Let’s do this together
I’m thinking of getting a peaked cap and chauffeur’s uniform for my best mate Ali who complains she spends quite a lot of time ferrying me around since I got rid of the car.
“Where to modom?” she asked this week, picking me up to go and change the plant again on my late husband’s grave, which is about an hour’s round trip out to the Hampshire countryside.
Not that I want to sound like I spend all my time hanging out at a churchyard, but I thought I should at least go and change the Christmas wreath before Shrove Tuesday.
“Isn’t it bad luck to leave the Christmas decorations up?” she asked as we set off. “Well it couldn’t get any worse for him, could it?” I replied, trying to change the music in her car by pressing all the buttons at the same time.
“Please no more Keane,” I pleaded with her. I love my friend but her appalling taste in music tests our friendship every time.
“Have you got any music that isn’t comfortingly middle class?”
Just then Annie’s Song came on and John Denver warbled: “You fill up my senses, like a night in the forest.”
“No, please no, let me out,” I said, pretending to grab the door handle. She piped up, “Actually, I want this played at my funeral.”
I looked at her aghast. “No, I refuse to let this be played,” I argued. “You won’t be there, so you don’t have to listen to it.”
To be honest, it’s a beautiful song, but I enjoy bickering with my friend. I also can’t bear the thought of her not being here one day.
“And anyway, it’s a wedding song,” I carried on winding her up. “Not a bury-your-dead-friend song. Why don’t you have that soppy Aled Jones one you like?”She stepped on the pedal as we hit the A road and we whooshed all the way up to a dizzying 30mph.
“You mean Did You Not Hear My Lady? The one your late husband sang at my blessing?” she reminded me.
I thought back to that lovely day, some 15 years ago, in Winchester Cathedral, when Ali looked magnificent in a white satin corset gown that only allowed her to breathe every 10 minutes, and David’s deep tenor voice boomed throughout the Lady Chapel.
“You can have Aled sing and bury you now – did you know he’s qualified as a celebrant?” I told her. “Or I can play it – on a kazoo,” I cackled.
■ Email siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.
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