Shunted our lad to a friend to take to school as we had to get to the crematorium at nine. Had to stop half way due to worry about the cars ability to cool its self, we got there early anyway. Waited by the same door i did with Ms Fussy's funeral, eventually Handy's neighbour arrived then others... eventually his wife. The van drew up as if it were a hurse, even driven by a top hatted funeral director with a big white beard. Complete with well barrow logo and the phone number of the gardener who lent it, it rolled past the door and we saw the "cardboard box" It was big, bigger than he was, and oddly printed with very fake wood grain with six plain carrying strops on either side. It had a CD player on top and the obligatory bunch of flowers. His lads took a handle along with one grandson, who dithered so one had to carry one side all himself. I didn't go forwards, feeling his dead weight would have been to terrible for words.
Inside to an odd mix of music on the CD player on the box, at one time it seemed to be the wedding march! His red headed son stood up and said some things about his dads life. He met his wife at 14 on a school trip, married at 16 as she was pregnant. Worked in an iron ore mine, got a job making farm gates etc built himself and the kids a boat for the local canal then a sailing boat called "rust" out of steel, was asked to make an boat for someone, said yes without having the skill or premasis, build a shed and made the boat and eventually made 10 or 12 big pleasure boats for tourist transportation. Built his own boat sailed round France and med, to arrive back where i first met him more than 20 years ago..... The chav neighbour from across the road got up and said what a good friend he had been to her, extracting her from her "bad relationship" her ex was a heroin addict and her and her two kids needed extracting. He rented a van and helped her do a flit in the night, her ex returned to smash al her house windows one night (his children inside terrified) I was surprised but she wanted to say something, she not usually outspoken. I must say Handy often referred to her and "that daft bitch across the road"...no one said anything else, his granddaughter was frantically sobbing all through, thrown on her mums shoulder. He went out to the fire with "I was Born Under A Wandering Star" a song he used to sing to his kids when they were young...
I didn't cry at my mums funeral, i didn't cry at my mates funeral i didn't cry at Our friends funeral, i did cry at this one.
We went back to the flat, filled with his offspring, and adopted offspring and some friends etc...So many Welsh accents. His wife talked of his dieing and how he was talking to the ambulance men, every step til he died in hospital not long after..4.15 in the morning, even the ambulance people looked shocked apparently. Chatted to the guys who looked hard drinking lads, one who fixed churches and historic building structures...One who survays boats and is now trying to unravel a boat place that built boats with no regard for the structural integrity and now has huge insurance claims...his daughter was there too, the one who's children were "registered carers" for...the one that boasted to her mother that she had 76 sexual partners (a few years ago now...) one son didn't come back from the Crematorium. The one with the clinically mad girl friend, I think she stopped him.
