The news media today was always bound to be dominated by the live transmission of the Pope's funeral in Rome starting at about 8.30 in the morning. Around 250,000 people gathered to pay their final respects to Pope Francis. This includes mourners who visited St Peter's Basilica over the last three days to view the pontiff's body and those attending the funeral service in St. Peter's Square. Additionally, up to one million people are estimated to have lined the streets to see the procession from the Vatican to the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Some 4,000 police had been detailed for the funeral which was to be attended by hundreds of world leaders. The protocols for the seating arrangements of such world leaders is interesting. The Heads of State are seated in alphabetical order of the their nations according to how their country is called in French. This puts the president of the USA ('Etats Unis' in French) sitting between the heads of Estonia and Ethiopia and one imagines that Donald Trump would have precious little to say to either of them. Pope Francis is to be buried in a simple coffin with just the words 'Franciscus' (Francis in Latin) and there will be a six mile peregrination across the streets of Rome to reach the Basilica in which he expressed a desire to be buried. It looks as though crowds of Italians and other nationalities will line the route and clap loudly as the coffin passes them. One thing that has been noted on this occasion is that in comparison with the death of Pope Benedict some years ago, non-Catholics have been swept up in the emotion of the occasion and even if in Rome on an accidental holiday, are delighted to be able to participate in the funeral rites. When world leaders gather for occasions such as this, there is also the possibility for 'brush by' diplomacy and we learn that the Ukrainian leader and Trump have had a meeting. How much practical diplomacy is possible is unclear but at least it looks as though the two leaders are talking productively to each other. What we appear to have had with the Ukrainian peace plan so far is the USA has almost 'de facto' endorsed Putin's wish list and there is no sign that any pressure is being put upon Russia to get them to stop the daily bombardment and to institute a ceasefire.
After breakfast had been completed, it was time to push Meg down the hill in her new conveyance i.e. the superior specified wheelchair delivered to us last Wednesday. I am delighted by the safety and comfort which the new wheelchair affords to Meg because she now a sculpted seat, better back and leg support and a headrest. The principal enhanced feature, though, that now the relevant framework can be tilted backwards and this eliminates the danger of Meg tilting forward and slipping out of the chair. This chair, the result of superior German engineering, seems to me the BMW of the Mercedes of wheelchairs but the increased size and particularly weight do make it somewhat more tiring to push up the long hill on the way home. The chair is nicely balanced and copes well with dropped kerbs when I need to navigate them. In our journey down to town, we popped into Waitrose to pick a newspaper and some supplies that only Waitrose sells and we then went forward to see our three friends in Wetherspoons. I also bumped into 'Seasoned World Traveller' from our park visiting days and we exchanged some pleasant greetings before having pour usual drink and breakfast muffin of bacon and fried egg. After our coffee break, I popped Meg into Poundland where I wanted to see if I could purchase any more of the very useful plastic storage containers I have bought before. Needless to say, the particular item I wanted was no longer stocked but I did buy some more storage containers of an interesting design which I knew would fit the intended purpose. Then, on the way home we called by a new estate agents that was opening in town and they were having an ooening day event involving various 'freebies' that were on offer. We accepted the offer of a large bar of chocolate which was being offered free to passers-by in exchange for taking some of their promotional literature. When we got home, though, I was pretty tired from pushing Meg up the hill and promptly fell asleep for three quarters of an hour. Although most of funeral service live transmission seemed to be over, Sky News seemed to have most of it an a repeating loop throughout the day so I heard much of the singing even if I did not watch much of the action. In the late afternoon, my son called me via a video-link so we had an interesting little chat about the things that we both had been doing. I am pleased that even after his retirement, he is still popping around every other day or so to keep an eye on myself and Meg and I expressed my gratitude to him once again for the fact that our daughter-in-law had called around and some so much work tidying up the shrubbery in the front of the house yesterday.
In the afternoon, I filled one of those supermarket fruit and vegetable trays with all of the clutter from the last foot of one shelf. One little find was a cordless mouse which is always useful as spare and which I had forgotten about. Some of the saved items in the clutter will have outlived their utility but other bits and pieces will need to be retained and therefore rehoused in a sensible way. I have had a stroke of good fortune in that several months ago I purchased a set of bamboo socks which came in a beautiful and well made presentation case. I have deployed two of these to house old notebooks which contain some information I really wish to retain and so this has neatened the relevant shelf considerably. There are also some plastic containers with very useful handles of which I purchased several to house my classical CD selection and some of these I might press into use as and when required.
© Mike Hart [2025]