much the scenery, the harbour, the hills, the lakes – beautiful though they are – but the ‘in your face’ nature of the people there. Like my wife.

It is not so much that people in Whitehaven will call a spade a spade, as that they will call it a ‘bloody great shovel’ and I love that. It is one of the reasons I have taught children for the last 18 years of my life. I still get as excited now with being with a student as I did back then because I loved the honesty. Children don’t know what they ‘should’ or ‘should not’ tell you. They just say it with brutal honesty. Cumbrians, like most northerners, are not known for being genteel and polite. But they are honest. Curmbrian children all the more so.

I know that it is difficult to generalise about people and you have your good and bad wherever you go. But in Whitehaven, perhaps more than anywhere else I have ever lived, the people tell you how it really is. If you look a total idiot they will tell you. If you paid too much for something they will tell you. If they disagree with you they will tell you.

That all sounds negative doesn’t it but no, believe me, it is refreshing.

Because Whitehaven people also know how to tell you when you are getting it right. And if you need someone on your side there is no one I would rather have than a Cumbrian who believed in me fighting my corner. They will sing your praises to the far corners if you warrant it and they are not backwards in coming forwards with telling you when you have got it right. I can’t think of a single time when someone from Whitehaven has paid me a compliment that didn’t sound like it was the God’s honest truth. There was no buttering up. Just the facts, as they saw it.

Is this some kind of nostalgic longing to be back there now I live in Bangladesh with a very different kind of society? No not all. For two reasons:

Firstly, I love being here too. The people are different but they are every bit as special. Another blog, another time and I will tell you about some of them. This is not written out of any sense of homesickness (though I confess that I do have such feelings at times). I am content with my lot here. But it is written with a deep swelling of pride in a place that I have come to appreciate all the more now that I am separated from it.

Secondly, because actually I have been saying all this ever since I first stepped foot in the town. I was attracted to the place because of the woman I knew best from there – my wife. So I already had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

And they didn’t let me down and never have. I had some hard knocks whilst there but though sometimes I had my knocks and scrapes with some and had a fair few arguments with many, not once has a Whitehaven lad or lass done me harm. The ones that did, who lived there, were never born there and usually only came up because of a job opportunity. They didn’t (and don’t) get the spirit of the place and can’t because somehow they seem to think they are better informed, better educated. They don’t need the locals.

Well, I think they are missing out. I think they don’t realise just what wisdom and beauty lies behind those faces. What pride in their town as they work together to make festivals the envy of any town. What dogged persistence when the infamous Cumbrian weather ravages every rooftop. Far from being beneath those of us who have found shelter in this noble town, I think they have much to show us about how much we have lost that was precious to England all but a few decades ago. Certainly in all the years I have been there, I have never failed to be amazed by the courage and love this town has given me. Ironically, being away these past two years I have missed tragedies there that I would have wanted to be able to help with. But I would only have mucked it up.

And then I would have really got it in the neck.