On my mother's side, in particular, my family is more than a little bit pikey. As they live in the West Country they speak with the kind of accent and intonation which Alice Tinker, the simpleton verger on The Vicar of Dibley, uses. The best way for me to help you understand what I mean by all of this is to describe my Auntie Sue (my Mum's sister) and her husband, my Uncle Alan.
Sue is what you might call a bit of a silly cow and likes to antagonise Alan at every opportunity. For example, a few years ago Alan staggered into his house with a piece of broken bone sticking out of the side of his leg (he'd somehow managed to fall out of his knackered VW van) and rather than call an ambulance Sue proceeded to lay into him for being careless while not having any accident insurance. Now, if I tell you that Alan is the sole provider in their household and is self employed you might be able to see her point of view. But still. Bloody bone stump sticking out of leg. Hello?!
Sue and Alan eat chips. A lot. They smoke 20-30 Royals a day and have a Jack Russel called Jack (inspired) which is deeply sexually attracted to my leg. Christmas buffet at my Aunt and Uncle's place usually consists of a combination of Melton Mowbury pork pies, Tesco tortilla chips and high-fat dips. And maybe a bottle of Blue Nun. Their house is teeming with an abundance of ceramic nick-nacks (doubtlessly ordered from the back of the Radio Times), overflowing ashtrays and copies of the Sunday Sport dating back to 2001. But perhaps the best way for me to illustrate this picture of chaos is with, well, with a picture:
OK, admittedly I am perhaps being a huge snob, but I work in PR and I probably always have aspired to scale to a height slightly above my station. A sentiment my bank manager would almost certainly agree with.
On Saturday Mum told me that she had not been able to get any sense out of Sue and Allen as to what the format of Granddad's funeral service should be (as he was not a particularly religious man, it's going to be a simple service at the local crematorium.) She also told me that no one else in the family was going to give any readings because they are all afraid that they might break down. We'd already agreed that I would read out the Gibran passage, so she wondered if I would choose the music which would intersperse Mum's readings before I did mine. She also wanted me to compose a flow - a term we use in PR for a "run of show". "Sure!" I told her. As you all know, I have organised many a fashion show / celebrity photocall. How hard could it be to organise a funeral?
So I devised a flow, peppered with what I thought were neutral and appropriate music choices which would represent the precise mood of each section of the service:
1) "Winter, Movement 3" by Vivaldi (Granddad was born in November) plays while Guests take their seats
2) Mum talks about the early part of Granddad's life
3) "Nocturne in E Flat" by Chopin
4) Mum talks about the latter part of Granddad's life
5) "I Could Write a Book" by Frank Sinatra
6) Christopher reads from The Prophet and closes the service
7) "Vide Cor Meum" - a piece of opera composed by Patrick Cassidy using words from Dante's "La Vita Nuova" sonnet (it's about how death doesn't rule out the idea of life remaining)
Beautiful huh? Underplayed, simple, respectful, not too sad, not too uplifting. To use another adjective, classy.
I talked Mum through it on the phone and played her some of the music and she loved it. So I burned off a copy of the music and printed off the flow and popped it in the post so that she could show the rest of the family what we had decided upon.
Mum called me this afternoon to tell me that Sue and Alan had read the flow and listened to the CD. "What did they think?" I asked her, fully expecting her to tell me how proud they were of their clever, sensitive, gay nephew.
"They didn't really like it. They've chosen some different music and moved some of the remaining music around."
I won't beat about the bush. This is the new flow:
1) "Spring, Movement 1" by Vivaldi plays (Granddad died in the Spring) while Guests take their seats
2) Mum talks about the first part of Granddad's life
3) "Pie Jesu" sung by Sarah Brightman
4) Mum talks about the latter part of Granddad's life
5) "I'll Never Get A Scrumpy Here" by The Wurzels
6) Christopher reads from The Prophet and closes the service
7) "Nocturne in E Flat" by Chopin
I don't even know where to start with this complete and utter nightmare farce.
Ok, I'll try...
A) If you have a CD of Vivaldi's Four Seasons to hand please put it on right now and listen to the first movement of Spring. This is really not intellectual snobbery now. I defy you to listen to that and tell me you think that is suitable for a funeral!
B) Pie Jesu - in essence I don't have a problem with this, except that it is being sung by Sarah Brightman who is the Sinitta of the opera world. She also married Andrew Lloyd Webber, the ugliest, most neo-Nazi fascist composer ever to wave his arms about in the West End of London. "So Sarah Brightman, tell us; what was it which first attracted you to multi-millionaire, Andrew Lloyd Webber?"
C) The Wurzels - first of all I thought Mum was joking when she told me this, but she wasn't. Words...can't...describe... Therefore another picture to illustrate:
D) Finally, the Chopin - totally not the right piece of music to listen to while watching Granddad's coffin slide off through the curtains and into the hereafter.
I took the news with good grace. I wanted to stamp my feet and make a fuss, but I didn't. After all he was my Grandfather and not my father. I have no power of veto over what my Aunt and Uncle want and what my Mum has conceded to. After all, it's not my funeral (although I tell you, if anyone plays The Wurzels at my funeral they'd better be prepared for some pretty fucking scary poltergeist shit.)
But what I do have power of veto over is the wreath which I am helping to buy with my cousin and my brother. Andrew, my cousin, also called me yesetrday evening. He wanted us to buy a wreath that reads, in orange flowers:
G-R-A-N-D-D-A-D
I'll let you guess what my answer was (which was prompted not least because of the cost of an eight word wreath.)
The lesson in all of this? You can take the pikiness out of the boy, but you can't take the boy out of the pikiness. Apparently some old geezer died over in Rome at the weekend and the funeral is on Friday. Maybe they'd appreciate my event management skills over there?
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