The last time I attended a funeral of any sort was the best part of 10 years so I had even forgotten the niceties of the protocol.

Today I attended the funeral of my brother-in-law who at 91 years of age decided to depart this planet after three years in a home whilst experiencing the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. This condition is a particularly difficult one for friends and family because it is the general deterioration of the brain so that eventually the victims cannot recognize others and coherent conversations cannot be had.

Our travel day

Up early to catch the 07:57 bus to Bath, have some croissants and coffee and then take the 09:42 to London which enabled us to arrive in Paddington at 11:08  which we did to the minute.

This Elmers End facility actually called Beckenham  Crematorium is very extensive and historic and it looks to me to be over 150 years old if you look at the condition of some of the  grave stones.

I mistakenly thought that cremations were ‘quick in quick out’ once every half hour jobs after having experience one such at Highgate Cemetery but I was wrong because in the South London Crematorium I attended they had one celebration each hour.

We were ushered in at 5 minutes to the hour, in this case one pm, but first of all the Coffin arrived and four men suitably dressed took the coffin in and rested it on a table at the front of the chapel. I had expected it to eventually go down into a hole on the push of a button but it remained there to be taken away at the end of the service to some undefined destination.

My reflections

If I look at the family tree I am one of six children and my sister Philippa had four sons who all married and had grandchildren and there are even a couple of great grandchildren around.   I had no idea how many cousins and nieces and someone who was the son of someone who died 20 years ago. Gosh I got muddled.

I admit that I forgot most of the names if I was ever told them in the first place so it was a little bit confusing, but everyone was friendly enough and seemed to know me more than I knew them (my shame) but then my memory is not that good although I will never forget a face except when you have not seen a person for 40 years they do change some more than others

The eulogy that the priest gave was very thoughtful in that it reminded us all of the many features of deceased that we may have forgotten,  for example his ability to be a good father, his sense of humour that the children inherited, the fact that he took his wife on a surprise trip to America  and many other places, that he was a very good alto singer and sung for three choirs and was certainly a loyal husband.

One of the sons gave a eulogy and said that every experience was sent to teach a lesson though sometimes you would not know what the lesson was until afterwards.

I feel that in the giving of the eulogies and the blessing of the soul and sending it on its way there was much clearing and closure and I left the occasion feeling a sense of completion and peace. Well done all.

I think it was easier for the widow (my sister) because she knew that the passing was going to come and death was a release from a life of increasingly poor quality.

However I don’t know how sublime the occasion would have been if the deceased had died in a sudden accident or been shot to death in or died of an incurable cancer that had only been recently discovered.

The service ended after 55 minutes. In other words we took our full allocated span  and we spent some time outside the exit door chatting before we went off to the deceased’s local church hall in Addington where refreshments had been prepared.

On offer was a combination of tea and coffee, wines, fruit juice, scones with real cream, sandwiches and small bits of cake. The food was very good in quality and after my having had a rather unseemly mixture of sandwiches and cake I suffered no after effects.

I was approached by a young lady who said that I had provided her with funds to go to South Africa and she had a great time and she had felt embarrassed ever since because she could not thank me.

I had forgotten all about it and she asked me why I gave the money, to which I replied that I just had a feeling that the money should be given and it was somehow deserved. The event was about 10 years ago. So it was a closure for her to thank the person who gave her the means to travel. ‘My pleasure’ as they say.

Back to home sweet home

We then decided to go and catch the train and perhaps spend a little bit of time walking around in London but decided that actually we had had enough so we arrived at the station early. There was Paddington Bear in all this glory sitting on a seat waiting for his train. (adjacent to platform 1).  You can’t have Paddington station without a bear can you.

Dynamic pricing in all its glory

This was Friday afternoon and great were the numbers of people wanting to travel West. They were trains to Bath and Bristol every 30 minutes and they were all crowded. Ours was the 19:30 train through to Western Super Mare and for reasons that we were not told about, the nine coaches had been reduced to five with the result that nine coach loads of people had to squeeze in to five coaches and was it a squeeze.

Incidentally I did ask if we could take an earlier train and I discovered quite quickly the answer was no. I wondered how much it would cost to buy a single ticket home and to my surprise cost was £82.60 for a single for one person. I was quite shocked at this but then 20 minutes later I again inquired at the machine the cost of a single ticket and it had magically gone down to £42.

This is an example of dynamic pricing which is another way of saying that the more popular the train the more they can charge so the six pm was the higher price and the seven pm train came in at a much reduced price. Other countries charge by the mile.  Why can’t we?

A very crowded train

I have been on crowded trains in my time but this raised the bar.There was even competition for a space to stand in the aisles and the poor souls wanting to go to the toilet had to fight their way out and then back again but we by some miracle had bagged seats and the one hour 30 minutes that the train took passed quicker than I thought.

I tried to make a public joke that, as in India, people could go on the roof if they chose but that didn’t go down too well. We are talking about introverted Brits after all. We need to turn up the sense of humour button a couple of notches.

The local 171 bus from Bath to Midsomer Norton took half the time of the London to Bath leg and I became increasingly impatient as the bus stopped at almost every single request stop to drop some soul off.

We arrived home around 10:30 pm after having left the house at 7:30 a.m. so that’s a 15 hour day. As I had planned the whole thing carefully, the day went without incident. I always over plan and have a plan B in case of transport failure.

I had thought of staying at a hotel but somehow that seemed more of a stress than going up and returning the same day and because the service was timed at 1:00 p.m. we were able to achieve our goal.

And so to bed.