For those of you who are surprised by the speed of a hearse, don't be.
I used to stop at a paper shop on my way to work that was near the Southern Cem in Manchester, and the owner of the shop, I think, was a retired copper. The world of pall-bearers and undertakers is a small one, and he knew I liked cars.
The day before, he'd been out with his mates, test-driving a possible new hearse near Altrichcham crem out in the lanes near to Dunham Massey. The test vehicle in question had a 5 litre Cosworth engine in it.
Think about it, a hearse has to carry the deceased and up to 6 strapping blokes to carry the body into the church/Crem. It could have a payload of 6 x 16 stone - imagine 6 x 6ft ex coppers, built to be impressive in their pointy hats, plus the deceased in their chipboard veneered with oak etc coffin who could weigh 20 stone, dead weight if you pardon the pun.
Then after the Crem, they have to get back at the speed of light to the depot for the next one.
He told me I should let him know if I could go along for the next test drive.....
Then there was the one about the widow and the curate and the ashes.
A widow was in the car with the urn carrying her late husband's ashes for burial. Due to the sadness of the occasion she hadn't felt like driving, so the curate kindly offered to do this. On the way to the burial they were pulled over by the police.....the curate didn't have his driving licence with him, or proof of identity etc, and the police were about to ask him to accompany them to the station. The situation was saved by the lady presenting her driving licence to vouch for the Curate.
At the morning after a wedding at University, we were all discussing holiday jobs, as you do.
One student had spent his holiday working as a porter as Birmingham's main accident hospital. There had been a freak hailstorm in June, and the mortuary was at the bottom of a steep ramp. Unfortunately, the same day, a building worker of Irish origin had returned to work after lunch, and died after a wall collapsed and fell on him. He had weighed some 16 stone. The student had the body on the trolley and let go of it at the top of the slope, where due to ice - an unforseen circumstance - the trolley went out of control and hit the wall at the end. His opinion was that if the gentleman hadn't been dead after the wall fell on him at work, he would have been when hitting the wall at the bottom of the ramp leading to the mortuary.
Another student had a friend who worked at an undertakers somewhere in the Wigan area. He was sacked when his habit of re-arranging the faces of the recently-departed into gurning expressions was discovered by grieving relatives.
Mil My late mil's funeral was a complete farce. DH due to grief left discussing the arrangements with the vicar to his elder brother and sister, something he still regrets over 20 years later. Mil was a member of the Communist party at the time of the Civil War in Spain, but also had deep religious convictions, and loved both the prayer book and the King James bible. She was psychic, and a landlord died after she reportedly put the evil eye on him after he increased the rent - illegally. Just to give a rounded picture.
The service at the Crem bore no resemblence to any CofE form of worship I have ever encountered. The Crem had an organist of the type in pleated skirt, sandles and cardie persuaded to play during the organist's holiday. At any and every moment where you would have expected a prayer, tilly mint, burst into a rousing chorus of "Keep the red flag flying here". Just before the curtains came around the Vicar asked us to stand for a final moment - for prayer? No, to honour mil's commitment to the socialist cause and another rousing burst of the Red Flag. On the way out, looking at the flowers, and somewhat stunned, the Red Rev shot past in his Astra, winding down the window to apologise for his car being blue and not red, as he didn't have any choice in his 'business vehicle'.
We avoided the wake, bil being on one side of the holy river and sil being on the other, as it would have caused a row had we gone to one and not the other. We changed out of our funeral attire in Tesco's toilets in Allerton our own farewells down at the Albert Dock.
To top it all, sil kept the change out of the money that mil had saved for her funeral as she told me it was "owed to her" for looking after her dm who she didn't care two hoots about. She just felt entitled. Mil died without a will and just left the money in sil's care to pay for her funeral. Mil would have wanted it to go to her 7 grand-children, and 1 great-grandchild alive at the time she died in 1993.