So I was sitting down reading the paper after just eating a sausage roll and a boiled egg. Pink Floyd were playing on Radio2. It was actually ‘Us and them’, but they are both off the same album, ‘Dark side of the moon’. Pink Floyd are worth getting into, not to the strange extent of Jeff Minter (look it up), who thought Floyd were on a massive drug fuelled mission to extend everyone’s minds. When Roger Waters wrote ‘Money’ on the same record he wasn’t thinking about doing a charity concept album. To prove the point the woman whaling her head off on ‘The great gig in the sky’ got paid about £30 as a session singer and apparently hasn’t seen a penny since.

Anyway, the song was going on for the usual ‘Floydal’ four hours and I got thinking about death. Now if I take after my dad I have exactly twenty-four years left. Okay he lasted sixty-five years and six months, but those last six months he was drowning in his own bile, so we’ll forget about those. I was thinking actually about death itself, let’s not forget, you want to approach it properly. After all it’s one of those acts like birth, losing your virginity and having sex with a chainsaw, you only get to do it once, so you may as well do a good job of it. James Dean did a good job of it, certain Tory politicians found dead inside a cupboard with a gag-ball in their mouths wearing woman’s tights probably didn’t. Not sure how I’d like to go…but probably like everything else in my life it will turn out to be rather dull and tedious.

It’s tempting to do one of those ‘bucket lists’, that’s where you do a list of things you want to do before you die. Unfortunately mine would be fairly dull. It would consist of things like ‘Invite Adam Rickitt round for a candle lit dinner. Then discuss his political views and why he wanted to become a Tory politician. Before stretching his hole wider than the Severn Barrage’.

So that’s twenty-four years, or 1248 weekends. Let’s exclude about 15% of those for pointless dinner parties and holidays, that’s 1060 weekends. Or to put it another way, 1060 Sunday’s. Finishing the dining room is going to be touch and go….