Alarm at 5 and Boo was sleeping right on top of me. I didn’t think too much about still being tired, just rolled into clothes and jumped in Bergie. I was out of London before the traffic, speeding up the M40 perhaps a little too fast. Police car parked at the side and I didn’t see the radar so I’m hoping they were taking notes at the time cos I’m pretty sure I was out of the permissible range.
I was at Rochdale Crem easily by ten, and changed into my suit in the disabled loo. They took Peter in a land rover hearse and brought him in to Hawkwind To Love a Machine. Apt. This was a sad funeral and I’m glad I made the effort. He was a great dad, made four boys, one of them Brian. I remember him giving Jack and I the free tour of Hare Hill House. He told us lively tales that stuck with me – a natural storyteller, a performer, an artist. If I’d known then how he was to decline I would have stayed up longer, as his last years were hard with dementia. This is why the funeral felt so loaded, heavy with the bittersweet memory of another gorgeous soul gone back to aether, not be arranged like that again, gone. It’s a necessary ritual, a funeral, and if we miss it the grief can be harder. We all go… some go hard, some go relieved, some drift, some cling. We leave a unique hole in the shape of things that resonates through time. It’s a power to say goodbye properly.
Brian carries a lot of his dad forward. I’m happy to see that connection, to know how proud his dad will be of the sonly that currently lives with us in our catflat in London.
I then drove briefly to St Helens but the idea of an all night Irish wake weighed too heavy on my tired bones. I needed to get some sleep. I’d even had a proper road rage incident on my way from the funeral to Robin’s. I’m in a suit, some great big hairy ginger lad starts trying to cut me up, laying on his horn and shouting so I let him pass but he pulls up alongside. My window is open and he’s shouting “it’s MY lane” and I gesticulate open handed, ‘go for it’ “Are you calling me a wanker?” and the obvious answer would be “I don’t need to call attention to it,” but I just ask him to back down. And there’s a queue ahead of us and I know he’s a problem. I realise in plenty of time that I’m gonna be alongside him in the queue so I stop, leaving about 6 car lengths before I’d have stop beside him. And immediately the car behind me starts honking and gesticulating, not understanding why I’ve left the space. I creep forward, watching the queue in front, waiting for the best moment, guessing what might be about to happen. This isn’t my first rodeo with an irrational driver, and I don’t think the suit helped. Sure enough, I time it just right. I get alongside him as I see that the two cars in front of me are about to get on the roundabout. And he’s out. I knew it. “oh here we fucking go,” I find myself saying. About six foot with meaty hands and all the ginger hair and beard and “You jumped up prick, get out of your fucking car,” and like that’s gonna happen. I wait until he’s come round (he’s on my right). He’s almost in my grill, but the cars in front are pulling onto the roundabout so I floor it and glide into their wake and I’m the out the other side and round a load of corners before he’s back in his seat. Shaky legs but still got all my teeth. I’m not worried about him taking my numberplate. He’s not the type. He was just having a moment, and his girlfriend was in the car with him laughing. Perhaps I’m lucky I could get clean out, I was worried he might have got across the roundabout in time to see where I went and that’s when it might have got dangerous, but I had let him come round his car to get to me. Peter was with me – nobody needs to get beaten up after your funeral.
AlBarclay 