Day to remember

Well, it's the day of the funeral. I can tell you it's been eventful.

I kick things off by waking up holding a face twice the size it normally is. Think cabbage-patch doll, and there you have it.

The emergency pharmacist takes a step back and offers the helpful advice that if the allergic reaction swells around my throat, then go to A&E. She adds gently, try and make it in under three minutes otherwise you die.

Upstaging the corpse with my dramatic gagging-breath death-scene in the chapel of rest seems like a deeply inappropriate thing to do, so I consider I might like to give it a try.

Dig says don't. He's burying his twin brother, and he's bearing a strange expression of triumph, so I suppose I should not steal the day.

The assembled family members are already beating me to it, anyway. Between them they have managed one car accident (fight with a wall; wall won), two medical emergencies (I'm counting one of them mine), unseemly ejection from private land (OK, that was me again, kicked off the Barratt estate where I had gone to drown my sorrows and let the medication take hold), and Aunty Dee, who continued her exploits of driving mayhem by having to be rescued by Mr Colly the undertaker.

The latter incident was a serious matter, as it made the funeral proceedings fretfully late. She managed to break down in the cortege. As the clock was ticking to missing our crematorium slot altogether, the undertaker abandoned the hearse to be driven at undignified speed by the junior, while Aunty Dee was shoved unceremoniously in the back of her own car. Mr Colly then carried out basic car maintenance duties before driving her like the clappers to the final moment of dignity.

I tell Aunty Dee not to worry. When I took my mother to her date with the crematorium we trailed the dustbin wagon for five miles out of Long Melford on a single-track road. What else could we do, but sit and watch the bin men carry out their slow and noisy duties while the undertaker sank his face in his hands?

I reassured her that my mother, if only she could have seen the day, would have laughed out loud.