I had to go to a funeral today. It wasn’t mine.

I tend to categorise funerals these days – this was a Category C Funeral.

Category A would be your parents, step-parents, your partner, your siblings or (God forbid) your offspring.

Category B would be your grandparents, your best friend, your ex-partner and, maybe, the bloke from down the pub that, in a moment of weakness, you lent £50 just before he went out and got knocked off his bike on his way home from the pub.

Category C would be that neighbour that you chat to twice a year, once when it starts to snow and once when you’ve managed two consecutive days of constant sunshine. Work colleagues and members of the same club would fall into this category.

Today was definitely a Category C affair where the deal is to turn up early enough to be near the front of the congregation so that the chief mourner will see you, shake their hand solemnly after the service and to have a ready-to-use excuse as t why you can’t go on to the wake afterwards – unless, of course, you particularly like stale tuna sandwiches and weak cordial with a bunch of complete strangers who will have been more affected by the ceremony than you were.

That said, whatever the category, unless you have had some kind of emotional bypass, every funeral will touch you at some point. Today, for example, I felt critical about the eulogy delivered by a full-frocked vicar who happened to be a cousin of the deceased. He knew everything about this person up to the age of eight but diddly squat about everything else: the marriage of 45 years; the children from this happy marriage (one of each); her stellar career in the NHS which had brought out a large number of healthcare professionals and grateful patients to pay their respects. For them, this would have been at least a Category B funeral.

Obviously none of my cousins had ever been pious enough to qualify for Holy orders so this would not be a specific problem for me but how would I ensure that my own funeral stayed ‘on message’? And what features would personalise my ceremony to mark it out as clearly a ‘Dave Funeral’?

Well, my favourite film is, probably, The Blues Brothers, so I could request that all attend in the signature black trilby and dark glasses. Mind you, to the casual onlooker this might simply present as particularly sad congregation concerned about avoiding head colds.

I’ve never been especially keen on The Rocky Horror Show, but I have seen the fans queuing up outside our local theatre in their exotic finery. If I themed my funeral on this it would certainly sort out the men from, well, the men from the men! It would definitely guarantee that those who see me anywhere below a Category A would find a reason, any reason, to be elesewhere on that day.

And I know that many would consider a Claret and Blue theme to be suitable but I disagree. I recall, prior to my Dad’s funeral, Mum insisting that there should not be an over-riding West Ham motif. We all accepted that Dad was so much more than simply a Hammers fan – mind you, I still managed to wear my understated West Ham tie when I delivered my eulogy (the toughest speech I have ever had to deliver, and, still, an event that gives me strength to meet the challenges I have had to face since.)

I’ve always thought that I really need TWO funerals. Not out of any kind of conceit, it’s just that my kids are such poor timekeepers that if I went straight for cremation they would miss the big finish. The solution is a burial followed later by the cremation – thus they would get two shots at being there.

And of course, anyone who knows me well knows of my morbid fear of fire so why would I subject myself to this phobia post mortem? Also, what would cremation do to my carbon footprint? I don’t need Greta Thunberg turning up with her hang-dog expression and monotone expressions of disapproval.

In spite of all this, it will have to be a cremation, I’m sure, but how to get my body to the furnace? If I were a biker I could arrange for the local chapter of Hells Angels to sweep me in on the sidecar of one of their Harley Davidsons. Or, even more exotic, strapped on as a pillion passenger on one of the bikes! But as I have only ever ridden a very small motorbike for a very, very short period of time, I can’t see this working.

My short skydiving career never reached the heights (get it?) where the Parachute Regiment would be wiling to parachute my coffin to a drop zone outside the Chapel of Rest.

However, I could envisage a flight of drones whisking my remains to the nearest Crematorium. That would be pretty 21st Century, I reckon. One would have to consider the weight issue (not mine, you understand) so the coffin would need to be of bio-degradable cardboard. But that would present potential problems if it started to rain mid-flight. Imagine the headlines the next day as my body spilled from the rapidly degrading papier mache coffin?

Clearly a lot more thought needs to go into this, so I will put it onto the back burner for another day.