Cardboard coffin and talk of boffins

RIP Joan Lydia Harvey, buried yesterday in a cardboard coffin in a woodland burial site in Scotland. Paying tribute to her were an assortment of family members and past friends and lovers, reminding us of her extraordinary life during which she knew (amongst many others) the likes of Francis Crick and Fred Hoyle. Not only did she know them but they regularly visited her humanist 'bunfights' in the caravan in which she lived with my mother and my mum's two siblings in Cambridgeshire. Joan also rode a motorbike well into her sixties, travelled far and wide, often alone, in her 'Ambly' (a converted 1950s ambulance), attended the very first anti-nuclear demonstrations in the 50s, brought up three children practically by herself and with a great deal of imagination financially, and influenced a great number of people on the issues of cooperative living, humanism, pacifism and anarchism. As I've implied before, her and I had a difficult relationship, but everyone, myself included, respected and admired her resolution and determination to stick with her principles. She did not suffer fools gladly - nor people with whom she saw no point in befriending - but she was perhaps the most honest person I'll ever have known. Bon voyage, Joan.