Remembering Chrissie

Yesterday was Chrissie Glazebrook's memorial - I can't bring myself to add the word "ceremony": I never met anyone less less ceremonious than Chrissie. Not a ceremony, then, and - sad, maybe, but not a gloomy affair. Chrissie being ill was sad, and as word came round during the autumn of last year about how very ill Chrissie now was, yes, that was gloomy. Chrissie dying was sad, for someone so alive and funny to die, and all those stories still to write. But the Friends' Meeting House was full of colour (the organisers, in particular, making a point of wearing their brightest finery, dresses and scarves and jewellery, and the low winter sun turning up for the occasion too) and loud with laughter as speaker after speaker told their Chrissie stories - and speaker after speaker said "Well, I can't quote what Chrissie said then..."

Afterwards we adjourned to the pub next door, for more of the same. Though "the same" doesn't begin to cover the unlikeliness of finding myself duetting with - er, "a central figure in the contemporary poetry world", it says here on Bernard Cribbins' Hole in the Ground.

Good party - thank you, Chrissie.