Farewell to Rachel

After breakfast this morning, Clare said goodbye to Rachel and then went off for a reflexolgy treatment. Then I drove Rachel down to the bridge at Cowbridge Road East, through the Sophia Gardens car park, so she could visit the souvenir shops again before boarding her coach for Birmingham at eleven twenty. She's staying with Kath, who will take her to Heathrow for the flight home on Sunday. It was so sad for Clare and I to see her go again. She's such a bright fun-loving spark when she's with us, it's possible to forget how old we are for a while, and that it's possible we may not see her again in this world. 

It was then time to finish preparing for this afternoon's funeral and cook lunch. I drove to Thornhill for the service. The roads were busy, but I'd given myself plenty of time, unlike the funeral cortege which arrived ten minutes late. It was a big funeral, with about a hundred and twenty people present to say farewell to the head of a large extended family, as I learned from the eulogy, given by a grandson. Unusually, this had nothing to say about what the man had done during his life apart from being a loving family man. It seems that was enough to talk about. One of the family team of bearers could barely contain himself during the procession. He broke down in tears and wept loudly inconsolably during the first half of the service. On the way out at the end, Bill Hailey's 'Rock around the Clock' was played, the mood was too sombre.

On return I went for a walk in the park, then had another go at Rachel's 'Chocolate' video before supper, improving it with an additional batch of photos, and uploading it to Google Drive for her to look at. Clare thinks it needs even more. If Rachel agrees, I'll have to wait for her to send me more. On the More Four channel this evening, the return of the excellent German crimmie series called 'Nordic Murders' when it should really be North Sea Murders because of its location on the north German coast near the border with Poland at Usedom. This week's episode was about a death and a rape during a weekend long drink and drug fuelled end of year school party among a group of sixteen year olds. It was, I felt a sober and unsensational portrayal of what can arise when young people are left to their own devices, and then try to deal with the mess they make of their lives in their own way, only making things far worse.