Tag Archives: funeral

4 Funerals and a Pork Pie

Posted on by Steve Higgins

One of my favourite memes and one I often post on Twitter (or X or whatever the hell it is called these days) is a quote attributed to John Lennon, and what it says is this; Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted. I kind of like that quote and it’s one that I often think about when I’m pottering about either reading, watching TV or surfing the internet.

Having the odd day just pottering about is good for the soul and for me, an opportunity to indulge in numerous cups of tea and sandwiches. I really do like my sandwiches.

Last week Liz and I went to a funeral and I suppose I’m at the age now (let’s just say mid-sixties) when I tend to see more funerals than weddings.

I can’t say I knew John, the deceased, particularly well and I was surprised to find that he was a foundling, abandoned as a baby and never knowing his birth family.

The service was good and in fact the vicar struck what I thought was the perfect note, not too sad and not too light hearted. John’s son by a first marriage was brought up in Canada and he seemed a very pleasant fellow recounting stories of the fishing adventures he and his father had in Canada.

The first ever funeral I went to was my Uncle Raymond’s. Raymond was my favourite uncle and the most wonderful guy. When I first started work when I was sixteen, going on seventeen, I used to get off my bus, the 152, at the Bluebell pub in Handforth after coming home from work in Manchester and Uncle Ray was there, waiting for the pub to open. Inside he chatted to everyone, the staff, punters he had never met before and at the drop of a hat would produce the photographs from his recent cruise showing him and my Auntie Elsie sat at the captain’s table. He would come back home with us, have dinner and then take my dad out to finish the evening off.

When he died his funeral cortège took a detour past the British Legion, one of his numerous watering holes, and the staff and customers came outside to pay tribute as his coffin passed slowly by.

The funeral was sad and tearful and the wake was pretty similar. A lot of sad people, a lot of tears and my dad, who had probably lost his best friend, was devastated. I was driving that day and was asked to run some long forgotten relative home. I did so and returned a short while later. Only twenty minutes or so had passed but when I returned, I returned to a happy, noisy, enjoyable party, full of laughter and fun. I don’t know what had happened in the twenty minutes I had been gone but I came back to exactly the sort of party that my Uncle Ray would have loved.

When my Gran died the funeral service was held in Marple, I’m not sure why as it was nowhere near where my Gran lived or was buried. The journey from there to Southern Cemetery in Manchester was for me, a masterpiece of motor car management, juggling with high water temperature and having to dive into a garage to top up my car with water.

At the graveside I noticed my dad making signs to the two grave diggers and after the coffin had slipped into the ground and the final words of the vicar had faded, my dad, a former grave-digger in years gone by, had a happy and joyful reunion with two of his old co-workers, much to the dismay of my mother who stood with me and cried her heart out. (Not your finest moment, dad.) At least he thought better of introducing her to his friends which I thought he was going to do at one point.

Funerals are odd things; in a way they are not for the dead but for the living, those left behind after a loved one has died and I have to say, not only did I enjoy my mother’s funeral, although enjoy is not perhaps the right word, but it helped me more than anything to say goodbye to her.

Back to this more recent funeral and as the drinks began to flow the sadness of the occasion seemed to ebb away. The only really disappointing issue was that the funeral was scheduled for 9:30am which for someone, who since retiring no longer has to get up early, was a bit of a challenge.

The buffet was served at 12 on the dot and despite there being quite a considerable gathering there was no concerted rush for the food in fact I was the one of the first to get up. I really do love funeral food. A buffet is comprised of pretty much everything I love, pork pies, sausage rolls and of course sandwiches. There were my two favourites, cheese and ham and there were also some rather nice cheese and tomato pizza slices. The tuna sandwiches were not my cup of tea at all so I avoided them like the plague. Still there were plenty of other delights for me including a lemon drizzle cake for afters.

A pork pie selection: Terry Kearney, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A few years ago, I went with Liz to another funeral in Lytham. I felt distinctly out of place, an intruder even, as I did not know either the deceased or his family. There was however, a rather nice buffet which, under the circumstances, I felt it was important to do justice to. The world is full of wonderful food and some outstanding cuisines but I do think that there is nothing nicer than a pork pie. Some moist pork, some jelly, all encased in pastry, what could be nicer?

On that particular occasion the widow had seriously underestimated the demand for food and I did feel a little mean when I grabbed the last pork pie moments before a teary-eyed lady in black appeared and eyed the empty plate somewhat wistfully.

When I was introduced to her later, I could see from her expression she was trying to place me. As I smiled and offered condolences I saw the moment of realisation, and I almost heard her say in her mind ‘I recognise him- he’s the bugger who took the last pork pie!’

Some elements of this post came from a previous one so apologies to regular readers if it sounds familiar.

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Funerals, Marilyn and what to do with those VHS Tapes

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I went to another funeral this week. It was someone I knew only very slightly and in fact Liz knew the deceased much more than me. His name was John and he was a pretty nice guy. The funeral service though seemed to me to be a little bit flat, a little lacking in soul. There was no priest or reverend at the service, just the celebrant. She read out a history of John’s life and family, someone came up to read a sad poem and his Grandson played a tune on his guitar.

The big problem though was the heat. Despite hearing for most of the year that a heatwave was coming this summer, most of the time we in the UK have suffered weeks of bad weather. The day of the funeral though turned out to be the hottest for a long time. Sweat poured down my face in the crematorium and when the service was over I had to make a quick exit as I had a doctor’s appointment to get to. It was wonderful to sit down in the air-conditioned surgery and cool down.

Afterwards we drove back to the wake but the venue that had been chosen was a hotel just by the seafront and the sun had brought out the crowds and parking was impossible, well, almost impossible. Luckily a small school next door was good enough to open its gates to the mourners otherwise I could never have parked at all.

At the wake I knew no one except the widow but everyone I did speak to said the same thing, wasn’t it a lovely service? Actually, I didn’t think it was although I would never have said that. Was it because there was no priest or vicar? Did the tributes fall flat because no one there had any faith in anything except the finality of death?

Funerals are odd things; in a way they are not for the dead but for the living, those left behind after a loved one has died and I have to say, not only did I enjoy my mother’s funeral, although enjoy is not perhaps the right word, but it helped me more than anything to say goodbye to her.

Something else that made me think about death this week was reading a blog on Medium.com from an American writer. He had read that in the state where he lives, and I can’t remember which one it was in the USA, he had read that the average life expectancy for a male was 77 years. He was 57 and so he reckoned that on average, he had about 20 years left. 20 years sounds a lot but when it comes down to it, it really isn’t that much at all and if the same thing is true for me, a male living in the north west of England, then I’ve only got about 11 years left.

This week as I write this, is the 61st anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe. I wrote about Marilyn a while ago talking about my collection of books about Marilyn and the clippings in my scrapbook. Over on Twitter and Instagram, pictures and clips of Marilyn are still pretty plentiful despite her dying back in 1962. One post I saw on Instagram paid tribute to her memory but at the same time the author decided to take a poke at those who believe Marilyn was murdered by the Kennedy family.

I have to say I don’t believe that, not for a minute, but at the same time I don’t believe Marilyn committed suicide either. I mentioned that on the Instagram post and the author told me there were no credible witnesses regarding her involvement with the Kennedys. Not so I replied, there was Marilyn’s housekeeper and handyman, there was Marilyn’s neighbour, there was Marilyn’s friend Jeanne Camen and of course there was Marilyn’s psychiatrist Ralph Greenson who when pressed about Marilyn’s death answered ‘ask Bobby Kennedy.’

Other people jumped into the argument too, some supported me and some didn’t. Jeanne Carmen was a liar said one, so was Bob Slatzer who has not only claimed Marilyn had been murdered but also that he was actually married to Marilyn for a short time. The studio forced the couple to annul the wedding or so he says. The problem there is that there are no records of the supposed wedding and the dates Slatzer gave were dates when Marilyn was known to be somewhere else.

Walt Schaefer, the head of the Schaefer ambulance company that sent an ambulance to 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, Marilyn’s home, says Marilyn was alive when the ambulance arrived but she died on the way to hospital. How did her body then get back to her home where it was supposedly discovered by housekeeper Eunise Murray later that night?

Here’s another thing: in 1985 a former employee of the ambulance company came forward to say that he was part of the ambulance crew that night. James Hall says Marilyn was found in the guest cottage but CPR was applied and she began to revive, her colour going from blue to normal. A doctor then appeared; he gave Marilyn an injection into the heart which missed and cracked a rib but she then died.

Hall has passed numerous lie detector tests but like many of the stories of Marilyn’s last hours, his story has never been corroborated and no broken rib was reported by the coroner, Thomas Noguchi.

Did Bobby Kennedy visit Marilyn on her last day alive? Yes, as I said earlier there were eyewitnesses to his visit. Did he murder Marilyn? Of course not but whatever happened, Marilyn did not survive that night.

You might be thinking that perhaps I’m getting a little obsessed with the death of a film star who died 61 years ago and actually, you might have a point. The more I read about Monroe and her death the more I want to know the truth but it seems to me that Monroe fans are split on the subject of her death. There are those who think Marilyn took an overdose and there are those who think something sinister involving the Kennedys happened. It’s a little bit like the JFK assassination; some think Oswald did it, some think that something happened involving the CIA, the Mafia, J Edgar Hoover, Cuban exiles or a combination of all those.

There’s a great scene in the Woody Allen film Annie Hall where Woody tries to explain just how all those differing theories and ideas can get on top of you and perhaps it’s time to put my Marilyn murder books away for a while and read something else and watch some different documentaries.

These last few days I’ve spent trying to sort out my huge collection of VHS video tapes. Any films that are likely to be shown again on TV or that I can now buy on DVD I tend to just throw away. Some that are proper commercial recordings I’ve taken to the charity shop but I’ve still got a shed load of tapes of F1 events, TV shows and documentaries. What I’ve tried to do with those is to copy them to DVD as I just happen to have a VHS/DVD recorder combo. One of the videos I found was the 1985 documentary Say Goodbye to the President which was of course about Marilyn Monroe, her involvement with the Kennedys and her last days. It’s a bit sad but films get reshown time and time again but TV documentaries rarely get a second showing.

A few weeks ago I was writing a post about stars who have appeared in Columbo and I knew I had a video of Jane Greer talking about her experiences with Howard Hughes. Could I find it after searching through my cupboards and boxes of VHS tapes? No, of course not. This week when I thought I would carry on with my mission to copy a few more interesting VHS documentaries to DVD, I opened a box and there was the video I’d been looking for. It was a tape marked ‘The RKO Story, the Howard Hughes Era.’ It was an episode from a 1980’s BBC documentary series about RKO Studios which were for a short period owned by Howard Hughes. Jane Greer was finally free of her contract to Hughes and had been signed to RKO and then Hughes bought the studio. I’m not sure if he bought it just to get control of Jane Greer but of course that is what happened.

Hughes told Jane how he knew she wasn’t happy; she told him she was. He wanted to buy her a house; she told him she already had a house and by the way, also a husband and child living there. Hughes was undeterred. He wouldn’t put her in any pictures unless she left her husband which she wasn’t ready to do so he kept paying her wages according to her contract and she just went home, cashed her pay cheque and got on with her life. Her film career of course stalled fatally.

A number of others told a similar story, Janet Leigh was one, another was Jane Russell. Jane had encountered a lot of racy publicity due to the film The Outlaw but as she pointed out, the sexy publicity pictures and film posters were really not representative of how she actually appeared in the film.

The film censors of the day wouldn’t allow the film to be released and Hughes used the ensuing battle with the censors to promote the film. He famously designed a bra for Jane to wear in the film which was intended to look as if Jane didn’t have a bra on at all. Jane Russell refused to wear it, padded her own bra with tissues and Hughes was apparently none the wiser. The film was finally released years after it was made, did very well and was even re-released when Hughes took over RKO.

As I said earlier, any film I have on VHS is not really worth saving as most are easy to find on DVD or on TV but I do have a few that I have rarely seen on the small screen in recent years. One of my absolute favourites is Random Harvest starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson. I love that film. It’s a bit soppy and sentimental and always brings a tear to my eye at the end. It was written by one of my favourite authors too, James Hilton, who came from Leigh in Lancashire, now part of Greater Manchester. I haven’t seen it on TV since I recorded it on VHS back in the 1980’s. Is it worth copying to DVD? Of course it is, in fact I think it’s time to make a brew, get out the biscuits and the tissues and settle down for a watch.

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Funerals and a Star of England

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Before I went away on holiday at the beginning of May, I went to see my mother. She had lived in a care home since 2020 and suffering with dementia, she would alternate between periods of deep depression and confusion. The first words she would usually say to me are ‘where am I?’ or ‘when am I going home?’ The home she remembered though is her childhood home, one that she left behind many years ago.

On visiting just before I left for France, the staff took me aside and told me that Mum had only a month to live. She looked bright and cheerful, if a little thin but certainly not someone with only a month to live. Over two years ago they had told me the same thing. Then on another occasion they told me she only had six months left. Both forecasts were inaccurate. This one however, proved to be correct.

When Elvis Presley died someone approached John Lennon with the news and waited for his reaction. He reportedly said, ‘Elvis died ten years ago’. Lennon despite his peace and love image always struck me as a hard faced sort of man who cared little for the sensitivities of others. Those words of his came to me when I heard the news that Mum had indeed died. Her name was Mary and the real woman, the real soul or spirit that made Mary what she was, had either long gone or been obscured by dementia.

Still, even though I felt as though I had lost Mum a long time ago, I still grieved at her passing and of course there was a funeral to arrange. I don’t really know much about funerals and what they involve so I began to cast my mind back to other funerals I had attended.

When my Gran died the funeral service was held in Marple. I’m not sure why as it was nowhere near where my Gran lived or was buried. The journey from there to Southern Cemetery in Manchester was for me, a masterpiece of motor car management, juggling with high water temperature and having to dive into a garage to top up my car with water and then hurry along to catch up the funeral cortège.

At the graveside I noticed my Dad making signs to the two grave diggers and after the coffin had slipped into the ground and the final words of the vicar had faded, my Dad, a former grave-digger in years gone by, had a happy and joyful reunion with two of his old co-workers, much to the dismay of Mum who stood with me and cried her heart out. (Not your finest moment, Dad.) At least he thought better of introducing her to his friends which I thought he was going to do at one point.

My Uncle Raymond was my favourite uncle and my Dad’s best friend. When he died his funeral cortège took a detour past the British Legion, one of his numerous watering holes, and the staff and customers came outside to pay tribute as his coffin passed slowly by.

The funeral was sad and tearful and the wake was pretty similar. A lot of sad people, a lot of tears and my Dad, who had lost his best friend was devastated.

I was driving that day and was asked to run some long forgotten relative home. I did so and returned a short while later. Only twenty minutes or so had passed but when I returned, I returned to a happy, noisy, enjoyable party, full of laughter and fun. I don’t know what had happened in the twenty minutes I had been gone but I came back to exactly the sort of party that my Uncle Ray would have loved.

Over in France I called the funeral home. They assured me Mum’s body would be looked after and soon someone would give me a call about further arrangements. The next day someone did indeed call and we set a date. I called or messaged all the relations that I could and then waited for the next step. The next step never happened so I called the funeral home again. No rush they said, finish your holiday and then come and see us and we’ll set a date for the funeral. Set a date? But we’ve already done that, haven’t we? It turned out that the date I’d set was a date to speak to the funeral home’s financial advisor! Perhaps I was more stressed than I thought.

I was full of nerves as we approached the day of the funeral but I went back to some of my old Paul McKenna confidence building routines that I used to use before job interviews. I woke on the day of the funeral feeling calm and confident. Everything went as planned and it was good to see my cousins and other family members who I hadn’t seen for many years.

My mother was born on Black Thursday, the day of the Wall Street crash, October 24th, 1929. She was born in Cheltenham, I’m not quite sure why, perhaps my Grandad was there looking for work. The family lived for a while at 36 Bath Street in Hulme, a suburb of Manchester. They moved to the new council housing estate of Wythenshawe in the 1930s. It must have been a wonderful place then, surrounded by farms and country lanes. Mum was the eldest in her family, followed soon by, in no particular order, Ada, Beryl, George and Frank.

The war came in 1939 and being the eldest, Mum helped with the cooking and shopping and used to tell me stories of queuing at shops and ration cards and swapping ration coupons for the things you didn’t want for the things that you did. She told me she could tell the German planes from the British ones by the sound of their engines and when the blitz came, the family used to troop out to the bomb shelter, all except my grandad who under no circumstances Mum said, would he ever step in there.

When Mum left school, she worked in a series of local factories and then later worked in Manchester city centre. She used to meet my grandad in Piccadilly; he would be going home after a night shift at Evans Bellhouse in Newton Heath and she would be on her way to work.

In 1948 tragedy struck when her sister Ada was killed in a cycling accident. Mum was deeply affected and told me about it many times.

Happier times came when she married my dad in 1954 and although they had their ups and downs, they stayed together until he died in 2000.

Mum was the centre of our small family. She organised everything we did. She arranged all our family holidays to places like Rhyl and Prestatyn, Blackpool and Morecambe and all the seaside destinations of northern England. They were always caravan holidays and as we had no car we always travelled by coach. We took the dog with us and no matter what preparations were made Bob, our dog, was always sick on the coach. Myself, my brother and my dad all looked the other way and pretended the dog was nothing to do with us while Mum, always prepared as usual, cleaned up the mess.

She also arranged all the decorating in our house taking charge of the wallpaper and preparing all the surfaces for painting. Dad would appear in his overalls, do the painting and then Mum would clean everything up.

She was devasted when he died in 2000 but like always, she just carried on.

I used to ask her if she wanted any shopping and she would always say, when she couldn’t go shopping herself anymore, then she was finished.

Once, when I was living in Merseyside, she bought a new lawn mower from Argos and asked me to pick it up. I kept putting it off but eventually drove back to Manchester and down to Argos. I had the code she had given me but the staff told me it had been picked up. I insisted it couldn’t have been but they were equally insistent that it had.  I drove round to Mum’s and it turned out she had got tired of waiting for me and had picked it up herself. She had gone to Asda, got herself a trolley, pushed it to Argos, the staff put the mower in and then she pushed it home, returning the shopping trolley the next day.

When she began to suffer with dementia my brother and I looked after her with the help of carers and believe me, it was very difficult indeed. She would forget she had eaten and demanded more food. She complained that her clothes were not her clothes and after an illness which I personally thought might have been covid she moved into a care home.

Sometimes I’d visit her and she could hardly put two words together. Other times she’d be bright and happy and talkative but even so, her death was more of a freeing of her spirit than anything else.

A lot of the words above came from the eulogy I read at her funeral. I’d decided to finish with these words from Henry 5th by William Shakespeare: Small time but in that small most greatly lived this Star of England.

You might those words were perhaps a little inappropriate, after all, Mum wasn’t a king or a queen. She was a simple lady who loved her husband and children and did her best for her family. She was proud to be a housewife and a homemaker but I truly believe she was, in her own way, a Star of England.

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Catchphrases, Pub Friends, and Big Steve

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-23Not long ago at work I noticed something that wasn’t right on the rota so I spoke to our former rota lady about it. She agreed with me, there was a problem but she herself couldn’t do anything about it and I would have to contact the new ‘National Roster Team.’

“Drop them an e-mail.” She said, then added with a giggle. “Tell them you’re not happy!”

Now, at first I don’t think I quite understood that but the other day I had an e-mail from a colleague which was in reply to some procedural point I had raised. The e-mail said something like I’ll sort that out straight away because I wouldn’t want you to be ‘not happy!’

Now, we don’t always notice that something we say habitually has become a sort of personal catchphrase and I’m sure I don’t say ‘not happy’ that much but clearly some people think differently.

trawlboatHere’s another example of a catchphrase or saying that I always associate with a particular person but first I need to tell you about a pub that Liz and I regularly use. It’s called the Trawl Boat and we both know a lot of people in there. I don’t always know their names but then that’s the thing about pub friends, they’re acquaintances and beyond our pub chatter I don’t know much about most of them at all. Anyway, there are the two guys who always stand at the end of the bar and order double rounds (not sure if that’s a comment on the bar service or maybe they just like their ale!). The thin guy who works for British Aerospace and is not happy (oops, there’s that phrase again! ) about being sent by his company to work on a project in Australia. (Wish my employer would send me off on a project like that! ) Then there’s his colleague with the Kojak haircut and a group that I do know the names of, Colin and Dougie, B&B owners in St Annes and Nick who manages a hotel on St Annes front.

The very first guy we got chatting with in the Trawl boat was a guy we called Big Steve. I’m six-foot and Big Steve towered above me, he must have been six-foot six, easy. He was a pretty fit guy having been a former drayman, one of those people who lug big beer barrels about for a living and he was a really easy fellow to get on with. We always used to sit with Steve and have a drink and a natter and when he was due to leave his would pull his jacket on, say his goodbyes and then always say to us; “Nice to see you both again: As always.” And then he would be off.

A couple of years ago we saw Big Steve sometime in December and as usual at the end of the evening we said our goodbyes, wished each other a happy Christmas in case we didn’t see each other before the holidays and Steve said his usual “Nice to see you both: As always” and left.

We didn’t see Big Steve over Christmas, nor through the New Year period and one day we both said together in the Trawl Boat, ‘wonder where Steve is?’ Anyway we thought nothing of it and assumed we’d catch up with him soon.

Later, Liz was chatting to some of the regulars and one mentioned to her that he had been to a funeral the previous day. Liz asked idly who the deceased was and the man answered that it was someone they didn’t think Liz or I knew. It was a guy called Big Steve who used to be a drayman! Well, the words leapt up and hit Liz and I like a slap. Big Steve was gone and we’d hadn’t even had a chance to pay our respects at his funeral. I can’t tell you how sad we both felt.

Liz, being the amateur Sherlock Holmes she is, tracked down the widow and we went to see her to pass on our condolences. It turned out that Steve had died quietly in his sleep and his wife went into his room one morning to find him dead. Not very nice for her but a peaceful passing at least for Steve but here’s a thing about pub friends. I don’t have the phone numbers of any of those guys from the Trawl Boat and apart from the guys who own B&B’s I’ve no idea where they live. Luckily, Big Steve had mentioned Nick to his wife as being a hotel manager and one day they had popped in the hotel for a meal and when Big Steve passed away that was the one contact she had for Steve’s pub friends.

One day, in the next world, I’ll make a point of finding Big Steve and I can see myself now tapping him on the shoulder and saying “Nice to see you again Steve, as always.”

Hope he doesn’t turn round and say “Steve, I’m not happy!”

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Three Funerals and a Pork Pie

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-12The other day my Mum started discussing her funeral plans with me. She is eighty-five this year and I suppose at that age one starts to think that the day is coming when you won’t be around. Even so, it was pretty shocking to be talking about her funeral.

The first ever funeral I went to was my Uncle Raymond’s. Raymond was my favourite uncle and the most wonderful guy. When I first started work when I was sixteen, going on seventeen, I used to get off my bus, the 152, at the Bluebell pub in Handforth after coming home from work in Manchester and Uncle Ray was there, waiting for the pub to open. Inside he chatted to everyone, the staff, punters he had never met before and at the drop of a hat would produce the photographs from his recent cruise showing him and my Auntie Elsie sat at the Captain’s table. He would come back home with us, have dinner, and then take my Dad out to finish the evening off.

When he died his funeral cortege took a detour past the British Legion, one of his numerous watering holes, and the staff and customers came outside to pay tribute as his coffin passed slowly by.

The funeral was sad and tearful and the wake was pretty similar. A lot of sad people, a lot of tears and my Dad, who had probably lost his best friend was devastated. I was driving that day and was asked to run some long forgotten relative home. I did so and returned a short while later. Only twenty minutes or so had passed but when I returned, I returned to a happy, noisy, enjoyable party, full of laughter and fun. I don’t know what had happened in the twenty minutes I had been gone but I came back to exactly the sort of party that my Uncle Ray would have loved.

When my Gran died the funeral service was held in Marple, I’m not sure why as it was nowhere near where my Gran lived or was buried. The journey from there to Southern Cemetery in Manchester was for me, a masterpiece of motor car management, juggling with high water temperature and having to dive into a garage to top up my car with water.

At the graveside I noticed my Dad making signs to the two grave diggers and after the coffin had slipped into the ground and the final words of the vicar had faded, my Dad, a former grave-digger in years gone by, had a happy and joyful reunion with two of his old co-workers, much to the dismay of my Mum who stood with me and cried her heart out. (Not your finest moment, Dad.) At least he thought better of introducing her to his friends which I thought he was going to do at one point.

A few years ago I went with Liz to a funeral in Lytham. I felt distinctly out of place, an intruder even, as I did not know the deceased or his family. There was however, a rather nice buffet which, under the circumstances, I felt it was important to do justice to. I did feel a little mean when I grabbed the last pork pie moments before a teary eyed lady in black appeared and eyed the empty plate somewhat wistfully.

When I was introduced to her later I could see from her expression she was trying to place me. As I smiled and offered condolences I saw the moment of realisation ; and I almost heard her say in her mind ‘I recognise him- he’s the bugger who took the last pork pie!

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