In a hole on Friday the Thirteenth

It was a horribly rainy day today. Clare's old friend Marion from St Paul's days thirty years ago came over for lunch. Afterwards I was taken to Danescourt cemetery for an interment of ashes, following a funeral I officiated at three months ago. It rained throughout. The little casket was placed in a hole at the foot of an existing family grave, just outside its kerb stones. After the ceremony, some of those present began discussing the reason for this location stating, rather too late, that the preferred site was inside the kerbstones. But apparently this wasn't possible because a concrete base had been placed over the grave and the kerbstones set into it. 

The family agreed they wanted the earth beneath the base to be dug out to receive the casket. If only they'd said before the ceremony, it could have been put on hold while this was negotiated. The cemetery manager and the funeral assistant who'd driven me there both got out their mobile phones and talked to their bosses. But once I'd formally committed the casket  to the ground, it couldn't be lifted out or relocated without an exhumation license, as the act of committal has legal force behind it. 

The supervisor wouldn't give permission to 'undermine' the concrete slab, removing the earth with a trowel and making a niche to accommodate the casket. The hole made was large enough to permit this to be done without needing to remove it. The obvious and commonsense solution to spare the family any further discomfort was ignored, with the insistence that proper procedure be followed. The rain continued and the family left. The hole with the irremovable casket in remained covered but unfilled for the moment, and as there was nothing more I could do, I left, explaining to the bewildered funeral assistant that while there was good reason for the law to exist, that didn't always mean that the application of the law made decent sense. Anyway, it was the afternoon of Friday the Thirteenth.

I got home and struggled on the phone to Ashley to edit corrections into a document I needed to get off before going out. It was a hair tearing disaster, because I had a bad attack of 'version control' and started working from the wrong file. Finally, we drove in driving rain to Bristol to see Amanda, as tomorrow is her birthday. 

Now she's got regular daily care and weekly visits to a hydrotherapy pool, she's far less stressed and coping better with her crippling condition. However, many of her carers seem to have personal problems and they off-load them on her because she's such a good listener, and that's both tiring and frustrating. Still, she's in a much better condition than last time I saw her. It was late by the time we got home. The only parking space in our neighbourhood was less than a foot longer than the car. How I parked without bumper squeezing I don't know. The manouverability of the old style VW Golf is truly remarkable.