Of endings and beginnings

It's impossible to remain on the fringes of one's life these days - I think of retired people as having long afternoons just requiring to be passed in some gentle activity, and then I realise how few of these I seem to live. Today we buried someone who was in the choir of Holy Trinity Dunoon when we arrived, fresh from Glasgow, with a five-week old baby and a new life ahead of us. She stayed in the choir when Himself became organist and took it over; she came on a crazy choir outing to Dochgarroch on Loch Ness-side and was mother to the youngsters, she was the third person from our church to go to Cursillo and she was one of the four lay preachers when we took on this adventure. She turned out to have been the year ahead of me at my school, and friendly with someone I knew well. Today my friend and fellow-Cursillista Canon Paddy took her funeral service in a packed church beautiful with flowers and full of her favourite hymns, ending with I the Lord of Sea and Sky, and we buried her outside in a corner of our quiet churchyard. I've put a photo as an extra, because it was all so well done - I was in the front row because I was leading the prayers. 

The main photo I took barely fifteen minutes ago as we walked back across the road from our first choir practice of this season. There were only four of us tonight instead of the putative eight that our name, 8+1, suggests, but we sang well and blended beautifully. At the end of the practice I reminded my fellow-alto that it was 50 years ago this month that we first sat together in the new choir that we'd just started to allow us to sing the music we'd been singing in Glasgow, first sang together as altos in The Hesperians, carried on through childbirth and toddlers and schoolchildren and emerged now, all these years later, still singing together. Quite a thing, really.

The town is so silent tonight , with the moon rising behind that thin serrated veil of cloud. We exchanged pleasantries with a man with a small and nervous dog and came home for tea.

And maybe some toast and marmalade ...