Funerals are like buses

Actually I am not at all sure that funerals are anything like buses, but it is true that two came along at the same time today. Helen's great aunt Violet's and my uncle Brian's funerals were both fixed for the same day. Sadly, it was not possible to attend both. One was in Birchington near Margate at 11.30am and the other was in Gorleston which is near Great Yarmouth at 2pm. Although the distance is not that great as the crow (or helicopter) flies, it was quite impossible to drive to attend both.

Despite the fact that my family (and especially my mother and my brother who contrived to be embroiled in separate pieces of litigation with him) were estranged from Uncle Brian, I would have liked to have attended his funeral. However, by some odd quirk of fate, those most estranged from him were the only members of my immediate family who actually knew of his demise before last night. My sister Julia and I, who might have attended the funeral given enough notice, were not aware that he had even died let alone when the funeral was. My cousin John (Brian's son) assumed that we would have heard about it "on the grapevine". He is a lovely man, but he did not seem to realise that knowledge is power where family estrangement is concerned.

In the event, we had already made arrangements for us all to attend great aunt Violet's funeral, which also gave me an opportunity to meet some of Helen's relatives for the first time, especially the Welsh contingent. They turned out to be utterly delightful people and given the shallowness of the Norfolk gene pool from which my family emanated, it seems to me that it would ill befit me to make jokes at their expense, so I won't. However, despite the cold, I left the sheepskin coat at home - I didn't want to lead them astray. And the kids were warned that all ovine intercourse jokes were strictly off limits.

Molly obviously sensed something was up because she decided to wake up twice in the night. Particularly unfortunate given that we had to be up so early to drive to Kent. She also sensed that we needed her to be quiet in the funeral ceremony because she began to grizzle the moment we set foot in the church. A grizzle that rapidly became a very vocal protest. Of course, it is possible that she understood how much I hate attending funerals and playing up as she did gave me the perfect excuse to take her outside and miss most of it. By the time we had finished in the church and decamped to the crematorium for the committal she was fast asleep. Bless !

Great aunt Violet's funeral was conducted according to the rites of the Catholic Church, so there was much bell ringing, burning of incense and splashing of Holy Water. Wailing and gnashing of teeth were depressingly absent and there were no mendicant friars offering to sell me pieces of the true cross or more unusual relics such as toe clippings from St Ursula of Ormskirk, but otherwise they put on a jolly good show. The priest who conducted the funeral was about 104 years old and both Charlotte and I had to suppress giggles outside the crematorium as one of the pall bearers had to step back to avoid being liberally sprayed with Holy Water as the priest did his thing at the back of the hearse. The head honcho from the undertakers also lurked around the priest in a way which, had I been his age, I would have found more than mildly disturbing.

The food afterwards was sublime and the company very congenial. They even had filled bridge rolls. A funeral is not complete without bridge rolls afterwards - a fact that I trust will not be overlooked when my time comes.