C'est Fini

A couple of months ago I mentioned my rashly self-imposed task of copying names into our new Memorial Book and how scary it was. It's now done, possibly the only job I have managed really to complete over the course of the allegedly quiet Summer season. My writing would make a proper calligrapher weep, but I was comforted to discover that the earlier book's lettering was far from consistent itself, and contained a couple of blotches and examples of rubbing-out. And that was all paid for. 

My most horrifying moment came early in the process as I was marking out the dates. I had a copy of the book's specification from the binder, which stated it contained '365 pages'. Halfway through marking out January, I began to question what this meant, and discovered that there were actually 365 leaves, giving each date two sides of paper. At times like that you discover what the phrase about your blood running cold means. Attempting to erase all those dates could be disastrous. In the end I decided to cut out small bits of paper from the old book and cover the erroneous dates: it looks bearable. At least the mistake only concerns the first bit of January.

As well as copying in the old names, I've at last been able to add a couple whose relatives have been waiting for two years for them to be written in, plus Sister Mary, our former Sacristan, and the parents of Rick our Verger, as some recompense for his faithful (and equally importantly, unpaid) service. Tomorrow I can take the book down to church.

The Julian Henderson whose name you can see in the photograph is entirely unknown to me. Coincidentally Julian Henderson was also the name of our former Archdeacon, who is now Bishop of Blackburn and arguably the episcopal bench's leading proponent of depressingly jejune conservativism (and also here). If he's actually been dead since March 2006 it would put a different interpretation on some of the encounters we had.