As Nice As These Things Can Be

Just the one day at work this week which is Monday and which I do WFH. 

Tuesday is my Mum’s Funeral which goes well and is actually a really nice day. As nice as these things can be. The funeral at Markeaton Crematorium is bookended by big band dance music from my Mum and Dad’s youth, Stardust by Artie Shaw and Skyliner by Charlie Barnet, with a bit of Robbie Williams’ Heaven From Here in the middle. My brother delivers a great eulogy and we all manage to hold it together, just about. Given the fact my Mum would have hated us making a fuss, I think she would have approved.

The wake at The Farmhouse goes well where and, as is often the case at funerals, you get to meet up with people you haven’t seen since a previous major life event. This is perhaps not quite true of my three cousins on my Mum’s side who turn up not having seen two of them since the early 1980s and the other not since my Gran died in 1998. It’s a surprise but a nice one.

Wednesday and Thursday is spent setting up my Club’s dog show at Locko Park but punctuated by Wednesday night’s The Run at Breaston. There is some confusion as I rush home to pick up L without telling her while she was in the process of getting the bus to meet me at the race but we get it together in the end.

This four miler that we’ve done several times before, this is my 6^th time, starts and finishes at the Navigation pub where we set up my Dad up to watch. It’s not the most exciting of routes but it’s a good leg stretch for those of us trying to get back into running. A long leg stretch in my case, nearly 34 minutes worth. Slower than the 29 I did last time in 2019 but I wasn’t hobbling as much then and way off the 25s I did back in the day when I was a ‘younger’ person.

Friday to Sunday is the actual dog show which goes well from an organising point of view but less so from The Lad point of view. It’s all a bit too much for him and he gets progressively agitated by the whole thing which ends up on Sunday with someone rather unfairly reporting him for going into the next ring. Not that anything ever happens when anyone does that.

My Dad comes every day and has a great time, particularly as he gets a free meal every day.

(Sunday 31^st July)