When I flick through the papers online I try to find the happy stories amongst all the doom and gloom that seems to make up 95% of the news these days. This often makes for speed reading because I ignore all the grim and depressing stuff, and fun stuff is a rare egg indeed. Bravo to all the neighbours in a street in Nottinghamshire, then, who have created a very long hedgehog run by making holes in all their fences so hedgehogs can generally frolic amok and socialise with each other freely and with gay abandon, which is something that is GOOD for hedgehogs.
Another story that caught my eye this morning, and triggered an interesting breakfast time conversation ‘twixt me and Lord Malarkey, was that Dame Mary Berry, baker and cook without compare, has chosen the hymns for her funeral. Quite right, too, I thought. I would be thoroughly vexed if ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ was chosen for MY funeral, for example. Very vexed indeed. So cliché.
‘I don’t want hymns at my funeral,’ said Lord Malarkey.
‘Really?’ said I. ‘What do you want, then?’
‘The theme tune to Doctor Who,’ said Himself. In hindsight, it was a stupid question on my part.
Andy went on to say that he thought no one would attend his funeral anyway, and I said don’t be ridiculous, you’d be very well attended. Unless you live to be 130, of course, in which case numbers might, indeed, be on the low side.
Andy said, ‘All I know is that you want to be wrapped in your favourite blanket and be planted with a tree on top.’ He is correct in this, but it did make me think that I need to specify which sort of tree. An oak, probably. Maybe a beech. Not any old tree. Not a bloody elder, that’s for sure.
‘And what about the music?’ said I because I KNOW I’ve told him about my planting-under-a-tree music and wanted to make sure he didn’t remember something random like The Wombles theme tune or ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ which would be very wrong.
The look he gave me suggested he had, indeed, forgotten my official fare thee well theme tune.
‘Toploader?’ I said. ‘Dancing in the Moonlight?’ And then I sang it too him because he was still looking confused.
Good grief, I thought. I’m going to have to spend some time writing down specific details. Otherwise I shall find myself dead on the other side and feel obliged to return through the ether and give him grief for cocking things up, when what I shall really want to do is have a bit of Rest and Relaxation time and a bit of spiritual reflection before deciding what I’m coming back as next, if I come back at all. I rather fancy to be someone’s Guardian Angel. That’d be a good career move.
‘And I want cake for people to have afterwards,’ said I. ‘Lots of tea and cake.’
‘What sort of cake?’ said Andy, sensing he could be heading into a funeral cake minefield.
‘I’ll think about it and write it ALL down,’ said I. Something else, then, to add to my to do list.
Basically, then, Andy doesn’t care about his send off, save for the Doctor Who theme tune. And I DO care about mine because I am very precise about these things. And you don’t realise these things until you stop and give them proper thought. Weird, eh?
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