Tale from the tower - The funny thing about funerals

It was way back in 98/99 when Bob Mackenzie, my immediate boss, passed away. It was sudden (he had been complaining about a pain in shoulder and by the time they had worked out it was actually fluid on his lungs it was too late). His family had decided that they wanted to give him a half military funeral and I along with Sparky and few others I was asked to be pole bearers.

The adventure started on Wednesday night with a trip down to st Mawgan (Newquay way) from Odiham, which was a long arsed way in old LDV minibus. The fun started in the bus with Sparky tapping his foot on the side of the van. To which the driver Doug woke up and wondered what the hell the noise was. Sparky stopped and then a few minutes later started again. This continued for the whole journey.

Well we finally arrived at st Mawgan and were met by the Station Warrant Officer (SWO) who was going to take us through the drill and how to march with the coffin etc. So the next day we followed him around to a shed where he produced a pretend coffin made of very light wood. We shoved this into the back of his little van and set of down to the Church. It was then noticed that the back door of his little van was open and that the coffin was sliding around. Desperate calls to him to stop fell on deaf ears and we could all picture the local headlines. “Burial party run over coffin”.

Luckily we managed to get the Church where we started to practice for the ceremony. It was tricky little place where we had to go down some steps and around the corner while a) Not dropping the coffin and b)Not throwing the flowers all over the floor. We then had to do the reverse to get him out and down to the graveyard. After several tries we finally got it right and deciding to have one last go. So we got in alright and started taking the ‘Coffin’ out again when at the door a bus load of old dears appeared. Now rather shocked they apologised unreservedly. At this point we said no problem and but the coffin down so they could come in, not to mention several of us actually sitting on the thing.

That said all the training was done. That night our big boss (Senior Air Traffic Control Officer) decide we should all go out and friends is where part II to will start.