Happy endings

Just a quick one today, because I only have 30 minutes to write this post and it usually takes a great deal longer. Never mind, off we go.

The knitting challenge is coming to its end and so is book production for the Missing Links! Woot. But first other news.

It’s been an eventful week. In every day life matters, one of the folks at my church died recently and his funeral was this week (Thursday). We had a choir. I say choir but as I may have mentioned before, the choir is three of us; two consummate musicians and I make up the numbers. We were asked by his widow if we would be able to do an anthem. It was a bit of Elgar but much more modern sounding that that would suggest. Pomp and circumstance this was not.

Anyway, with three days to learn it in, we did our best and rocked up at the organist’s house for a rehearsal on Wednesday. We decided, in the end, that we’d got it to a standard that was actually all right, so we sang it on the Thursday. I think I fluffed a bit up at one stage, coming in early, but luckily it was a) a quiet bit and b) I was singing extra quietly because I wasn’t sure if I’d counted an extra half beat that I needed to count. I hadn’t so I just waited for the others. Gulp. It went well and most importantly, his wife was extremely pleased as the piece had meant a lot to him. So huzzah! and also Phew!

One of the things I quite like about funerals, if they are of the celebrate the life kind, which this was, was how much you learn about the person who has died. I knew this gentleman restored and rode motorbikes but I didn’t realise that over his life time there were over 50. He was riding them well in to his late 80s, too. I was also amused to learn that he’d been larking about with a sink plunger as a younger man and as a bald fellow, had stuck it to his head, at which point he found he couldn’t remove it. When he finally did, he had an enormous red ring round his head. He was a parish priest at the time, so he had to celebrate mass like that the following day, with a bright red halo!

Other interesting trivia. When the coffin is brought into church at a funeral, it’s placed on trestles before the altar with the head end facing the congregation, as in standing before God. However, if it’s a priest they are placed the other way round, standing with God with feet towards the congregation instead. I’d seen it at my Uncle’s funeral but wasn’t sure if that was a tradition or just my family being arcane. Now I know it’s a tradition. So there’s a little bit of funeral trivia for you!

Knitting madness, see the sponsoring heroes!

Oh ho ho! Three, two one for my incredibly witty bastardisation of popular hymn-tastic poetry there, but I just wanted to give one final update on the knitting thing.

First of all, if you are one of the sponsoring heroes who donated, thank you! I can’t quite believe this but we’ve made £700, added to which I have £42 in cash donations. If you haven’t sponsored me yet, and you want to, there are two days left so now’s the time! I’m hoping I might get the last £8 to get the total raised to £750 because £700 is amazing, but £750 would be absolutely bloody marvellous.

Despite the fact the official challenge ends on 31st March, I’m probably going to carry on knitting every day through Holy Week because I said I’d do Lent and I’m anally retentive like that. The donations pages are open until 10th April I think, but yeh, the official, count up day was yesterday and I think it all comes to a halt on Tuesday. From the point of view of the fundraisers’ leader board, I am currently hanging on by my fingertips in third place overall, which is fabulous but not as good as the zenith of my achievements, which was second. There’s some woman miles out in front who’s raised about £200 more than everyone else. Seriously impressive!

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to hold second place, one of the other folks has overtaken me with a whopping £740. Only the electronic donations count, so I am unlikely to reclaim second place with the £42 cash and it’s touch and go if I can hang on to third as the others seem to be doing rather better at last minute donations.

On the other hand, I have pestered everyone and everything breathing known to me and to be honest, I’m not sure there’s anyone left who I haven’t asked! Mwahahahrgh! Overenthusiasm 101. But yeh, if you want to, and you haven’t, please feel free to bung some of your filthy lucre to Alzheimer’s Research. You can do that by following either of these lovely links here:

https://socialsync.app/fundraiser/cr-93oj85qyr3wn

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mary-mcguire-1771350600

Writing

The Missing Links is getting there, I am close to getting the innards formatted, at which point I’ll know how many pages there are and I can get the cover done. So with any luck, so long as the designer isn’t away next week or anything, I will have a proof copy ordered by Easter! Hoorah.

I am also, I think, going to produce a ritzy hardback version of this one, and, indeed the entire series, with the three short ones in one book, and the two novel length ones on their own. I thought I’d do it on a larger paper size because this will be cheaper and see if I can get some nice end papers? The bit inside anyway, done. Then I’ll stick that on kickstarter. Watch this space for news on that.

Right that’s it for this week, if you want to preorder the book, go here

Those links again:

Donate to the knitting challenge:

Just Giving Knitting donation page

or Facebook Knitting donation page

Preorder The Missing Links: