A walk to St Catherine's after breakfast to celebrate St Paul and his companions Timothy and Titus in one go, with eight others. Then, on to St John's for the day's funeral. I emailed the Coop FD yesterday evening to ask if they could give me a lift to the cemetery but got no response. With covid health and safety nerves I wasn't sure they'd be able to agree, so I went home got the car and parked it near St John's just in case. It wasn't a big a funeral as anticipated, as Traveller families often are - forty in church and at the cemetery.
I rode to Western cemetery wedged into the back seat of a new high topped hearse powered by a hybrid engine. An expensive American style casket was used, so big that was it hard for the bearers to handle, as one of them said quietly - heaver than the lady inside. Its size made it hard to get the main wreaths alongside it or on top without squashing them,
The grave digger welcomed me with a smile - twice in a week - we bantered with each other. He looked after the funeral I did on Monday. All worked as intended, except the chief mourner said that I'd got one of the sibling's names wrong. He wasn't much bothered and I apologised, but later when I checked the photo of the I received, it turned out it wasn't my transcription error but most likely a dictation error. Someone had heard and written down 'Bettie' when the person mentioned was called 'Beatie'. The name was written three times in clear handwriting, so there was no doubt about this. The text wasn't checked for errors before sending. Ah well, these things happen, if there's no possibility of face to face contact beforehand.
Technology cannot deliver us from simple communications errors, as I was reminded yesterday listening to the fourth Reith Lecture on AI. With a phenomenally powerful AI managed system one simple program error could be catastrophic, indeed we've seen this with very smart aircraft navigation systems causing hundreds of lives. It's the old sorcerer's apprentice conundrum writ large.
Then back to Canton to collect the car and drive home for a late lunch of curried chick peas and veggies, most welcome on a cold day. As our regular organic veggie bag pick up point was near where I left the car, I collected it en route. Later, after a restorative snooze, I walked to Beanfreaks to collect this week's dairy free grocery order, while Clare continued to work on re-painting the kitchen, which she's done in stages since the damp area re-plastering had dried out for sure. No change in paint colour, we still really like what we decided upon eleven years ago before we moved in.
We watched an amazing 'Winterwatch' programme again this evening, which featured unique footage from a heat sensitive camera of a fox attacking and killing a stoat. One predator preying on another, in effect removing competition for a share of smaller victims in the same territory. Also wonderful shots of Hen Harriers coming to roost in the same location in winter.
This was followed by a powerful edition of 'Storyville' on BBC Four called 'The man who saw too much.' in which Alan Yentob interviewed a 106 year old Slovenian man Boris Pahor, the last living survivor of a Nazi death camp in Alsace, telling his nightmare of a story story. He may only have survive because we spoke Slovenian, Italian and French and was spared to serve as a translator. He's written several book and quotes from them were included, powerful, moving, poetic, eloquent in stark simplicity. An appropriate programme choice ahead of Holocaust Memorial day commemorations tomorrow.
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