Bill Hallsden had asked for respect and consideration for his family on this day, but, in view of what had happened in London, the story was just too good. Romsey was hit once again by a minor media fest.
Donna’s friends, Jenny and Ali, sat towards the back of the church. They were given no say in what music was played. They hadn’t asked for it. The little service ended with the hymn Morning Has Broken, after which Donna was buried in the church cemetery, about fifty yards from the grave of her boy friend Rick Niemen. The Niemen family didn’t attend the funeral.
THE END
Also by Ray Connolly
Novels
A Girl Who Came To Stay
That’ll Be The Day
Stardust
Trick Or Treat?
Newsdeath
A Sunday Kind Of Woman
The Sun Place
Sunday Morning
Shadows On A Wall
Love Out Of Season
Let Nothing You Dismay (anthology of short stories)
Other Books
John Lennon 1940-1980
Stardust Memories (anthology of own journalism)
In The Sixties (anthology of Sixties journalism)
The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive (anthology of Beatles journalism)
Screenplays for Film and Television
That’ll Be The Day
Honky Tonk Heroes (TV series)
Forever Young
Lytton’s Diary (TV series)
Defrosting The Fridge
Perfect Scoundrels (TV series)
Documentaries
James Dean: The First American Teenager
The Rhythm Of Life (co-writer TV series)
Radio Plays
An Easy Game To Play
Lost Fortnight
Tim Merryman’s Days Of Clover (series)
Unimaginable
God Bless Our Love
About the Author
Ray Connolly has written widely on popular music and popular culture. The award winning screenwriter of the movie Stardust, he also wrote the film That’ll Be The Day, the television series Lytton’s Diary and Perfect Scoundrels, and wrote and directed the documentary James Dean: the First American Teenager.
A biographer of John Lennon, he is also the author of ten novels. His most recent, Love Out Of Season (“…funny, charming and compassionate, successfully transposes the conventions of Shakespearian comedy to the 21st Century” - Mail On Sunday) was adapted for BBC Radio, while Shadows On A Wall, a novel about an out of control film production on location with a ballooning budget, was described in the Sunday Express as “probably the best novel on movie-making ever written”.
As a journalist he has written for the London Evening Standard, The Times, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and the Daily Mail. He is married and lives in London.