My thoughts have turned of late, excuse the impending pun, to mortality. I have taken to reading the Hatch, Match and Dispatch section in the Times – the Facebook of the over forties – and any number of people are said to have ‘died peacefully in their sleep’. Now logically I accept that the majority of them were very elderly and/or very ill but there must be exceptions. We all retire to bed at night and for all we know that could be it. Food for thought readers.

Anyway this has prompted me to buy (Too cruel to keep you waiting until next week but being me I am of course tempted to turn this into a money-spinning competition) a grave! Actually I’ve bought two because my long experience tells me that given enough time it ALWAYS pays to have a spare of everything, with the possible exception of a life threatening illness. Today’s top tip.

Coming from a long line of very organised worriers my family did own a number of plots next to a beautiful Norman church in deepest Sussex but due to an unusually busy period during the late seventies these were all filled up bar one.

The midst of a bereavement is never the best time to commit details to memory and for reasons too complex to go into, when my mother died none of us could remember which of the plots were still vacant, so to speak. There were headstones marking the actual spot, headstones in remembrance of ashes scattered elsewhere and in one case two headstones for the same person on different plots. Faced with having to pop her in with someone she had never really liked, most of the above, we were forced to buy yet another one.

When I went to get my own finally resting place sorted Mrs Kindly from the Parish Council asked me who they were for. Obviously I had several preferred candidates but in the absence of a cast iron alibi I was reluctant to name names.
‘Put me down as having first refusal’ I replied. ‘You qualify for the residents rate’ she said and so I jolly well should. (I stopped myself from asking exactly how you could be non-resident in a grave. Just) You don’t get much more resident than a family who, according to the impeccable research done by my mother’s cousins wife, were there to greet that early illegal immigrant, William of Normandy when he landed not ten miles away. Was I not christened and confirmed in that very church, even sang in the choir and do my sisters not marry there, every time? Always in white.

So when the time comes to bid a teary farewell could somebody somewhere please make a note that I’m for 149? Thank you.

PS Job done so we popped into the local hostelry for a small sherry. My review of Salehurst Halt is available on Trip Advisor. They clearly failed to notice a senior restaurant reviewer was in their midst. Novice, novice mistake.