Battle of the chairs at the funeral

Thuli Jankey | Wednesday August 13, 2025 08:44

This funeral just happened to be at a small village on the peripheries of the city where people behave and act like city-dwellers. At any funeral, the fiercest battles are fought not with words... but with chairs. There was a VIP seating and ordinary seating. VIP seating is mainly for the more important mourners who are there to cry and shake hands with the speakers after eulogising the deceased. At this funeral they had decided that VIP seating mourners are the only ones that would get thirsty and on their velvety seats there was a bottle of mineral water. In this little village no one from ordinary seating is allowed to get thirsty. I got ordinary seating. The reason I was ushered here was mainly because I was bunched with the ‘He Knew My Cousin's Friend's Barber’ pseudo-mourners.

Basically this is the lot that doesn’t even know whether the deceased is a toddler, an old man or a teenager. This cohort forms a large section of the mourners – around 50% - at any funeral. We were with the distant cousins who had not seen the deceased in a decade or so.

My role was to watch the VIP section to see if they're crying, so I know when I am supposed to start looking sad. I was basically the audience for the grief, not necessarily the participant.

Ordinary seating is a test of endurance. You sit, you sweat, and you pray the chair doesn’t collapse mid-hymn. And then it happened. A plastic chair gave up. It folded like a cheap tent bringing down with it one of the cousins.

There were some disapproving glances from the VIP seating especially with those ‘you gotta lose weight’ stares.

The nice thing about ordinary seating is one has the freedom to zone out during the 15th-consecutive ‘He was a good man’ speech, the ability to leave without anyone noticing and the unspoken camaraderie with your fellow back-row dwellers who are all thinking, ‘How much longer do we have to pretend to be sad?’

While there was a battle between VIP and ordinary seating, there was yet another battle of plastic chairs on the ordinary seating section – basically a battle within a battle. While we thought the chairs we were seating on were ordinary plastic chairs they were on a shift much bigger than bum support.

They were there to fight on the corner of two councillor wannabes who lost in the previous elections. They had the names of the councillors inscribed on their backs. They were waging a silent war for the owner by acting like billboards.

I don’t know if these two are contesting in the next election, but they should, and I for one intend to make every effort, as a pseudo journalist, to start that rumor.

Anyway, getting back from the graveyard I decided to just head over to the VIP buffet and try to gain entrance via charm.

You know get more scrumptious food and less competition. Unfortunately, the buffet was closed to the mourners from ordinary seating and the door was guarded by a group of those seriously charm-resistant ladies who can spot a member from ordinary seating from 50 metres using only instinct and nothing else. So, I didn't get in.

That meant I had to go hustle with the ordinaries and the queue was moving slower than a tortoise on a treadmill. (For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com) *Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@gmail.com.