One funeral and a burnt-out wedding

The organist played "The Old Rugged Cross" as we entered the South Chapel, because Uncle Fred had liked that tune. As an adult, I never really knew him. He looms large in childhood memories, a big man with a bristle moustache who smiled a lot and made you feel safe and happy. My brother, sister and I always felt protected when Uncle Fred was around. He and Auntie Judy lived with us for a while after they got married.

Reverend Twitty reminded us that Fred had weighed 16 stone and built his own boat, and sailed it with Judy and their son, Trygve. They even sailed to France. Fred was 78, nearly 15 years older than Judy. Before he died he told her he'd had a good run, a happy life.

A decade ago we had said farewell to my grandfather, Jack Sharkey, in the same room. Just as then, the ceremony ended with a pink velvet curtain obscuring the casket, like a game show in reverse. Auntie Judy and my cousin Trygve were hunched over in the pew, crying. Between Trygve and his wife Jackie sat their 10-year-old, Christopher. Jade, 3, was elsewhere.

Outside I looked at my heavy black shoes, my black suit, white shirt, black tie. Over the years, without even thinking about it, everyone acquires a funeral uniform. All you have to do is live long enough. I decided against the Reservoir Dogs reference and put the sunglasses back in my pocket.

Back at Trygve's we had a cold buffet and drinks. My brother Stuart could not make it. Too busy, he said. My grandmother was there and Sharon and Bubbles, my mum's other sisters, with Uncle Chris and Uncle Roy. Everybody said how Phoebe, my daughter, looked just like Christopher. Could be brother and sister, they said.

Royston is married to Jackie's sister, Maria. More than 20 years ago, he and I would scramble over the barbed-wired gate at South Tottenham station and run up the High Street to White Hart Lane. Those were the days, we agreed. "You'd get 55,000 at Spurs for Man United or Liverpool, and a fight could break out anywhere in the ground." That sort of thing. "Jennings, Kinnear, Knowles..." Like a pair of old men.

Royston told me about people I last saw 20 years ago. How Carol had had a kid who died from cancer. How Jimmy's wife left him and went back to Scotland. How Lorna and Sue, grammar school girls, were now working with him, Royston, cutting the tops off wellington boots at Bata.

I caught myself feeling slightly buoyed as Royston got sozzled. He was very proud of his two-year-old Jason - or Jurgen as he had taken to calling him.

Cousin Luke and I kicked a ball in the garden, but his elder brother Shane was absent. Luke had come down the other morning and found all Shane's stuff in the kitchen, ready to move out. "I just let him get on with it," said Uncle Chris, taking ash off his roll-up with the tip of his ring finger.

The men were fading. Not just the dead, like Fred and Frank and Jack, but the younger generation, like Stuart and Shane. They were falling away too soon, failing to show up for these morbid rituals, these matters of life and death. My family disintegrating. I felt helpless.

My mum looked chic but painfully thin in a block knee-length silk vest, long black skirt and ankle boots. She drank gin and bitter lemon, and soon became theatrical. Loves an audience, does Molly. Runs in the family.

In the front room, the sisters told how she was once engaged to marry a man called Jim, a BA air steward. She worked hard and saved every penny. Then one day her stepbrother, Cavan, who had been adopted, went into her room. Perhaps he was smoking a cigarette, they said. Whatever, her bridal gown and the dresses she had bought for the bridesmaids went up in flames. The wedding was postponed. Before it could be rearranged, she met my father, an alcoholic sailor, in a pub called The Ship.

My mother's mood soured as the evening drew on, and my stepfather had tears in his eyes. This upset my sister Jeanneane, who started crying, too. The cab arrived for me and Jeanneane and Phoebe. I promised to try and come down more often, yes, and bring Phoebe, of course.

"I wish they'd stop drinking and smoke a joint now and again," said Jeanneane as we pulled away. "They really need to loosen up a bit." I gave her a copy of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and said I was sorry for missing her birthday.