The remnants of summer hung on for Joan Beales’ funeral at Attleborough on Friday. When the sun was out it was pleasant, but dark clouds brought a bit of a chill, which penetrated the church and brought a shiver to the cemetery. We arrived early, which was just as well because the car park was already full and we were lucky to find a slot where someone was just leaving.

So we were in the church over half an hour early, sitting at the back of the central section, in front of Rosie and Billy Wright. It then got rather confusing, because Angela arrived and said that Peter wanted us down the front. Because there wasn’t a huge amount of space there, and we didn’t want the immediate family to run out of seats, Angela and Dot sat at the front together, with me sitting further back next to Rodney, and Vicki elsewhere. Not ideal, especially as the funeral directors produced an extra row of seats which went unused.

It was a lovely service, though, with a really nice and thorough eulogy from Margaret White, a friend of Joan’s from her acting group. There were also recordings of Joan singing and then Laura singing (Fields of Gold). The burial was at the cemetery, across the car park, and we then went to a reception at Peter Beales Roses. The rain held off, and we enjoyed food, punch and conversation with other members of the family, including Donna, who had made the trip from Wolverhampton that morning and was returning to see a show in Birmingham in the evening. That’s what I call a full day.

At the reception I kept expecting Joan to come round every corner. She was a lovely woman, and will be much missed. Afterwards Dot and I called in on Auntie Ethel, who was understandably upset that she hadn’t been able to go. But it would have been too difficult. We were relieved after a while by Angela and Rodney, who had been to Waitrose.

Yesterday, while Dot was in the city, talking to Anne and buying a new suitcase, I finished sorting out my old chess games (up to a point) and wrote an article for En Passant, featuring the game I won for the school chess championship in 1962!  After a bad night with a dodgy stomach, I delivered my sermon this morning and then – with help from Howard and Phil – cleared up some paint that had been thrown over the paving stones outside the hall. As autumn finally arrived in early afternoon, with a chill heavy rain, Dot and I  decided to stay in the house for the rest of the day, spending part of it rewriting stuff on Dot’s P4C page, using html.