More of the same

After breakfast this morning, I worked on my Sunday sermon for an hour before walking to Pidgeon's Chapel for a lift to the Vale Crematorium with one of the team assisting at the service I was taking. I got there before rain started and continued for the rest of the morning. About a dozen mourners attended, and on this occasion we sang a couple of hymns with the words displayed line by line on the screen behind me which meant I had to turn around to see them. 

Everyone was masked, so I'm not sure if anyone sang along to the recorded music. It felt rather odd, and I limited myself to one joke about the strangeness of the situation. What frustrated me was that the sentence was displayed exactly when the words were to be sung, not appearing just a second before, to give you a chance to read ahead - a recipe for ragged singing if the words were unfamiliar. So, I have emailed the management at the crem to give them feedback about this set up.

The last minute tribute to the deceased which I wrote for the service drew appreciation from a few of the mourners who spoke to me. I'm glad it was worth the worry and the effort. One of the two remaining sisters of the deceased intended to come to the funeral but tested positive for covid the night before, so I gave the other sister my print out of the service and the eulogy to take home and show her.

I got back home just as Clare was serving a tofu and veggie stir fry for lunch. Then we drove to Screwfix in the Western Avenue Retail Park to buy a new mixter tap for the kitchen sink, as the one that was put in during our kitchen refurb ten years ago is badly leaking and hard if not impossible to repair. Mission accomplished we returned home, and when it had stopped raining I went out and walked for an hour and half, under a sky that cleared a while then clouded over intermittently. 

Mother Francis messaged me about another funeral in three week's time at St Luke's, organised by the Coop Funeral Service in Redfield Bristol, not far from where Owain lives. This is quite unusual and will be the first Bristol Coop Funeral I have done since leaving the City to live in Chepstow thirty eight years ago. It seems the deceased was born and bred in Canton and is to be laid to rest in Western Cemetery. I contacted to funeral arranger and now await a confirmation letter with the arrangement details.

Then I did a bereavement phone call to start the process of organising another funeral at St John's. Later I had an email giving me the date of the funeral at St German's for the son of one of the church members. That was enough for one day, so I vegetated in front of the telly until it was time to reflect on the day and turn in. So many funerals at the moment.