Woman has been crashing funerals for 14 years just to get a free lunch

Nobody likes a funeral, really, do they? Unless maybe they’re standing under a tree 50m away wearing a black raincoat and a hat and it’s of the gangster that killed your whole family, after you tracked him down and fought him to the death. In that case, the closure is rather comforting. Apart from that though, funerals are horrible.

If there’s a saving grace, it’s that there’s free food, normally in the form of a buffet, but if I’m being honest, I’d rather pay for my lunch and not have to go to a funeral. But that’s just me, for I am not a Catholic woman who lives in Slough, and I have not been going to almost every single funeral at the same church for 14 years.

I have not been heading to the funerals of people that I do not know, and then eating all the free food at the wake. 

Father Noah Connolly, of the Holy Redeemer Church in Slough, Berkshire, said:

“Every funeral we have she comes and if there is a reception afterwards she makes her way to it without invitation.

“She is a Catholic woman and she is convinced she needs to go to as many masses as possible. She has been coming and going since I have been here for the past 14 years.

“[But] I can’t exactly say you can’t come here.”

I mean, you can, I think. If you turn up to a funeral for someone who you have never met, I’d say you should likely expect to be turned away, particularly from the buffet table.

One funeral attendee, Margaret Whitehead described an encounter with the crumb-fingered guest at her daughter Catherine’s funeral:

“There were a lot of people at the funeral from Catherine’s work so I just assumed she was a colleague.

“When I spoke to her though she told me she used to work with Catherine as a waitress. My daughter never worked as a waitress.

“She was eating from the buffet like there was no tomorrow.

“There’s mass every morning, she doesn’t need to go to funerals. She’s only going when there’s a cheap lunch.

“She intrudes on people when they are upset and sad.”

Yeah, not best practice this, if I think about it, but in a morbid sort of roundabout way, props to her for trying. It seems nothing is off limits in the pursuit of a Scotch egg and some mini pork pies in today’s buffet-heavy climate.

(Image: iStock)