Inevitably, when we were making this work is the ongoing challenge to make each other laugh at some time during the funeral. On one occasion, we removed the coffin of a former adviser to the back of the hearse and were carrying it in a small country church when one of my colleagues tested the rest of us to the limit. Tony "Shooter" Gunn was in front of me at the front end of the coffin and he thought it would be funny to give the casket a push in my direction that our heads were directly between the coffin and the narrow stone arch of the church door. His timing was perfect and my head impacted the stone with a certain gravity and left my head and my vision blurred sounds that we made our way down the aisle. In fact, I'm sure if I had dropped the coffin I'd staggered away in the pews like a drunkard. Fortunately, because we walked slowly, my head cleared up considerably before we have to put the coffin on the easel in front of the altar, but I still stumbled like we took three steps back from the coffin in a well established and choreographed movement. I looked up to see Tony and the other two guys in front, and bright red faces biting their lower lips, trying not to laugh as they stood head bowed and hands clasped in front of them. I could see the corner of his eye that the two guys to my right did the same thing. Tony I cursed under my breath.
During the first hymn, I noticed the vicar walking slowly towards me as he sang. He leaned forward a little when he got near and asked in a hoarse whisper behind his hymnal, "Do you know that you bleed my son?" I touched my face where it hurt my fingers and inspected. I was. I heard grunts of my friends as they struggled to contain their laughter, but fortunately the mourners, singing sadly, nothing heard above the sound of the church organ. With a slight nod and a nudge, I assured the vicar I was fine and he surreptitiously slipped me a cloth to clean the blood. When the service ended, we picked up the coffin and it was the cemetery for burial. Fortunately, the damaged side of my face was against the coffin to the output so that the mourners still could not see. We left the grave when the coffin was in the ground and made good our escape to the nearest pub where we could laugh without restraint before someone saw us. No one except the vicar never noticed anything.
On another occasion, we were bringing a former mayor died in the aisle of a church for his funeral service when one of our crew became quite the ventriloquist and began slowly but hit quickly to the side of the coffin and saying in a frantic but muffled voice as if inside the coffin, "audible Help! Help me! Let me out!" All six of us arrived at the altar with tears streaming down our faces as we fought to contain our laughter. As we wiped our tears a flash went off and I looked around to see a local press photographer down his camera and start scribbling furiously in his notebook. I imagined the headlines the next day: "Funeral of Fire Mock Mayor" or "Fire Find Funeral Funny Mayor" or similar We were sure that we would lose our jobs First thing the next day I bought one.. copy of the newspaper and frantically leafing through it in search of damning article. Then I found it. "Weep for Firemen Deceased Ex-mayor." Phew.