So Long, Farewell

Today it was time to say farewell to a distant relative of the Silver Vixen. He was the husband of a cousin of the Silver Vixen's mother.

We headed off towards the West and had an astonishingly good run through, passing Portsmouth, Southampton, Salisbury, and Wilton then on towards Trowbridge. We had timed it to allow time for lunch at a nearby pub and pulled into the car park just before noon. The pub was The Somerset Arms, in Semington. It had a good write up on Google so seemed like it was worth a try. Only two other people were in the pub - and it turns out that they too were going to the funeral.

We settled down to some lovely coffee and a plate called a "trio of steaks". This was three 4oz steaks of pork, gammon, and beef with tomatoes, mushrooms, and "gourmet" chips. Simple enough, but beautifully prepared and absolutely delicious. It was also sufficient to last us the rest of the day.

We moved on to the funeral at the nearby Crematorium. The service was very moving. It is clear that this distant uncle had had an interesting life in the Commandos (seeing action in Singapore, Borneo, and North Africa), then back in civilian life as a driver for  Tesco. The Bath chapter of the Commando association provided a guard of honour and the Eulogy revealed what a joker he had clearly been. In fact the whole service had concentrated on his humour and mischief, which was lovely. At the committal a bugler played the Last Post. It was very touching. In a complete contrast, we filed out to "Oh Lord It's Hard to be Humble" (by Mac Davis) - which had everyone chuckling.

As we filed out we made ourselves known to the tav's distant cousin, but as it was cold and wet, we headed straight for the reception. We sat with the couple who had been at the pub when we were there... and chatted about the deceased and his family. After a while the family arrived and the Silver Vixen went along to greet her aunt - who she hadn't seen for 40+ years. She immediately recognised her and commented how much she looked like her mum. From then on, she was in full swing and managed to chat with her aunt, and her cousins and catch up on what has been going on in family.

We made a start for home and had a good run through until we approached Southampton. Then we joined traffic which slowed us up for about 30 minutes. Once past Soton, the roads opened up again and we had a trouble-free run from there on.