Are you ready, it’s a matter of life and death?

THIS week started with a funeral and will finish with a christening.

With such bookends, one can be forgiven, I hope, for taking a moment; spending time gazing thoughtfully at views, a favourite gazing spot being from Sully seafront, across to Sully Island, Flat Holm and beyond; and generally pondering big thoughts.

The funeral was for a distant family member. However, their legacy is felt throughout the family, as our legacies are - for good or ill amongst those that were somehow linked.

Like wandering through a field of grass, whether we are heavy-footed and plodding or light as a daisy and skippy, we leave a mark on that grass and it stays there, in some form, forever.

I’ve had more cause to think big thoughts and ponder what it is all about over the last couple of years, than at any other time since I can remember.

This may be inevitable for us all as we age, so too do those around us, but the last couple of years have seen several close deaths and illnesses, births and weddings and at these times I cannot fail to wonder about life, love and the universe.

Responses to all of these big life events can be divergent and fascinating. Recently, the cockles of my heart were well and truly warmed, seeing the response of a very dear friend to the birth of her first nephew.

To understand the enormity of my emotional response to all this is to understand two things, one that this woman feels like family and her joys and heartbreaks, feel interwoven with mine and second, I never believed she had the ‘gushy’ bone in her body.

But with the arrival of this gorgeous bundle, gush and coo she did and her joy and pride had all the sparkle of freshly popped bubbly.

Thinking of those big thoughts and as my eyes gaze upon Flat Holm, I think of the big thoughts that must’ve occupied the mind of Guglielmo Marconi whom in May 1897 persevered with his telegraphy system to send the first wireless signals over the sea, from this little island, to Lavernock Point, not far from Penarth.

That desire, that need to communicate and to connect, is surely a big thought.

My parents are ‘end of war’ babies. It always astounds and inspires me that throughout history, in the midst of the most terrifying uncertainties, the human spirit still battles on, still falls in love, still has children, still laughs, still invents, still dreams, still...carries on.

People still plan and look forward, knowing that nothing is infinite and little is certain and yet we plough on.

It may be hope over experience, or it may just be that experience shows us, time and time again, that whilst people are undoubtedly capable of terrible deeds and mass destruction, they also have the capacity for boundless creativity and greatness.

Life is short and precious so in the words of Marconi’s message, "Are you ready?"