The best New
Year’s gift for a Self Employed man is a phone call about a job early in the
New Year and David was pleased to get a call on January 3rd from Emma Clay
Funeral Arranger at John Stuart Funeral Directors in Melksham, Wiltshire.
Melksham has proved to be a good location for Vintage Lorry Funerals. The
Leyland Beaver has previously worked in the town for Bewley & Merrett and 5
times for D.J. Bewley whose premises are on Bank Street, on the opposite side of the
road to John Stuart Funeral Directors.
The
opportunity arose because a Farmer’s Family had asked Emma Clay if she could
find a Farm Tractor to pull a trailer to carry their Dad’s coffin and some hay
bales, however, the Tractor which John Stuart had previously used for a
Farmer’s Funeral was deemed to be too modern. As the Family were looking at the
photograph of the ‘modern’ Tractor the Son of the Deceased happened to notice a
framed picture of the 1950 Leyland Beaver and said, ‘That wagon is of the right
age’, and it is the first time that David has been given a job solely because
of the lorry’s age of 69 years.
Emma phoned
David, explained that the Family would like hay bales to be carried on the
lorry, then she sent a copy of a picture of the Farm tractor pulling a trailer
with a coffin and hay bales. Emma said that the hay bales were important and
the Family could provide them if David couldn’t find any himself. The Family
didn’t want the modern round shaped bales but the old fashioned rectangular
bale shape which was initiated in 1936. The traditional way that Farmer’s funerals
are undertaken is for hay bales to be loaded onto the deck of the trailer,
single stacked, forming a C shape and thereby enveloping the front part of the
coffin, which in David’s opinion looked wrong. His idea was to stack the bales
in front of the coffin to create a display with significant height, which
everyone would see, and have the coffin distanced from the hay bales so that it
could also be clearly seen. David then designed a Hay Rig Theme using 5 bales
stacked in three levels, depicting hay bales being collected off the field and
taken to the farm.
For those of
you who have never worked on a farm then you should know that handling
rectangular hay bales is a nightmare because parts of the hay become untangled
from the bale and leave pieces of hay everywhere. David envisaged that if the
Family had provided the hay bales that there would be horrendous implications
for John Stuart Funeral Directors, carrying hay in their vehicles and for West
Wiltshire Crematorium, as the hay bales would have been deposited in the flower
area for someone else to collect.
The solution
was for David to supply the hay bales, fix them in place in his Garage at Bradford-on-Avon and keep them on the lorry during and
after the funeral. David also knew a man who could help him, Jim Pethers, one
of Vintage Lorry Funerals Support Team, who has a Landscape Gardening business
and he also has a small holding with cattle. Jim has been an amazing help to
David over the years providing a number of items, notably a Victorian Rail
Porter’s Sack Barrow, a 1950’s Milk Churn and a series of antique gardening
tools. Jim arrived on a Saturday afternoon with 4 hay bales and one bale of
straw and David showed Jim a sketch of how the Hay Rig Theme would look, with
vertical poles at the rear to stop the bales slipping backwards.
The key flower
tray which would support the hay bales has been used many times before. It
supported a Sack Truck in Highworth earlier in 2017/2018 and has been part of
some of David’s memorable Themes, including ‘A Dolls House’, ‘Del Boy falling
through the Bar’ and a ‘Tanker Refuelling a Plane’.
The vertical
poles had also previously been used during a Frome funeral, in a horizontal way
as part of a ‘Horse Jump Theme’ for someone who loved horses, but unfortunately
the crematorium was too far away for a Horse & Carriage to travel.
As the hay bales
were being stacked onto the support structure David’s wife became aware of all
the pieces of hay that were falling off the bales and she informed David that
he should allow extra time after the funeral so that she might hoover the deck
telling him, ‘that hay will get everywhere, we will still be finding strands of
it for months.’
So a plan was
in place for David to use the bales during the funeral and afterwards he would
take them back to the farm in Southwick, offload them and then help feed the
cattle.
Emma when
providing information on the coffin, made David aware that it was made of
plywood which would be strong enough and exposure to rain wouldn’t matter for
the short journey down the A350 road to West Wiltshire Crematorium at
Semington. However, the weather forecast didn’t look great for January 23rd
so David decided to use his see-through sheet which can keep a coffin dry no
matter how heavy the rain is.
It is David’s opinion that some Funeral Directors
may try to highlight a perceived wet weather weakness for Vintage Lorry
Funerals in an attempt to dissuade a family from using the lorry. The truth of
the matter is that David has carried the see-through sheet in a cover beneath
the deck of the lorry since he started undertaking funerals in 2002. It has
been rarely used, only twice previously for the funeral of a man in Nunney whose
Family wanted him sheeted like a load, despite there being no rain and a
Cardboard Coffin in Snodland for which the sheet was used solely to secure the
coffin on a sunny day. David normally finds that although it can rain whilst he
is loading the flowers, invariably the rain stops when the coffin is presented
to the side roller on the deck. The only issue Vintage Lorry Funerals has
regarding bad weather is that David Hall hasn’t marketed the use of his sheet
well enough to confirm that his lorry is one for all seasons.
So David and
his wife put the sheet in place in their garage the day before the funeral and
David slept well cognisant that he had in place the right facilities for a
plywood coffin. When David got up at 0600 hours there was torrential rain and
as he ate his breakfast he knew that he had made the right decision with the
sheet. However, as David was putting on his boots he noticed that the rain had
stopped and it never came back during the funeral.
The back
roads in Wiltshire were covered in water spilling off the fields, however, the
1950 Leyland Beaver was in place in the car park behind John Stuart Funeral
Directors for 0745 hours. Emma arrived at 0815 hours and gave David a Car Park
Permit. The coffin arrived from Devizes in a hearse and the team helped David
put the sheet in place once the coffin was loaded. Everyone was amazed how quickly
the sheet was secured and how it protected the coffin. One of the Bearers, who
had an old Fire Engine, was very interested in the quality of the paintwork on
the Leyland Beaver and he found it hard to believe that most of the paintwork
was untouched since 1996, with David’s wife providing regular protective coats
of polish.
This funeral
provided many good things:-
- The Farmer’s Family were delighted with everything David had done.
- The Short Horn Beasts were happy with their hay.
- West Wiltshire Crematorium staff members were pleased that no hay was left at the Semington site and quickly agreed to an article for ICCM, which goes to all crematoria sites, highlighting the steps that David took to help them.
- Atech Coachbuilders are likely to restore a Fire Engine
- Pictures from the funeral will appear in a number of magazines and hopefully take the awareness of Vintage Lorry Funerals to a new level with the use of the see-through sheet dispelling any wet weather concerns. A man once told David that you should never complain about the rain, just wear a better coat.
