Yes it’s true, this year is looking a lot like a movie. I have 3 weddings and a funeral, one more wedding and I will make a movie and call it 4 weddings and…What??? You say there is already one!
Oh well…
I am sitting in a house in Doubleview while this couple (an adult couple both with kids from other marriages) are filling out their Prepare survey. It is cool, I moved to the lounge where there was a laptop on the floor, connected to the internet and away I went!
Yesterdays funeral was for Keith, a guy from Joondalup who lost his battle with Leukaemia Sunday week ago. Keith and his wife Elaine had 3 kids together. Keith was a carpenter, has lived and worked local for many years. He built his house in Joondalup almost from the ground up with second hand stuff that he collected from old homes being demolished all over the place, particularly in the country. About the only thing that was new and that he did not do was the roof that Paul Turner put on. The house is stunning, the kitchen (only just finished) is made from old recycled cedar wood. The whole house, although not realy finished has a fantastic feel to it. The whole ceiling is done from pressed tin Keith picked up in Bullsbrook I think.
He heard about a swimming pool being pretty much given away to anyone willing to dig it our by hand. So he and some family and friends did just that! It took a while (not as long as cleaning off 11 000 bricks to build the home!) and finally the pool was ready to load onto a truck and move to the bottom of their block until they had dug yet another hole to put it in. I don’t know how many years it sat down on the bottom of their block. Many times I would drive past down the end of Joondalup drive there and see this big pool sitting on the ground, and wonder what it was there for. They finally dug a hole and stuck in the pool up the top of their block in front of their main living and kitchen area.
It will be sold one day in the near future, before it does we will pull a big team together to help the family finish the house off, paint, gardens etc. Keith was a mad keen collector of fine wood, just in case one day he needed to build something…I think I am a bit like that too – guess who he gave all his wood to? Yes you guessed it! He wanted me to have all this wood, like a massive shed full…not sure Christine is so keen, I think some may fit under our bed, some in the lounge…no seriously I may need to store it in someone’s big shed!
I have not really done too many funerals before, helped out in a few, but seriously what a privilage to be with the family through all that.
Now back to the wedding. These guys behind me are not meant to be talking to each other as they do this questionaire, but they are talking and joking as they go, I keep ‘telling them off’. It feels odd as they are older than me, I feel like teacher!
I never feel comfortable charging for these marriage things and all the premarriage stuff I do, I guess part of it is that I used to work for the church in which this stuff is a service to the community on behalf of the church, and I think it should be so. In fact the day the church starts charging for some of these ‘weddings and funerals’ … (I didn’t charge for the funeral, I saw it as a community service, and they were friends) these guys tonight are not part of my community, I don’t know them really at all. Do churches charge for these things, does anyone know? I have a price and always reduce it because I feel guilty when I get to the initial meeting. I can hear myself saying “oh I will give this to you for free, this one I will chop in half”. But these guys tonight saw my bottom line and went, “oh that’s great, can we pay now?”
That’s my bottom line!! Not my bottom…
No Guarantees 