London Lives

There were fireworks starting even when I was on the way home from work. From the window of my flat, I could see displays over Canary Wharf, over to the City, across to Battersea Park and beyond. We were meant to be going to the Waltham Forest ones, but my pal is working late so we can’t. Neither of us can manage the Ally Pally ones on Saturday, either. Still, the displays are great and the ones in the parkland over the back of my house were gorgeous.

Hope all the local moggies are safely indoors…

Five years ago today, I was attending my uncle’s funeral. He was my father’s older brother and had been ill for some time. It was a poignant day for all of us, my father in particular. It was the most gorgeous autumn day, brilliant blue sunny sky, very chilly, with yellow leaves on the trees. A piper played the Last Post, recalling my uncle’s time as a Bearskin when he was a young man. I held my father’s hand tightly as his brother’s coffin was lowered. My mother was holding his other hand on the other side. I’d never attended a burial before, so was unsure how I would feel. The churchyard was familiar, though. My father has taken me round it before, pointing out the graves of my great-grandparents and various people who lived near his family when he was a child.

I don’t think I’d really comprehended how strong this loss would be for my father until we were chatting a few months before my uncle died. My father and his brothers were brought up in outer London during WWII and he simply said: “That’s my older brother; when we were kids we were bombed out of our beds together.” And they were.

After the service and the burial, we went to a local pub with numerous cousins, aunts, uncles (hundreds of people, most of them bearing my surname) and chatted, drank, laughed and pored over memories. It sounds strange to say that the day of a funeral can be beautiful, but this one was.