15 September 2010 (Wednesday) - All The Lonely People..

I read something in the news this morning which made me sit up and take notice. A woman in Devon died two weeks ago. That’s not remarkable in itself; I suspect it happens all the time. What was unusual (to me) was the fact that her funeral is being organised by the local council because it transpires that she was utterly alone in this world. No friends or family whatsoever. And as I read on through the article I got rather angry. This woman was a wartime hero. Now leaving aside the indifference of an ungrateful nation, what annoyed me is the fact that the Royal British Legion are planning a huge turnout at the funeral because she was a wartime hero. I can’t help but feel that maybe they should have befriended her while she was alive.

Perhaps this has bothered me more than it should: being a naturally gregarious kind of guy I worry about the lonely. I can remember feeling very awkward at a funeral some years ago. The chap who had been the secretary of the snake club had died. When several hundred of us turned up for his funeral we had to wait for a funeral already in progress to finish. There were only four people at that funeral. I’ll never forget their faces as they watched us come into the chapel. What had been deserted for their beloved’s funeral was standing room only for ours.

When my mother in law used to run a bed and breakfast, she would occasionally have guests drop dead. I remember her telling me that a couple of times she attended funerals of croaked customers. At those funerals she would be accompanied by one or two other residents of her B&B, but that would be all. These people would be way past retirement age, but still utterly alone.

As a child there was the tale of a beloved grandmother going missing from the Sussex village of Winchelsea. When the local river was dragged they didn’t find her body, but they found the bodies of two men who still remain unidentified.

All the lonely people….

And so to NeverWinter where I generated quite a few more ungrieved dead, and then to work where I generated quite a lot more stuff for my other blog. This other blog’s not doing bad for all that it’s less than two weeks old. And then home. Eventually.

I forgot that yesterday (with help from the Rear Admiral) I took the top box off of my car, and so this evening I spent a panicked few minutes looking for a silver top box in a car par devoid of any top boxes whatsoever.