Illuminated2 Feb 2025

Scattering

Over 80% of people in Britain choose to be cremated rather than buried after death and the scattering of a loved one's ashes is a ritual that's increasingly familiar to many of us.

In a lyrical and bittersweet meditation on grief and memory, writer and producer Tim Dee reflects on a West Country road trip to scatter his father’s mortal remains in places of significance to both of them. Each stop has a unique story and forms part of a revealing and poignant commemoration.

In the car, the cardboard tube of John Dee's cremated remains travels in the passenger seat, safely buckled up. Then at each place, some of the contents are decanted into an recycle Indian Takeaway container for the act itself.

They are cast into the wind from the top of Dunkery Beacon on Exmoor, from a bridge over the River Horner nearby. A pot of ashes is put into a paper boat as an attempt to sail John out to sea from Madbrain Sands in Minehead.

Then to Bristol. To the family home on Sion Hill to remember domestic rancour between father and mother. And below the bridge over the Avon Gorge, a place of profound early trauma for son Tim.

All this is set to a soundtrack of remembrance on the car stereo with songs from The Beach Boys, Julie Andrews, Taylor Swift and the recorded memories of Tim's father from a conversation they had 20 years before his death.

Presenter: Tim Dee Producer: Alastair Laurence Executive Producer: David Prest A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(105)

The Grand North Atlantic Home Video Archive

Growing up in rural Derry, author Séamas O’Reilly and his siblings never needed to go to Blockbuster. Instead, they were enraptured by their father’s archive of hundreds of films recorded off the tele...

16 Aug 28min

James Hutton and The Restless Earth

Award winning Scottish folksinger, songwriter and storyteller, Karine Polwart celebrates the 300th anniversary of James Hutton’s birth, the Scottish scientist and philosopher known as the father of ge...

9 Aug 28min

Precious Stones

"Some losses feel seismic. The ground shifts, familiar landscapes tilt, and nothing is the same. Dad’s death changed our world. But it also left us with a distinctly geological conundrum. What on eart...

2 Aug 28min

Unreliable Narrator

How do you tell the story of your life when you have no memory of the events that shaped you? At 15, Stephen McAll was a promising musician with a head full of songs. He was booked into a studio to ...

26 Jul 28min

A Most Magickal Encounter

Writer Tim Dee is trying to make a most extraordinary Zoom Call that will transport him across the centuries to have a most magical encounter with a scholarly looking guy with a white beard who is his...

19 Jul 28min

Dear Gilbert, Dear Gordon

When museum curator Mark Hignett began buying WWII-era letters online, he believed he was piecing together the life of an ordinary soldier. At first glance, the letters looked like typical corresponde...

12 Jul 29min

Later Life Letter

This is a love letter to a special kind of letter, a 'later life letter' - a letter that can 'speak across the years', telling an adopted child where they come from, and helping them understand who t...

5 Jul 29min

July Morning

We're at the Black Sea coast on the last night of June. Everything is building up to the sunrise. This is Bulgaria’s ‘July Morning’ observance - somewhere between a counter-cultural musical festival...

28 Jun 28min