Mal's Memories 9

DO YOU remember those old-style funerals when the hearse used to leave from the house?

This meant that the coffin - and deceased - were kept at home, usually in the front parlour, until the day of the funeral.

When I was a junior reporter on the old Barry Herald one of my jobs was to prepare obituary notices.

This involved picking up that week’s list of funerals from the local undertakers and then knocking on doors to obtain details of the deceased, usually from the widow or widower.

Until I started work I don’t think that I had ever seen a dead body. But that oversight was soon to be rectified.

If it was a widow that I was interviewing for the details of her late husband, invariably the encounter would end with her saying: “You must see him before you go.”

And into the front parlour we would troop to see him lying in state in the open coffin. I promise you that in the two years I worked in Barry I saw literally dozens of corpses.

Not that I minded. I was usually given tea and biscuits or a slice of cake, and occasionally something stronger. A consideration not be sniffed at on a junior reporter’s wages in those days.

It was noticeable that such invitations practically never came from surviving husbands.

I soon cottoned on to the fact that some of my peers did not relish the ritual of corpse viewing at all, so when we were dividing up the calls it was not too difficult to make sure that I had the majority of the widows, and their hospitality, on my list.