News from Switzerland

I drove to Thornhill at lunchtime to officiate at my first funeral since I left for Ibiza, and my first under the new health and safety restrictions followed by the City's Council's Bereavement Services team. Normally the Wenallt Chapel has seats for two hundred and fifty people, now it's eighty with wide gaps in between the rows. Currently the permitted number of mourners is thirty. I'm not sure if there's any elasticity here to accommodate more with socially distanced household family groups. Wales is relaxing restrictions at a different rate to England. 

Hand sanitizer was available on the way in, though I'm not sure how many took advantage of this. Six young men of the family were bearers. I didn't see anyone wearing masks. Neither I not the funeral attendants wore them. Unlike church we sang a hymn. I didn't feel there was any undue risk, the chapel is large, seating is widely spaced. The mourners kept their distance from me if not each other and nobody attempted to shake hands. It was so different from the mother's funeral which I took back in January. 

It was good to see familiar faces about their business - the crem manager and funeral attendants' team members, with whom I have often worked. They talked about how much the boss had invested in PPE and bio-safety measures in the previous months. The business remains covid free, and needs to stay like this. At the peak of the pandemic wave they were doing the maximum of thirty five funeral a week using all the teams and resources available. The FD spoke of dealing with thirty nine different funeral arrangements at the same time, and the struggle to fend off 'funeral blindness', where they start to blur together making it that harder to access the details of each, when there are so many to remember at the same time. Thankfully it never got to the stage where the company was overwhelmed, but talk about stress testing!

After a late lunch and a brief siesta, I went to Tescos for freezer bags and wine, then we walked together in Thompson's Park before tea, Clare had a surprise call from Mari-Luisa in Switzerland with news of the opening of the mother and baby educational centre in Buchs, a project arising from her work, which she and Heinz have cherished and worked on together for the past decade. It's a wonderful achievement. The buildings and their environment are beautiful, designed by a young architect inspired by the nature of the project, and destined to win an award they think. 

To think it all started with a mother and baby group meeting in the huge attic space of the old farmhouse they renovated and transformed into a zero carbon footprint eco-house. The first small group of parents with infants is now attending sessions and the numbers will be scaled up as the year goes on. When a vaccine for covid-19 has been put to use, we'll go and see them again, most likely by train.  There's positive news on the vaccine development front today, but it'll still be a year or more before this has any impact on those whose immune systems most need protection. And that means us.