Tuesday 19th April 2016

Despite the usual spate of deaths, or perhaps because of, home improvement throbs through my entire fabric at the moment. I’m up a ladder night and day fiddling with the chandeliers bought from a dead man on eBay. £50 each. Awful flat in which he’d died on Pimlico estate. No wonder he died.

Last week, we had back-to-back funeral and memorial services in the Far West. Cousin Teddy-Vitorio died at 97. He lived deep in a valley, market-gardening for 50 years but was also a sage unknown to the world.  In the last twenty years he barely left his valley. A bashed-up Volvo estate car drew up outside the crem. and a cardboard box was drawn out of it, stamped in several places ‘St Bice’s Fruit Farm’ (the name of Cousin Teddy-Vitorio’s market garden). This was the coffin. It was an organic funeral, you see. Cousin Teddy-Vitorio was being delivered as farmed goods now to be whirled back into the ether as molecules making a contribution. That’s what Cousin Boniface, his son, who is a sort of monk, said in his address. Cousin Teddy was also a painter. His comical scenes of life in the Far West are masterpieces. But he cared nothing for fame or recognition and was latterly devoted to a work of philosophy, sections of which were read out during the service which wasn’t really a service – just readings, with recorded music at either end. This was one who lived an inner life that required nothing.  At the end, Cousin Paquita, the widow, rose and addressed the throng: ‘Teddy-Vitorio would have been astonished to see so many of you here. He would have said, if only one man and a dog had come, “I’m sure the dog has something better to do”.’

Afterwards we gathered at an hotel accustomed to wakes, being near the Crem. Long-lost rellies abounded and from death sprang much weaving of who was who and how connected. Cousin Teddy’s father and my great-grandfather were 1st cousins, but vastly separated in age. Their fathers, although brothers, were 20 years apart with crowds of other brothers in between. It was hours of exciting work to stitch it all back together again.

On the way back, the Gay Mother wished to visit a Waitrose, having never seen one. She was much taken with the bagged pea-shoots and we got a duck down from £16 to £8. She reports that she’s had a lot of benefit from that duck subsequently in terms of stock, soups and duck-flavourings. It rather recalls the time Val embarked on Ballentine of Duck for a Christmas party in the early 80s and Twirly Godfrey said, so ducky was his flat with the duck work, ‘The ducks will re-form from the air.’

The very next day we were off again for a memorial (one of our mineral neighbours and fellow landed gentry). Hymns and tributes: some daring mention of lippy and snogging in the 50s along with her presents which went on being New Berry Fruits long after these had fallen out of flavour with the general population. Upon inheriting, she’d cleared out the cobwebs of her aunt, Mrs Barnet-Gigg, who’d shut up the Chinese Drawing Room and most of the rest of the house. Now her time in situ is over in a blink (perhaps 35 years) and the next generation looms. I wished I’d had a better coat for the exit from the Church. My old Prada blue with a petrol sheen wasn’t quite good enough for a conspicuous departure as a leading family.