Falling in the Rain

    Yesterdays bad weather reminded me of an amusing event one rainy day.  It was raining very hard and had been all week.  I was on a small funeral with a burial in Rookwood, a place famous for its sticky clay and slippery puddles.  But I actually had no issues with this as I was well and truly use to it.

    When we arrived at Rookwood and all jumped out of the hearse I noticed the conductor had tucked his pants into his socks.  It was a really odd look, his pants were all puffed out at the base like parachute pants from the 90s.  I just stared at him, shocked and amused.  He let out a proud and humble grin as though he thought I was marvelling at his new look.  Then he said that yes, he looked like a clown but at least his pants would not get dirty.  Each to their own I guess.  It was a rather strange look, his little socks then the puffy pants.

    The hearse driver said something about how he would not need to do that as he simply wouldn't step in the mud.  And I believed him as he had a habit of keeping clean no matter the circumstances.  Actually earlier that morning I had been talking to the hearse driver about his shoes.  No matter the conditions of the day I had noticed he always came back to the office with clean shiny shoes.  While everyone else was scrapping mud off their pants and shoes he was always clean.  And yet it was not as though he avoided work or dirt.  I never saw him avoid getting his hands dirty, he simply walked away clean.

    However he would not be so lucky on this funeral.  A few moments after getting out of the hearse the hearse driver was carrying a small basket of petals over to the grave.  I watched as he made his way across the muddy landscape when suddenly and unexpectedly one of his feet sank and petals went flying everywhere.  He had stepped on the side of a fresh grave and due to being a solid guy the dirt just sank down.

    The gravedigger and I started laughing uncontrollably,  it was so funny; there was the big ex-army guy who normally walked with such sureness and poise suddenly stumbling sideways, chased by a cloud of petals.  The hearse driver came over to us, less than impressed but able to see the funny side.  That is when we saw he had sunken just past his ankel, getting a little sandy mud inside his shoe as well as all over it.

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