The key, the essence, the kernel of attending an immensely dignified memorial service is to pack in a good solid breakfast beforehand.
It settles the stomach and calms the mind and assures the constitution that though the person you are commemorating has already made the Great Journey, you are not ready to join him, not yet, at least. Otherwise, you can pay a terrible price.
The commemorated person concerned was Bala Bredin, the last surviving senior officer of the 38th (Irish) Brigade which had fought with such extraordinary valour in the Italian campaign of 1944-45. He is usually described as "Irish", though necessarily, in a somewhat attenuated form. His Irishness was of the old imperial species, in which Irish ancestry and an undying loyalty to Irish regiments in the British army could outweigh his birth in India and an almost complete ignorance of the country whose identity he so enthusiastically embraced. His Ireland was largely a creation of his imagination, populated by sturdy, cheerful, brave and humorous soldiers: had he ever been to a cattle mart in Limerick on a wet day in November, he might have had different opinions.
No matter. It is sufficient that he called himself Irish, and the Irishmen who followed him into action were content with his definition. Part of his understanding of Irishness was in the raw valour which he showed repeatedly, both before, during and after the second World War. When incapacitated by wounds at the battle of Monte Cassino, he had himself tied to the bonnet of his jeep, from which he led his men forward into action. And indeed, it was as much to commemorate those men who perished on the stony wastes of the Appenines in the long arduous advance up Italy's spine, or who have silently faded away in their civilian beds, that I attended the memorial service for Bala Bredin in St Anne's cathedral in Belfast.
The eulogy was by Sir Roger Wheeler, the old general's godson, and himself a retired general and former commander of the Royal Irish Rangers. He is one of those ex-soldiers who never loses his military bearing: his eye is keen and penetrating, his back ramrod straight in a lean, athletic frame. He strode to the podium, cast his eagle eye around the congregation, and opened his mouth to speak.
And in that momentary silence, someone rolled a bowling ball down a corrugated iron roof. Or at least that was what it sounded like. It was in fact my stomach. I had not breakfasted before heading north, and had then wallowed in a handsome lunch, with wine: and my alimentary canal was registering the only protest available to it. You could have heard the duodenal din in Ardoyne.
Sir Roger is cut from game cloth. He ignored the heckling belly, and proceeded onto Bala's Irish ancestry, with roots in Sligo, and I think, Roscommon. I can be forgiven for any uncertainty because just as Sir Roger paused again, somewhere nor' nor' east of my oesophagus, a geyser cleared its throat and then uttered a long low gurgle of satisfaction, which echoed through the cathedral with the resonance of a shepherd calling his sheep in the Tyrol.
There is only one thing one can do in the circumstances, and that is to stare around in innocent bafflement, like a cardinal who has just broken wind at the very moment of the pope's coronation. Very possibly I got away with it, for my stomach then went quiet. Sir Roger paused - somewhere I think between Monte Cassino and the Po valley - for a long and dramatic silence, or rather as it should have been. But instead, from somewhere mid-abdomen, erupted a perfect facsimile of bath-time at a boarding school with Victorian plumbing, as plugs are pulled out of a dozen baths simultaneously. Numerous down-pipes vie for possession of the main waste-pipe, with thwarted bathwater gurgling, sluicing and chuckling its way backwards and forwards. Finally the surging water hits an airlock, and hiccups violently, before bubbling its way back into the baths, yodelling as it goes.
Well, if you thought that one man could not impersonate the sonar turmoil of an entire plumbing system, built circa 1865, going into in crisis, then in all modesty, I am here to tell you that it can be done. Indeed, it has been done, and I am the fine fellow that did it.
As the rumble of hydraulics going into thrombosis slowly abated, Sir Roger composed himself, drew breath and opened his mouth. At which point, my jejunum opened the valve to the ileum due south of it, and noisily propelled my lunch into a sloshing pool of digestive juices. It sounded like a cauldron of porridge coming to the boil. Against this uproar, Sir Roger nonetheless fought gallantly on, taking Bala up the Italian peninsula. Then, some three days short of VE-Day, and perhaps in anticipation of it, a sort of Hallelujah Chorus erupted in the vicinity of my umbilicus, complete with sackbuts, viols, cornets and other early instruments. To my ear, one of the boy sopranos was a little off-key, but there we are, no-one's perfect.
And so the memorial service proceeded, next, very possibly, to the sound of The Water Music, but without any assistance from the choir of St Anne's. I have no way of knowing, for my poor tormented mind has mercifully removed all memory of the rest of the proceedings from my brain. However, if you have need of a ventriloquist with a virtually limitless - though utterly uncontrollable - repertoire, you now know where to go.