Passed A Way: Guidelines for my Funeral

If you are reading this, either I am dead or you are rifling through my stuff.

SHOO! Get out of it.

Now that has wheedled out the lookie-loos, let us move onto the business at hand. I am dead. Hopefully from passing away peacefully in my sleep after a wonderful day spent with loved ones. Or from falling off stage after attempting a pratfall too athletic for my advanced years. Either/or.

Anyway, I'm gone now, so at least one (1) person will be tasked with summarising my life in a way that makes it sound mildly interesting. I won't be around to hear it, of course (which is a shame because I do so love praise), but I can still provide some tips, so you can truly know 'this is what he would have wanted'. Besides from getting to be alive longer.

Anyway, here are my guidelines. Follow them if you don't want to be haunted.

If foul play in my demise is suspected, start by announcing 'someone in this room is a murderer'. Even if this turns out not to be true, saying the phrase will give you chills.

While I have long established that a love of Scooby Doo is part of my personal "brand", at no point during your tribute should you say 'ruh roh', 'jinkies', 'jeepers', or 'zoinks'.

Do not allude to my secret second family. Do conclude that the true treasure was the family we found on the way. Related: do not reveal where I stashed the actual treasure.

You are limited to one pun based on my surname. If multiple people are giving speeches, swap notes before the service to check you're not using the same one.

No podcast clips. Listening to one en masse is weird. Podcasts are for headphones, car journeys, or playing aloud at home as if it's radio.

If speeches are running long, please play people off like they do at the Oscars, albeit using 'Mahna Mahna', the song from The Muppets. Incidentally, puppets are not banned from the ceremony and are, in fact, encouraged.

No use of any pre-university nicknames. My grandma does not need to know why I was called Squeaky Bubble Butt.

Do not refer to the Swedish Motorway Incident.

Do refer to my luscious fringe.

And if someone reacted suspiciously to the line about murder, hire four teens and a dog to investigate.

Better put this amongst the post for my other flatmates - Home Owner and Whom It May Concern...

We received this in the post recently (I say 'recently' - it was actually about four months ago, but that's besides the point) and I cannot help but have questions.

First off, am I to disregard this postcard if my feelings for the Italian staple are anything short of love? What if I really really appreciate a good pizza, but only to the extent of liking it an awful lot? Does this mean I should chuck out this thinly-disguised ad, or perhaps seek out people who better fit the recipient description? Maybe it would be best if I left it on the side, and never ate, touched, or thought about another pizza again until these issues are resolved.

Man, all this pondering is really making me hungry. You know what I could really go for right now?

Pasta.

At best, I find them mildly amusing.

Up until today, I had no idea what I was doing for Jubilee weekend - that is, until, I recieved this in the post:

Animals not to scale (I hope).

Of course! How better to mark sixty years of the queen's reign than by taking in some farmers and falcolnry for three days of good old-fashioned country fun? It's certainly not a patch on what her maj will be doing, no siree. Yes, she can keep her star-studded concert, new massive yacht, and piles of presents, because we've got ferret racing.

Yes, one of the attractions, amongst tractor demonstrations, puppets shows, and something called gundog scurries, is ferret racing. Wow. Whoever said new technologies had dulled our minds certainly was wrong, eh?

Mind you, that's not the most worrying amusement at this supposedly superb family day out. One particular image in this extensive leaflet appears to have been put in at random as it does not seem to correspond to any of the fun-filled activities listed below. See if you can spot it.

I've never flown a hawk before. I've ridden a plane though.

I am, of course, referring to this:

'Yep, that's, er, definitely a rabbit.'

What exactly is going on here? Are the 'fur and feather marquees', instead of being tents made of animal coats, set up for this sort of display? Did this vet (I'm hoping he's a vet, rather than just some bloke in a lab coat) bring the bunny, or do people take their pets to him to be identified? Is he in fact a butcher considering how long to cook the furry thing? This photo raises all sorts of questions without ever hinting at an answer.

That's not the best picture though. The award for most baffling image must go to this:

I have never seen someone so captivated by an angling demonstration. He must be faking it. Maybe he was promised sweets if he can make fishing appeal to his peers. Either way, I'm convinced - I'm booking my advanced ticket straight away.

As for the best line, well, that goes to a little phrase that convinces me that the editor was ensuring each section hit a certain word count. After all, why on earth would you make such an outrageous sweeping statement as...

All I wanted was a bus of tea.

This morning, I was wolf up by bomb's nun.

Confused? Well, according to predictive text, you shouldn't be as, naturally, some of those are the words you'd most likely be trying to spell. I mean, you're far more likely to be discussing women of the cloth over, say, your mum, right? (By which I mean mentioning your mum with greater frequency than you do nuns. I'm not implying you chat about a mother/mother superior tryst.) Seriously, rarely a text conversation between my peers and myself goes by without at least half a dozen references to nuns and their dirty habits.

As for that bomb, well, it's no wonder we're constantly on high alert from terrorists. All I wanted to do was text my friend Anna, but no, according to my phone, what I obviously intended to write was 'bomb'. You know me so well, mobile. I'm constantly asking whether explosives would like to go shopping or have a picnic on the beach, aren't I? Oh yeah, I truly like to literally play with fire, me. I'm precisely that kind of guy.

Mind you, the phone's paranoia doesn't extend to modern hazards, oh no. It also includes threats from ravenous beasts as well. 'Wolf' precedes 'woke' in its vocabulary, thus suggesting that my mobile has judged the frequency of word usage entirely on the works of the Brothers Grimm. Honestly, the notion that I would ever need to text someone about a slobbering carnivorous mutt is preposterous. The very idea is - wait, is that howling? Ah, I might just message someone to say I need picking up...

"Shaking up"?

Damn you, predictive text, damn you.