WE return this week to my favourite topic, the uplifting but sobering subject of … [drumroll] … death. Boom-cha!

I don’t think there’s ever a day when my thoughts don’t turn to my demise. Sometimes, people will catch me in a dwam, my eyes glazed and my mind where it ever yearns to be: far away. They say: “Are you thinking about something nice?”

And in a grim, mordant voice I say: “Yes, death.” I am joking, of course. Usually, I pretend to them that I was thinking of Hibs’ midfield problems or peculiar sexual positions of the Orient, something wholesome and decent that they will find perfectly understandable.

If you tell people you were thinking of death, they tend to leap back like Basil Fawlty encountering hotel inspectors, particularly if you are at a wedding or a comedy evening, something where you’re supposed to enjoy yourself – yawn.

A part of me hopes that the Grim Reaper will come for me with his cordless strimmer when I’m out in the garden overdoing things or trying to lift stuff way too heavy for one man. A natural death in nature.

The big worry about such a scenario is that something big with wings might come and peck my eyes out as I lie there even more insentient than usual. That’s why I always wear safety-glasses and a crash-helmet when cutting the grass. Urban friends sometimes taunt me that, living in the sticks, I will be found one morning with my face eaten off, and I cannot pretend that I am comfortable at the thought.

Just as I don't want to be cremated as I think it might still sting a little, I wouldn’t like to think of a raven swaggering aboot with one of my eyes in its gub like a bairn with a joob-joob.

But this discussion is becoming impossibly morbid and probably a bit uncomfortable for anyone trying to enjoy a gooseberry for breakfast. Let us consider instead the joys of death, one of which is the funeral service, a last chance to irritate your friends with your choice of music, usually meaningful and emotional or, worse still, uplifting and positive.

According to a report about death from the inappropriately named insurance firm Sunlife, traditional hymns are becoming less popular at funerals, replaced instead by worthy tunes ululated by the likes of Bette Midler, Robbie Williams and Frank Sinatra.

As I dislike large social gatherings of Earthlings, I won’t be having a funeral service, though I might consider having a scrappy flier flutter wanly on a damp community hall noticeboard informing the lieges that that’s me away.

If forced to have a funeral service – made to do stuff even when I’m deid – then for music I’d choose Spike Millgan’s “Q5 Piano Tune”, with its gibbering voices, plodding trombone and tinky-tonky notes punctuated periodically by the flat tone of a buzzer.

Why does there have to be music anyway? Such a lot of nonsense. Might it not be better to show a movie, something to take mourners out of themselves, just as you the deceased have done in a more literal sense?

I’m sure mourners would enjoy my choice of Fanny and Alexander, five hours and twelve minutes of classic Scandinavian entertainment which, serendipitously I think, mimics life by starting off cheerful and ending up positively lugubrious.

I hope I have given you food for thought this Sunday morning, taking your mind off the problems in the Hibs midfield and peculiar sexual positions of the Orient, subjects which can lead a fellow to become a little melancholy.

A tailgater's tale

NEWS that motorists deplore tailgating more than any other problem on the roads is hardly surprising.

Research by Glasgow personal injury lawyers Dallas McMillan found that 85 per cent of drivers questioned found the practice annoying, leaving the usual survey question unanswered: who are the 15 per cent who don’t find it irritating? Are they sentient? Are they saints?

On an average five-hour trip, in my experience, you can count on an average of three tailgaters. The ones I really dislike are those who drive up your bumper when you’re at the back of a long convoy. What do they expect you to do? What’s the point of tailgating in such (or any) circumstances, other than being a prat?

Others to deplore are those who tailgate you for miles then, when there’s a long track of overtaking potential ahead, they slacken off and fall back because they’re too chicken to overtake, even when you slow down for them.

Wouldn’t it be an idea to have distance-measuring cameras on the backs of cars to capture the number plates of offenders? Alas, I fear the police couldn’t cope with the resultant avalanche of evidence, particularly when they’ve so many tweets to monitor for inappropriate language.

Not my type

ONE of the many disappointing aspects of modern life is that everyone can type now. In gender-demarcated days gone by, being a male typist was a matter of perverse pride.

It was special and unusual. It marked you out as a bona fide journalist, with 40 per cent of the required professional skills (another 40 per cent being shorthand, plus 15 per cent for a brash personality, and 5 per cent for writing ability).

Typing and shorthand would normally be secretarial skills, that too being a noble profession, but nothing compared to journalism as a trade universally respected and admired. At least nothing has changed in that respect.

A study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich found that some people, suspected to be teenagers, can type 85 words a minute on their portable telephones. I ended up able to touch-type on a keyboard but, on a mobile, typing 85 words would take me till January.

I don’t have sausage or even manly digits, but the dexterity needed for the teeny wee buttons of a mobile phone eludes me. In all honesty, I can’t pretend to have a brash or outgoing personality either. I’m beginning to feel such a failure.