Journey to the End of the World
I can't believe it's Friday night already. Where has the week gone? I don't think it helps that apart from today, the whole week has been taken up with the funeral. Monday was taken up with packing and getting stuff ready, Tuesday was the journey down, Wednesday was the funeral and the journey back and then Thursday was spent doing as little as possible.
The journey down didn't start off well when I realised that somehow I'd got a ticket missing for the journey back. I'd collected them from the Fast Ticket machine on Friday and I was sure I'd got them all but I must have missed one. Annoyingly, that meant we had to buy a new ticket, so that was an extra £100 we'd not budgeted for. I was so furious with myself about that, still am really. Other than that, the journey was fine. We got into London 10 minutes early and got across to Victoria with no problems so we were able to get an earlier train. It was a little after 3.45pm when we got to the B&B, rather than an hour or so later. The room was very nice and had a lovely view of the sea. After a reviving cup of tea and deciding who was sleeping in which bed, we went out to see what eating establishments were on offer. We considered a proper English seaside chippy but ended up at a Wetherspoons instead. We toook a detour back to the B&B by way of the front where it was rather blowy but we were too busy recognising places that we'd not seen for years and reminiscing to care.
Wednesday morning started far too early. We had to be up at 7 in order to be up, dressed, fed and packed ready for 8.15 when we were being picked up by one of my cousins. It was a shame because we all would have liked to have had a proper English but we just didn't have time and had to make do with cereal and toast instead. It's no comparision! We then went off to the crematorium where we met up with the rest of the family. That side of the family is huge HUGE. My Nannie was one of 13 children so there's loads of uncles and aunts and cousins who are really greatuncles and greataunts and second cousins. I've only come out to my immediate aunt and cousins - there wasn't any point telling the rest seeing as I see them so rarely - so it was very amusing when Auntie B kept going on about how much I've changed! Then again, the last time she saw me apparently I was only yay high anyway.
I've often heard people say after going to a funeral, "oh, it was a lovely service" but I've never found that myself. Well, Nannie's really was a lovely service. The priest had purposely worn a bright yellow shirt because he remembered how much Nannie loved bright colours, and he had us laughing so many times. It really did do her justice. Then it was back to my aunt's house for the wake which was pretty much lots of sitting around talking, catching up on everyone and eating food. We worked out that the last time we'd been there was about 15 years ago for one of my cousin's wedding and so we had a lot of catching up to do. Our train back wasn't till nearly 5 so we had plenty of time for it! My aunt made sure that we had plenty of food for the journey home and my cousin's husband took us to the station.
The journey home was fine, just very very long. My mother was rather shellshocked from experiencing the Tube at rush-hour, it is really unnerving if you're not used to it. My sister and I spent the journey doing sketches and photos of the scenery which was fun when it was whizzing past at 125mph! It was after 10pm by the time we finally got home and we were all knackered. My mother hasn't been on a train for years and certainly not any distance so she was understandably worn out from that. I wouldn't have been so bad if I'd not been ill at the same time. Obviously the early morning on Wednesday after a bad night in a strange place didn't help either. I'm still pretty exhausted today but hopefully a lazy weekend will soon sort that out.
This has turned out to be a really long post but as a reward, here's a photo I took of Battersea Power Station on Wednesday as we were going into London. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, and that's mostly due to the weather! There were two thunder storms that day and the sky was full of black clouds the whole time so it's resulted in a very atmospheric picture. Click for a bigger version!
The journey down didn't start off well when I realised that somehow I'd got a ticket missing for the journey back. I'd collected them from the Fast Ticket machine on Friday and I was sure I'd got them all but I must have missed one. Annoyingly, that meant we had to buy a new ticket, so that was an extra £100 we'd not budgeted for. I was so furious with myself about that, still am really. Other than that, the journey was fine. We got into London 10 minutes early and got across to Victoria with no problems so we were able to get an earlier train. It was a little after 3.45pm when we got to the B&B, rather than an hour or so later. The room was very nice and had a lovely view of the sea. After a reviving cup of tea and deciding who was sleeping in which bed, we went out to see what eating establishments were on offer. We considered a proper English seaside chippy but ended up at a Wetherspoons instead. We toook a detour back to the B&B by way of the front where it was rather blowy but we were too busy recognising places that we'd not seen for years and reminiscing to care.
Wednesday morning started far too early. We had to be up at 7 in order to be up, dressed, fed and packed ready for 8.15 when we were being picked up by one of my cousins. It was a shame because we all would have liked to have had a proper English but we just didn't have time and had to make do with cereal and toast instead. It's no comparision! We then went off to the crematorium where we met up with the rest of the family. That side of the family is huge HUGE. My Nannie was one of 13 children so there's loads of uncles and aunts and cousins who are really greatuncles and greataunts and second cousins. I've only come out to my immediate aunt and cousins - there wasn't any point telling the rest seeing as I see them so rarely - so it was very amusing when Auntie B kept going on about how much I've changed! Then again, the last time she saw me apparently I was only yay high anyway.
I've often heard people say after going to a funeral, "oh, it was a lovely service" but I've never found that myself. Well, Nannie's really was a lovely service. The priest had purposely worn a bright yellow shirt because he remembered how much Nannie loved bright colours, and he had us laughing so many times. It really did do her justice. Then it was back to my aunt's house for the wake which was pretty much lots of sitting around talking, catching up on everyone and eating food. We worked out that the last time we'd been there was about 15 years ago for one of my cousin's wedding and so we had a lot of catching up to do. Our train back wasn't till nearly 5 so we had plenty of time for it! My aunt made sure that we had plenty of food for the journey home and my cousin's husband took us to the station.
The journey home was fine, just very very long. My mother was rather shellshocked from experiencing the Tube at rush-hour, it is really unnerving if you're not used to it. My sister and I spent the journey doing sketches and photos of the scenery which was fun when it was whizzing past at 125mph! It was after 10pm by the time we finally got home and we were all knackered. My mother hasn't been on a train for years and certainly not any distance so she was understandably worn out from that. I wouldn't have been so bad if I'd not been ill at the same time. Obviously the early morning on Wednesday after a bad night in a strange place didn't help either. I'm still pretty exhausted today but hopefully a lazy weekend will soon sort that out.
This has turned out to be a really long post but as a reward, here's a photo I took of Battersea Power Station on Wednesday as we were going into London. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, and that's mostly due to the weather! There were two thunder storms that day and the sky was full of black clouds the whole time so it's resulted in a very atmospheric picture. Click for a bigger version!