Yes another funeral this week – a bit like 21st birthdays and weddings, you go through a period of your life when you seem to go to little else.  This time it was one of my oldest and dearest friends; 46 years of getting impressively drunk together.

I was introduced to him by his best friend, my late brother-in-law – they were both jazz musicians and I could fill blogs for the next year relating just some of the shenanigans they were involved in.  After the brother-in-laws funeral, a tragic early death involving a rogue lawn-mower, my then husband, not as tired and emotional as we were, uthrew us both out of the car on the way back to London.  We went to the nearest pub and carried on grieving.  A proper send off if I say so myself.

We didn’t meet up that often but if he came to London the day would always involve lunch followed by brandies and cigarettes outside the Bar Italia in Soho, opposite Ronnie Scott’s.  He always smoked the most revolting fags and whenever I was abroad I made a point of seeking out the worst local  gaspers as souvenirs.  I recall that the ones sourced in Russia were particularly impressive in their room clearing properties and a real bargain at about 5 roubles for 200.  Sadly unobtainable over here.

We spoke on the phone frequently and for never less than an hour, ice clinking in our glasses as we discussed our respective gardens, his being as eccentric as he was.  Think Tim Burton crossed with Bunny Guinness on speed.  Not a suitable place for children on several levels and talking of which let me deviate to my own offspring.

They too had spent long afternoons with me in his garden drinking whatever gut-rotting Eastern European vodka we had purchased en route.  I found out that he had died because one of them rang me and bless them, they both came to the funeral even though it meant one of them leaving Bristol at 6 in the morning.  They looked handsome, they were charming to the elderly mourners and they came because they knew it would mean a lot to me.  A moment of maternal pride.  Proper old-fashioned values.  I hope I passed them on.