The funeral of my old friend Colin has been and gone. Denise and I met up in the pub at Syderstone, to run through our little eulogy. The funeral itself was at a woodland burial ground near Norwich, Colin was in a wicker coffin and the proceedings were humanist and religion-free. While Denise was word-perfect, I got a lump in my throat. But if there’s ever a time for a poor delivery, due to a tear in the eye, it’s a funeral. We loaded the casket onto a gun-carriage pulled by two black horses, and walked behind it to the graveside. It was quite surreal.
At the graveside Jake, Colin’s son, dropped his mobile phone into the grave… and nearly followed it in. In a few years, when everything else has been forgotten, this might be the one incident that sticks in the memory.
The next day, Saturday, I drove down to Fingringhoe Wick, in Essex, hoping the nightingales had returned. I was lucky. A nightingale’s song confirmed the regenerative power of spring; it sounded wonderful…
The church at Syderstone...
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