I wish the default was no service unless otherwise specified. Or
indeed France where I think it's le mairie who does the hatches
matches and despatches thing unless specified otherwise.

I think a gathering of close friends and relatives is probably good
enough for me.

I have three funeral stories.

My grandfather used to let me help him dig graves. I used to climb
into the clay-sided hole with him and arrange his tools.

The second one involves a great-aunt of mine. The day had been sunny,
with clouds after heavy rain. After the memorial service at the
(organ-less) chapel, we went to a small country church for the burial.
We stood there in solemn silence, a little chilly in the stiff breeze,
and the pall-bearers began to lower the coffin into the grave. All was
going well until we saw that one end of the coffin was out of the
grave, whilst the other one was in the grave. We sang, the vicar
intoned, the grave-diggers tried to gently jiggle the coffin into the
grave, whose sides had collapsed. The service "finished" and the
coffin was still peaking out of the gravce. We didn't know whether to
laugh or cry.

The third one is a burial at sea. Hitting Maputo, we took in a black
box, the remains of a Purser who had died in hospital. Instead of
being flown home, someone decided that he be buried at sea. Now those
of you used to war films, with the board, the shroud, the teary eyes,
flags at half-mast, are probably ill-prepared at this point, as we
were. The captain decided to launch the box over the stern - good
logic as we couldn't stop and if it had been thrown over the side,
then it would have been sucked in by the propellor. However, the stern
of a merchant ship is where the rubbish bins hang so it's always a bit
... whiffy. The red ensign was lowered to half mast ... which meant
that it was touching the railling. The senior officers and a few of
the rest gathered at the stern, at dusk. It was slightly pungent. The
captain said a few words, except we couldn't hear a word over the
noise of the engine, the wind and the churning. For the records,
photographs were taken of the senior officers and the box; imagine
someone displaying a particularly praise-worthy pig at a country fair,
and there you have it, several beaming officials in bright whites
bearing the object of their .... ah ...anyway, the time came for the
box to be dropped over the side. This little black box bobbed away
merrily into the setting sun on the Indian Ocean. Not the Merchant
Navy's finest hour.

Roger

On 6/30/08, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > PS VB got him self baptized into all the main religions just to be on the
> > safe side
> >
>
> That was Thomas Hardy's mother's attitude to baptism -- "It can't do any
> harm, and it might do some good" -- the flip-side of Pascal's Wager.
>
> Though I'm surprised that a hard-nosed atheist like you would allow that.
>
> If, of course, the term "allow" applies to anything VB wishes -- I'd sure as
> hell be reluctant to come between him and his just (or even unjust) desires.
> Or deserts.
>
> R.
>
> (As an aside, if it's pertinent, the pre-eminent British Milton scholar
> rivals Patrick in his militant commitment to a denial of the deity.)
>
> {Mind you, and this probably shouldn't be said, about the best in my book
> editors of Milton, now in the USA, was taught by the high-school off-shoot
> of the London School of Economic Studies.  [sic! -- *not the LSE].  And that
> bunch of nutters have to be about as off-the-wall as Scientologists.}
>


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