Saw a bloke today, he was about 6 years younger than my dad when he passed away, and like that sort of chap, was a lovely man, he was trying, without a computer, to get his affairs in order, his daughter lived in Warwick, and she was the one who could print out his emails, his invoices, everything. Taking on the digital age and reverting back to analogue; I can appreciate and identify with that. As I sat in his beige jaguar with walnut dash, a tangle of wires and adaptors to connect his phone, a tweed fedora on the parcel shelf, a cushion for his wife’s back on the back seat, I could not help thinking of my Dad who passed away 3 years ago now, still trying to get Mum to move over here away from her little empire. And then we stopped on the grassy track heading down to the remote burial ground.

“What the hell is that? Is it a Labrador?”

“A badger, no I think its a Muntjac”

“It’s a bloody dog, we’re going to have to move it. Bloody dumpers, they always dump things here”

“I thinks a Muntjac”

 The dumpers had dumped a dead dog deer, deceased in the middle of the track, its result to misalign this old boy’s little world.

We got out of the car.

“you’re going to have to move it.”

“What me? Can’t we just drive past and let the foxes feast?”

“No, we’ll move it, you’re going to have to throw it in the hedge”

I looked at him and he nodded his head in the direction of the beige cadaver.

“Go on, pick it up and sling it in the hedge”

I pushed it with my foot, turned it obverse, closer to the edge of the track and glanced back at him. He widened his eyes and pushed his head forwards, looking at the hedge.

I pulled my Hi Viz jacket’s sleeves over my hands and lifted up the back legs, gave it a tentative swing and slung it towards the hedge, it wasn’t a great throw, and its back legs stuck out of the hedge, but he seemed satisfied.

We got back in the car, and carried on down the track towards the cemetary.

“Did I tell you about how Old George who drunk at the pub wanted to be buried next to Mabel?”

“Who’s Mabel?” I asked

“Well Susan’s horse of course”

This continued for some time…