Dressing for the final time

My mum will be cremated, so it surprised me slightly when the undertaker asked us to bring clothes for her. I had imagined she would be dressed in some kind of shroud.

Born a Macdonald, the strongest thing emerging from the tributes is her overwhelming sense of Scottishness, so my cousin and I decided she should wear tartan.

This is a waistcoat I made when I was at school. I remember going to Edinburgh and spending what seemed like a small fortune on 2 yards of dress tartan to make it.

(For those of you who don't know, most clans have three variants on their tartan, the basic plaid design, the hunting tartan which has the addition of green and the dress tartan which has a strip of white).

So today I will take to the Funeral Directors (together with the foundations) a cream shirt, this waistcoat and her favourite beige slacks (everything beige here).