Funerals can be a tricky business. For the laity, as someone once told me, it is like organising a wedding, but you only have one week to do it in; for the clergy too, there can be pitfalls. Though most funerals pass off without untoward incident, one does hear of strange tales from time to time. Once, in a certain town in East Anglia, a priest had to preside at a burial: on one side of the grave was the wife and family; on the opposite side was the “other” (or “real” as she put it) wife and her family; between the two were a line of policemen.