Still here, still surviving.

[taimatsu]

Yesterday we had Brendan (our favourite priest) over for dinner to thrash out the details of the funeral service. I wound up bringing the laptop downstairs and taking dictation of bits of the liturgy, so the congregation will have the right responses. It looks like I'm going to be reading the psalm at the vigil (5pm Friday, when the coffin is received into the church, small brief service) which will be Ps.102/103, 'The Lord is compassion and love'. Then at the requiem itself my brothers and I will do the bidding prayers (so we've got to write them!). I'm also designing a papercut as an illustration for the order of service. I have designed one tonight already - it's rectangular, and has the word PEACE in the middle surrounded by leaves and flowers - but I'm not sure it works for the intended use, so I'm still thinking. I'm pleased with it anyway, and might make cards or something to that design. I need to do something smaller, but make the actual size larger so as to cut it very smoothly and carefully with appropriate fine detail. It has to be 100% done by noon tomorrow - deadline, eeep, eep, eeeeep. If anyone has bright ideas for a subject, do let me know. Not praying hands, though, I can't get them looking right.

Tomorrow we're going over to have lunch with one set of godparents; Godparent-Mike is organising the printing of the booklets and prayer cards (I think those are a Catholic thing) and has to have all the documents tomorrow. So then Robert will pick me up from Wargrave (because it's near Reading) and I'll go home with him. We can spend some time together, I can marvel at his HAIR which is apparently SHORTER, and I can go to my new classes on Monday and Tuesday. I'll probably need to come back to Wimbledon on Wednesday or Thursday, because I'm playing the flute during one bit of the funeral service, and the pianist and singers may or may not want to rehearse.

It is going to be such an event. Could be up to 400 people there, or even more. Quite intimidating really. I'm going to have to clear out of my room so my grandmother (paternal) can sleep here. Robert and I will be camping on the floor of Hugo's room, probably...

And finally -
Belated congratulations to Rhiannon, who got married today! Best wishes and every happiness for the future!

Comments

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

A dove? Find a really really simple bird design, maybe...symbolic of peace, souls winging their way to heaven, and generally good things...

(am biased, wrote a poem for my grandmother's death about birds)

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I was going to say I'm free on Friday afternoon if you wanted to do something, but it seems a bit close to the actual funeral for you to want people you hardly know in person around. Hrm. I could be around for a bit of Thursday (something like 2.30-4pm) if you wanted, but that's probably about it :/ Pretty booked up at the moment with students in random places.

I can bring CAKE (that isn't fruitcake). Having noted your responses to my peanut butter poll, I won't offer you any of the variants that have it in - but I do flapjack (chewy or crunchy, with or without chocolate), muffins (bananana - with chocolate chunks, or lemon curd),
and waffles (made on the waffle iron - go a bit soggy in transit but revive in 5 minutes in a hot oven! The really amazing recipe has banana instead of egg, and then cocoa powder to hide the banana from people who don't care for it). I have a couple of very good brownie recipes (sweet and bitter chocolate), but I haven't veganised them yet and I'd rather not have to cook with egg. (Although I could probably go and research scary egg replacement powder in the next few days (and find out if it really IS scary a la vegetarian "bacon", which tends to be bright red salty cardboard containing 101 E numbers. Not something I want to put into my body)). Chocolate crunchy cornflake cake (with added sweets, fruit, etc) is dead easy, also rice krispie marshmallow squares... I'm sure those aren't even the only cakes I do, but they're the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Hrm.

Or I can make homemade peppermint creams (with or without chocolate), but they're not the most inspiring thing in the world. Having a vast quantity of flavourings means I could potentially make a mix of orange, lemon, peppermint and almond (?!) creams, or I could buy yet more highly expensive 34p flavourings and do just about any flavour you'd like. I draw the line at blue raspberry, though. Failing all of that, I could probably try making fudge again - I have slightly less fear of over-boiling sugar now after the last one that never actually set ;)

Anyway. Yeah. Cake, & stuff. Let me know if you want some, and if you want it accompanied by a me (otherwise I could just post it to you - first class is usually okay!).