I woke up with a start last night at about a quarter past two to find myself sitting outside the Stag’s Head on my own in the dark.
Of course I felt like an idiot, and headed off down to the nightclub, where I discovered later that the two drivers in front of me had only arrived there a few minutes earlier, having done exactly the same.
It is a good job the summer holidays are over. We collapsed into bed with blissful relief at about half past four, only to stagger out of it again at half past nine, because of getting up for a funeral.
We knew Number One Son-In-Law’s father, and liked him, but were attending the funeral mostly to provide supervision for Ritalin Boy and his Identical Twin Cousin, who are not great companions in an atmosphere of dignified grief.
We washed and polished rather hastily, although no amount of tinted moisturiser turned out to disguise the dreadful sagging bits around my bank-holiday bloodshot eyes. We squeezed ourselves once again into our outgrown funeral clothes and made the same resolution to have a go at self denial in the near future, along with more sleep and exercise, maybe when the children are back at school.
Apart from the awfulness of the occasion it was really nice to see all of Number One Son-In-Law’s family. We get together with them at Christmas, and I like them very much, he has some inspiringly rascally brothers who once stole our dining room furniture and hid it in somebody else’s garden as a jolly jape.
Ritalin Boy and Identical Cousin travelled with us, and I gave them a brief lecture about the purpose of a funeral and the style of behaviour most appropriate to the occasion.
Ritalin Boy listened carefully, and then said: “I’ve found some money on the seat. If I poked my eye out with a knife I could put the money in the hole instead of an eye.”
Identical Cousin said: “Why have we got to burn Grandad?”
I wasn’t entirely sure of the answer to this one, and explained lamely that it is what you do when people die.
We filed into the crematorium behind the coffin, holding firmly to small hands and occasionally whispering a reminder to Ritalin Boy about what constitutes appropriate behaviour when walking behind a coffin, take your finger out of your nose, please.
We found seats as close to an exit point as we could, but in the event we didn’t need to make a hasty exit, and it turned out that whispered threats were sufficient to prevent the proposed adventures up and down the aisle into the alcove with the coffin.
Identical Cousin said loudly: “Why have we got to burn Grandad? What are we going to do with him afterwards?”
Ritalin Boy said: “Goodbye Grandad. Can we go now?”
I removed the hymn book from Ritalin Boy, who was busy trying to take the pages out and distracted him with the order of service for the funeral, which had a picture of his grandad on the front.
“That’s not Grandad,” said Ritalin Boy disbelievingly, “Grandad’s really really old,”
“Let us pray,” said the vicar.
“Granny, your socks are really long,” announced Ritalin Boy loudly, pulling at my skirt in an attempt to discover where my tights came to an end. “They don’t stop.”
“Why have we got to burn Grandad?” demanded Identical Cousin.
In the end it was over, and the two boys walked sedately out with Mark’s hands firmly on their shoulders. They obediently shook hands with their fathers and the waiting line of relatives, and everybody said how good they had been.
We loaded them into the car where Ritalin Boy did something to the back window, which stuck open and took Mark half an hour with a spanner to fix later.
The wake was at a pub on the coast, and the boys disappeared into the crowd of relatives for long enough for us to gulp down glasses of wine for breakfast, after which we felt considerably restored.
They joined us for the buffet, which was a suitably simple affair of jolly nice sandwiches and pies and cakes, which we wolfed down enthusiastically, so enthusiastically that Mark had to take both the boys to the bathroom for some ablutions afterwards.
We were sorry to say goodbye to them, but relieved to be able to get home and peel off our undersized outfits, if only we didn’t like eating so much.
The day concluded on the taxi rank, where Elspeth took the matter of my rubbish friendship into her own hands. I have not been to see her for ages, so she bought herself a can of gin and tonic and came to see me on the taxi rank. She sat companionably in my taxi in between customers and regaled me with very splendid stories of her holiday adventures whilst drinking gin and tonic, until eventually she thought her family might be missing her and trundled off home.
It was truly lovely. How lovely it is to have friends.
The picture is the two remaining poopies. Number One Daughter took the others with her to deliver this evening. The last one is going tomorrow, and there will only be Roger.
We are going to miss them.
