I recently spent my
41st birthday at the funeral of a very dear friend, it got
me thinking, how good does a friend have to be to make you change
your planned pulled-the-day-off-work-for-my-birthday activities of
lying about in the garden drinking cider and reading old Peanuts
cartoons? Friendship is a difficult thing to measure at the best of
times, and I think those who try to measure it, and gauge which
friends are better than other friends can probably all fuck off.
I am now convinced
that the people who post all those, 'Get rid of all the negative
needy, selfish people around you, shake them off, you are a beautiful
butterfly,' memes on facebook are almost certainly the very selfish,
needy, fuckawful dickheads they are talking about. On the other hand,
many of them are my friends, and I would most certainly go to their
funerals over my own selfish drunken plans.
This
chap comes to us all eventually, don't miss the party
A person who will
remain anonymous was perplexed that I would willingly choose to spend
my birthday at a funeral, saying it wouldn't be much fun. Now, there
are two very important points here, one, my friend will only ever
have one funeral – I should have plenty more birthdays, I get one a
year after all (not like that birthday hoarding, two a year selfish
monarch of ours, does that make her 157 now?) and I've already had
about fifteen more than I planned on. And secondly, I put the fun in
funerals. Seriously, I've never been to one I haven't enjoyed (apart
from that one where the wake only had tea and cake, what is wrong
with you? Who doesn't have booze at a funeral? Note to all my
relatives, there must be a bar at mine.)
My anonymous
acquaintance also claims to share my legendary misanthropy. The
difference being that I hate people in general – the abstract
concept of having to share my space with others – but I very rarely
meet any specific people I don't like. My acquaintance, on the other
hand, has trouble being alone, and wants to be around other people,
but finds the actual, specific people problematic and not quite
malleable enough for their needs. I have had 'oh but you like
everybody!' thrown at me as if it's an insult before. Frankly, I'm
pretty proud of it, I do like everybody I meet. It takes a good deal
of effort to make me not like you, so if you've managed it, well
done, that's quite the achievement.
Anyway, I was
sitting in the funeral parlour, contemplating my own mortality, as
you do at a funeral, and suddenly the voice of the deceased came into
my head. I quite distinctly heard him chuckling 'Fuck's sake Dave,
it's my funeral, you could at least have worn shoes!' Which would
have been fair. His son, who contacted me about it, told me we had to
go for bright colours. I had forgotten the unwritten rule about the
'celebration of life, bright colours' funerals that states you must
still wear a suit, shirt and tie, nothing stronger than a pale blue
and still mainly black, and rolled up in my multi-coloured patchwork
shirt, purple Prince trousers and that
hat. And I don't wear shoes between May and September usually, so
sandals it was. I could hear him laughing all the way to his coffin,
he'd have loved it.
This
hat here – which has become much too regular a feature of this blog
It was a good
funeral, I saw some very dear people that I have all but lost contact
with over the last few years that I was very glad to see again. You
could tell it would be fun when the first thing the grieving widow
did on seeing me was grab me and whisper, 'I'm free and single now
Dave,' in my ear with a raucous laugh. It continued, with this
singular family who I used to see so much of all heckling each
other's eulogies, clapping the readings and talking over the
contemplative music. I have not cry-laughed so much since
This is Us finished.
I do draw the line
at talking over the music though. When I finally pop off you're going
to have to listen. I've been working on the funeral setlist for
years, I would like some well-meaning member of my family to turn to
the crowd and say 'shut the fuck up and listen to the song, this
bit's really good', as we near the 28 minute mark of 'Thick as a
Brick'. Heckling is fine, and to be encouraged, indeed, please shout
'Stop making me listen to Jethro fucking Tull again you dead
bastard!' rather than muttering amongst yourselves guiltily.
I do advise everyone
to sort out your funeral songs, if you're not careful somebody else
will pick them, and they'll get them wrong. You don't want to end up
with people sitting in quiet reminiscence of you to the St Winifred's
School Choir. This is your chance to get your own back, as my friend
did by making me listen to Don fucking Mclean for one last time.
Bastard, well played.
Things go wrong in
planning, I remember another funeral for another friend a long time
ago where the order of service was to have guitars on it, as he was a
guitarist. This friend had, in our last conversation about a month
before he died – a conversation that at that point I had no inkling
would be our last – royally ripped the piss out of me for gigging
exclusively on bass, saying I was a guitar player, not a shitty
bassist. I had to stifle a laugh as I entered the service and found
his grieving relatives had accidentally put two Fender Jazz Basses on
the front. I could hear his voice shouting 'Fuck's sake Dave, I'm a
guitar player, not a bassist! What are they doing to me?'
Tell people what you
want, I'm not revealing my set list here, but my wife and a couple of
back up friends have it for when the inevitable happens. It's good,
and I might add a few more for the service. The wake will be even
better, you're all invited, it shall be a rave in a field, you can
pick the tunes for that, as you'll want to be dancing – in my
fevered imagination I see people begging to have my songs played as
loud as possible, in
reality I am still very much aware of how bad they are, and you
really can't dance to them. I will be there in spirit, as I have
ordered an effigy of me dressed in my finery be burned atop a huge
fire – like an old school Guy Fawkes night – to keep the
revellers warm.
It's going to be
fun, and well worth missing a boring old normal 41st
Birthday for. You'll see a load of people you haven't for years, make
a few new friends and remember someone you (hopefully) liked.
Here's
an artist's impression of what my funeral might look like
Obviously
that guy in the hat will be a model on the fire
and
only dancing in spirit
