Non progredi est regredi

Well, the funeral went off ok - as well as might be expected I mean. We got there very early as it was a very cold, crisp day, and our most direct route was country lanes, so we sat in the car nursing hot coffee purchased en route. When asked, "Did it go ok?", the mischievous part of me always wants to say, no actually, they dropped the coffin, or, I went to the wrong chapel. I'm afraid I had to walk away from one relative at the wake - life's short enough, without listening to repeated bitterness about events that took place, that cannot be undone or apologised for (I had 90 minutes of it earlier in the week anyway). I probably should have said something, but I'm very English and hate causing a scene. My grandma wasn't perfect by any means - no parent, no human being, ever is - but she will still be missed nonetheless. It is done. She is at peace now. It's time to let it all go and move on - revisiting the hurt of the past will never bring release. The whole point of a funeral is to remember the good stuff, the fun times. There were lots of those too.

But what really brought it all into sharp perspective for me? Surprisingly, it wasn't the first funeral of the day at 9.45am. The first hearse that arrived contained a tiny wooden coffin, not much bigger than a box of A4 paper. I didn't see any other cars or mourners around, just a few gardeners heading off to their travails. That poor little mite probably never even got the chance to draw breath, or if it did, there were precious few of them. So often we forget what a dangerous process being born is - that all of us are lucky we are even here at all. So to waste a moment of that precious gift of life seems incredibly ungrateful, in the grand scheme of things.

We had a small amount of snow at the end of last week - not enough to cause serious problems, but enough drifts to block some local roads and cause travel problems. So my busy weekend of helping someone in Bromsgrove and then onto Birmingham for drinks with a friend got postponed - leaving me plenty of time to start some actual machine knitting. Yes, you might well faint in surprise - I decided to make another handkerchief hem skirt, this time in a beautiful turquoise Grigna. The weekend was further disrupted on discovery that the Cog's battery was dead as a doornail, thus meaning he had to be picked up for a gig on Saturday night, and thus stranding me at home (not enough room in the car for me, and no way to get my car out either). Oh well, them's tha breaks - the chap from Green Flag was pretty good and managed to get the fancypants Kuga going again on Sunday morning, albeit with some minor surgery to get the dead battery out of the car long enough to get it jump-started. It was really hard to get out, being half under the windscreen drain. I'll stick with my little Fiesta, thanks - no fancy computer and gadgets to drain my battery. The Cog is now obsessively measuring his voltage. I think it was just a blip (the car is not yet four years old). The theory is that some snow got into the car a bit and drained the battery - entirely possible.

I also cast on "Sigh" - a simple cable-fronted jumper in Rowan Colourscape chunky - a discontinued yarn that cost too much to give up on. Some yarn is decidedly bad at telling me what it wants to be - this is one of them! :)

Still struggling somewhat with the black dog. Fed up of winter now - it's gone on entirely too long. Couple that with work and other issues, and I'd be quite happy to go home and just sleep for a few months hoping things are better when I wake up.

Current mood: thoughtful

* To not go forward is to go backward