Death in Bettws

Transport that Fails -- incompetent to the last.

It was the funeral of my 22-year-old work colleague. She put her headphones on, then walked into a tunnel at night when she knew a train was coming.

I arrived at the church to find three people I used to work with, and a couple of other strangers; all of us wondering why no-one else was there. Guessing, D-- , my glamorous and curvy former roster clerk, took us to the other St Mark's church, but by the time we'd driven there we were only going to catch the last ten minutes; she made the welcome and sensible suggestion that we stop for a pint then go straight to the crem. We joked about how hilarious it would be if they'd given us details of the wrong crem as well as the wrong church.

It was the wrong crem.

We got back in the car and D-- drove us to the next nearest dispatch hub, where we caught the last ten minutes of the service, stood in the annexe as there were so many people there.

Then it was on to the kind of industrial estate where the gangsters of Gwent could arrange unfortunate accidents, at the back of which was the big flat-roofed social club where the wake was being held.

I felt a bit casually dressed in grey trousers and a rather corporate shirt with thin purple and white stripes. It was a solidly working-class Welsh funeral, most people in black; some men forcing themselves into suits and shirts they hadn't worn since they were leaner, but doing it defiantly, respectfully. In the foyer there were posters advertising the forthcoming turns.

It was packed; must have been over a hundred people. All that love for her, unable to beat down the locked door of her suicide-wish. We all went outside to watch her girlfriends let off dozens of pink helium balloons, many of which got amusingly tangled in the trees.

After about three hours my colleague suggested we leave. It was time to leave the people who were closer to her to have their own conversations. To my regret, I didn't say anything to the girl's mother, out of a possibly misplaced sense of thinking she might be a bit overwhelmed with people coming up to her with unsolicited remembrances. But seeing as I was working with her daughter, spending eight hours a day with just a few weeks ago, and have nothing but fond memories of her, I wish now I'd said something.