A flurry of activity - Day 2

Day 2 in the residential course house.

X Piry is not feeling so good............

By the afternoon I was feeling a bit hyper, and found it difficult to concentrate.

To use a term common in theatrical parlance, but not necessarily appropriate in funerals; I corpsed.

Our ceremony was for a young woman with small children. One of my colleagues was role playing as a small child. Now, I genuinely believe that a small child saying "I want to go to the toilet" would not throw me. However, to have a mature and elegant woman say it was just too much, and I got the giggles.

However, this was only part one of my inadequacies.

I'd been in charge of the script that four of us were working on, and I'd put some of the pages into the folder in the wrong order. That was a classic schoolboy error, and I felt genuinely ashamed about it. My colleague coped with it brilliantly, and the congregation would never have known, but I still felt absolutely awful.

Add fatigue to this and I was a very grumpy bunny by the time I was coming home.

In conclusion, however, I shouldn't dwell on the negative; we got some very good feedback, and are all moving forward to the next stage. My overall feeling is that it went well, so that's what I should carry with me.

(Famous last words).

A flurry of activity - Day 1

Day One in the Residential Training House................

X. Piry is in the diary room................


Day 1

I'm a bit knackered, and we've only done 6 hours training!

Started at noon, and it's gone pretty well. I haven't done much since the last session, especially in comparison with a number of my colleagues, who've been attending ceremonies left right and centre.

We covered a lot of practical stuff today; record-keeping, music selection, a walk through of the ceremony, that sort of stuff. I am much more at home with practical than theory, and as soon as they mentioned the magic word "spreadsheet" I knew I'd be okay.

Then we worked out who was doing what in the presentation tomorrow, and decided what to do with our script. I think it's one of those "oh, that'll do" things, when we worry more about delivery and volume (I know I speak too quickly, and must learn to slow it down). However, you can bet your life that tomorrow we'll get feedback and say "oh, we wish we'd spent more time on the script", but that's the way it goes.

Let's just hope for a dry half hour when we come to do our outdoor burial bit.

The hotel is quite nice, although the rooms are across the road from the main bit of the hotel, so we got a bit wet when we booked in earlier. So much for my lovely blow-dried bob this morning!

But enough of this nonsense. I need a shower and to iron my clothes for tomorrow.

Spots and philosophy

I've never been a great one for skincare. Marian Keyes reckons that there are two types of women; those who love shoes, and those of love cosmetics. Well, sorry Marian, but I fall into a third category; those who don't give a monkeys.

Obviously, this means that I look absolutely gorgeous at all times.

However, I am going to have to start taking a bit more care of my appearance, and a huge spot on the corner of my mouth has brought this home to me.

For my own part, I still don't care much - spot, schmot say I. But, if I were standing up at the local crematorium today, looking like I've done ten rounds with Ricky Hatton, saying "we are now here to celebrate the life of....." would I be portraying quite the image that the family are looking for?

Superdrug, here I come.


When I had my feedback from the first training session, it was recommended that I read up a bit on the philosophical side of Humanism. Being a good girl, I got myself onto Amazon and ordered a load of books.

I am usually a happy reader. I normally try to read at least two books per month, alternating between fiction and non-fiction. Not this month! This is slow old stuff to read. I realise that philosophy is meant to be read slowly and digested, but bugger me, when you get to the bottom of the page, and realise that you need to start at the top again, because you drifted off into "what shall I cook for dinner tonight", then these books are not going to be finished quickly.

My original plan was to read through them all in one hit, but I think that when I've finished the current tome, I'm going to have to go for something with a pink cover, and a title like "love's a bastard, but not in the end" to clear the brain.

Critique and self-doubt.

"All feedback gratefully received." That's what I always say. Of course, what I actually mean is "please love me, and don't criticise, or I'll cry".

I say all this because SWMBO gave me feedback on my second script. She gave me a lot of constructive advice on how to make it better, but I wanted it to be good enough already!

I know, unrealistic expectations of self have always been a problem; it is, after all, only my second script, and so I have things to learn. But it still hurt.

I hope that I was positive and polite when I spoke to her (even if she HATED my choice of poem for the committal), and I could see that all of her suggestions were right, but I felt a bit flat afterwards.

I've swapped scripts with other members of the group, or rather, I embraced the idea, sent my work out to 5 people, and only one has replied and I spent ages frightened to read her work, in case it was brilliant. It is very good, but not to the point where I'm intimidated.

In the final part of training, a group of us work together on a script, and I'm already convinced that none of my contributions will be used, as everyone else will be better than me.

But I have a lifelong habit of worrying about things that haven't happened yet, so perhaps I should just take a breath, calm down and do my homework!