Birthday funeral

It has been the most splendid of lovely days.

This is surprising, since it started with a funeral.

It was a taxi driver funeral, of course, and dreadfully sad, since it was a driver called Mickey P., whom we had all liked very much.

He had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago, to nobody’s great surprise, since he liked beer and eating much more than he liked going to the gym, but he had been a gentle, kindly giant of a man, liked by absolutely everybody. I took over a school run from him once, and the children involved were not at all pleased, and spent the whole year telling me, accurately, that I was not nearly as nice as Mickey P.

He was not from Windermere, but worked in Kendal, and I had come to know him during a a militant period of taxi history, when the council refused to increase the fares, and we joined forces to protest.

Three of us, Mickey P., a chap called Andy, and me, were the loudest and shoutiest. There were a great many indignant meetings in pubs, and speeches performed at council meetings, one of which even ejected Andy once. It made us very unpopular, and for a while the council took to inspecting the three of us regularly, to see if they could find reasons to put us off the road. This made us glow with innocent virtue and a sense of being unjustly singled out by a wicked political establishment, all of which, I must confess, we secretly enjoyed very much.

Anyway, I had known him quite well, although our hastily-formed Taxi Association melted away like ice in hot coffee once the council gave in and increased the fares.

The Taxi Association reassembled this morning, for the first time since the fares went up, and it was absolutely ace to see everybody, the day would have been perfect if only Mickey P. had been there.

It was a very large coffin.

Taxi drivers at funerals look like a gathering of pirates in court. Our valiant efforts to look smart and respectable are generally impeded by our collective lifetime’s lack of interest in achieving that result. Hence there is an impression that perhaps a single suit has been shared between everybody, and might even have been borrowed from the deceased, but has been cheered up with a bright sprinkling of ear rings, gold teeth and the occasional tattoo. Mark and I go to some very smart gatherings indeed, but there is no doubt about where we are most at home.

He was always called Mickey P. Even the officiating vicar, who had an ear ring of his own, called him that, which was oddly comforting.

He was too young to be dead. I am very sorry that he has gone.

The day also happened to be Mark’s birthday, and once we had left the funeral we popped into Kendal for a celebratory haircut, because of both of us being horribly scruffy.

We had got up to a birthday gathering, because of having a collection of daughters at home. We had not even got dressed, but had sat about the living room in our dressing gowns, drinking coffee and feeling happy. The girls had sent Mark a very nice card, telling him how lovely they all thought he was, which touched him very much, because he is entirely soppy about things like that. I sent him a card which said that he was becoming elderly and a bit absent minded, because of loathing birthday cards with badly-written poetry, and all of the ones To My Husband seemed to include some.

After the funeral, to our very great happiness the girls took us out to dinner. They paid for everything, with a birthday-surprise chocolate brownie which said Happy Birthday, enough wine to make us feel definitely squiffy, and the sort of food that you have got to point to on the menu because of not being sure how it is pronounced.

The chocolate brownie is shown above. The picture is not upside down. I was just too idle to get up from my own seat to take the photograph.

It was a truly superb dinner, at a restaurant in Ambleside where Number Two Daughter is friends with the chef. She stuck her head out to say hello, so we all clapped loudly, and she retreated again very quickly, but it was ace.

It is great good fortune to have lives full of people whom we like so very much. We thought this evening that we have got the nicest family that we could possibly imagine, whose company we enjoy more than anybody else’s.

We have left them all at home now, and buzzed off in the camper van. We are collecting Lucy tomorrow, and are making our way to York.

It has been a lovely day.