A lousy correspondent

Training last week, and I didn't even write about it (well, I was absolutely cream crackered).

The 2nd training was more relaxed (the guy I thought was a bit "self-rectal" the first time seemed a lot more human - I don't know if he'd mellowed or I had), but it did feel a bit chaotic. I know that seems like a contradiction , what I mean is that the students were more confident, but that the trainers were trying to cram so much in that we were fighting the clock the whole time.

There was only one part where I knew I'd done badly, and for two reasons.

We were role-playing a scenario, enacting a family visit with a woman whose son had killed himself, and our brief was to find out the cause of death.

Self criticism no 1 - I could hear myself asking closed rather than open questions - must get out of that habit RIGHT now!

Self criticism no 2 - The trainer playing the bereaved mother was in denial about the death (unsure if it was deliberate or not), and so we were getting inconclusive answers. I just turned to a fellow student and said "I've gone blank". Obviously, that is a Very Bad Thing, but I would like to think that in a real situation I would behave differently, for two reasons.

Firstly, if the mother didn't know or didn't want to share the cause of death, I would leave it out of the ceremony.

Secondly, if I was drawing a blank from the family, I would ask about something else entirely (what did the deceased do for a living, favourite music, anything) and move on, perhaps coming back to the cause of death later, once more trust had been established.

However, I've been invited back for part 3 of the training, and so it couldn't have counted against me too much.

I've not had any ceremonies for ages, so I've had to go to work (boo) and rack up spare hours for when they're needed. If I get too many, I might just take some time off anyway.

More feedback, and another funeral

Another week, another cremation.

I got feedback from NG (my trainer) on my first script. He made several useful comments, and some that I found entertaining. This was because he had criticised one or two things which were straight lifts from my mentor's scripts.

NG is a bit of an evangelical humanist, whereas I think I'm more liberal, so there are bound to be differences, but he summed it up as "not a bad stab at it", which I took to be a complement.

There was also the problem of the family for this particular script. I'm surprised that they could even agree that the bloke had died, because they couldn't agree on anything else! Still, NG's not to know that, so he made comments about "should have got more here" (none of the music had been decided when I sent the script to him, but one piece was changed on the day of the ceremony). Therefore, he doesn't know if I didn't have everything because it wasn't given, or because I'm not good at listening, getting info etc.

Generally, the feedback was useful, however, and I don't want to seem as though I'm making excuses.

So then we came to the funeral yesterday of the elderly lady. The family are lovely, and when the deceased's daughter said hello to me when they arrived, I said what I always say: "All right?"

No, she probably wasn't, as she had just arrived for the funeral of her mother.

I must teach myself simply to say "hello". It's kinda established in the language, it really shouldn't be too much of a shock.

I met one of the funeral directors yesterday, and when he shook my hand he leaned forward and said, very quietly, "welcome to the show". To me that summed it up beautifully. A good funeral is dignified and respectful theatre.

Bring on the next performance.

Poetry and feedback.

I feel that it's about time I got organised (famous last words), and so I've printed off all of the funeral poems I've collated so far, and put them into a folder, with an index of first lines.

I was quite impressed with what I'd collected but, major note to self - think before you print!

I thought 5 copies of each would be about right (to hand out as needed). That is fine, but when you've got nearly 50 of the buggers, and they are to go into plastic punched pockets (oh my, I do love my stationery!) they struggle to fit into the ring binder set aside for this purpose (a purple holographic one).

Plus, some of them are beautiful, but a bit on the religious side, so are inappropriate for a non-religious ceremony. Many are complete sentimental rubbish - but that doesn't mean that the good folks won't love 'em. I daresay I'll have to listen to a lot of Boyzone and Celine Dion as I make my way through this career too!

However, I can always do a bit of judicious filtering, and leave the god-squad ones in a less shiny binder at home.

On a more positive note, I got some very good feedback from SWMBO from my first script. She gave some very practical tips (number pages, put a deep margin at the bottom so that you don't end up talking to your feet -that kind of thing), as well as suggesting some changes, but her general comment was that although it could be improved, she didn't feel that a family would be unhappy with that ceremony, as written.

I'm a happy bunny!