2004-02-03 - 7:17 p.m.

The weekend saw the rare event of a family funeral. My family is notoriously tiny, a cunning tactic to ensure that not many of us die very often, or something. Actually, �notorious� is maybe overstating the case, but you get the drift.

It was my great aunt, who had reached 93 which is, as the priest sensitively put it during his sermon, �a good long innings�. I arrived home assuming that my role would be confined to wearing a black suit and saying consoling things at the right time, but my mother had other ideas. I was expected to do two readings and help carry the coffin, which I wouldn�t have minded too much if I weren�t convinced this was simply another covert tactic in her obsessive drive to have me rejoin the Catholic church.

I don�t mind public speaking too much, but my days of delivering an enthusiastic rendering of verses from the Old Testament are long gone. People pretty much have to die or be getting hitched to get me into a church these days � come to think of it, anything with the promise of subsequent booze will pretty much do the trick.

So my mum�s on a bit of a rocky path there, but I think she knows in her heart of hearts. When I was back for Christmas, she gave me a card to carry in my wallet which said �I am a Roman Catholic. In the event of accident, please notify a priest.� I guess the thinking is that I will, having been hit by a bus or trampled by a rampaging troupe of boy scouts, pledge myself back to the church just in time to save my damned soul. I refuse to put the card in my wallet as a) it�s a complete falsehood and b) why have a card saying that in your wallet when you could have one saying �Please notify the first person you can find with a defibrillator�, or �Please shout out to see if anyone knows about anything about emergency resuscitation�.

It was a pleasant ceremony, and I think that Catholics at least do death well. It�s vaguely showbiz, what with all the singing and incense burning, but not too over the top � no hysterical throwing of self onto coffin, leaping into the open grave, that kind of thing. Emotional, but dignified. The graveside part is actually pretty short, and though I�ve been to a million funerals (during my 13 years as an altar boy � form a queue armchair psychoanalysts), the part where you throw a handful of dirt onto the coffin always gets me. That�s the bit when the finality hits, when you know that the biggest defibrillator in the world isn�t going to make a difference now. That dying is the thing you do alone.

Anyway, my mum was pleased as I hadn�t been quick thinking enough to get out of going to communion (they still haven�t improved the taste of those wafers) and even though I hadn�t been amazingly close to my great aunt, it was a sobering kind of morning. Not least as there was no booze at the wake.