RIP Porky

Another funeral today. I knew Peter through our children, our daughters were at primary school together and our wives are firm friends. For 28 years he worked on the fruit farm which abuts the one I live on. He was a big, friendly guy who could turn his hand to most things practical - he was a bodger in the finest sense of the word in that he made things work. He spent some time as the mechanic for a banger racer and he loved motorcycles. His pride and joy was a Yamaha Star Cruiser and he set up the Star Cruiser Owners Club which became the Mutineers Motorcycle Club. 

So today was a biker funeral. About 50 bikes escorted the hearse from Peter's home to the crematorium and before the hearse pulled up at the entrance to the chapel they formed a guard-of-honour and revved their engines as the hearse passed through. The chapel couldn't accommodate everyone, even with people standing in every available space, and we heard stories of him growing up as the youngest of six and only going to school on Wednesdays because that was when lunch was sausage and chips. The service finished with the full version of "Bat out of Hell" with lots of people mouthing the words, tapping their feet and nodding along.

Then back to Maidstone for the wake. Peter loved ice cream so his wife arranged for an ice cream van to give out ice creams as people arrived - this was paid for from his "20p jar" which held more than £400 - well over 1,000 of the little silver coins.

The bike club have created a patch to remember him - that's the image - and it got me to thinking about the rituals around goodbyes and the overt and hidden ways in which we show membership of groups. The bikers wore leather waistcoats with badges showing who they were, where they'd been and their club affiliations - there were people from a range of local groups. Also, implicitly, the badges and patches show who they were and what they stand for.  I wear an OU Graduates badge on my lapel. Today people showed that they were part of the "in group" by remembering events with Peter - his chaotic fireworks parties in the orchard with our children, times when he helped move a piano - a few of us had examples of that, or trimmed or cut down trees. 

The last couple of years have been dreadful for Peter as he went through the pain and indignities of being ravaged by cancer and the radical interventions aimed at trying to stem its unremitting progress. Today won't make up for that but he had a send off that showed the measure of the man.