Grave Goods – Max Porter.
Tools of the Trade – a tool/implement without which you’d be lost, whether it’s a pen, trowel, notepad, bottle-opener or scanning electron microscope.
Pencil and paper, please. And a little knife to sharpen my pencil. I suppose if I’m being specific, a thick cloth-bound A5 notebook of plain paper. And an HB pencil. In life, I use a Uni-ball ‘eye’ fine black pen made by the Mitsubishi pencil co, but this is because it suits my living purposes perfectly. For the afterlife I hope I’d reconnect with the finer things, for infinity work, and a pencil is the tool for that.
Food for the Journey – a favourite portable snack, or a portion of something from your funeral feast.
Marmite. I imagine archaeologists dusting the earth from around my hand to reveal the iconic and tragically non-degradable yellow plastic lid.
Memento Vivere – a memento of a companion/event to bring you cheer (can be an image).
A very everyday photograph please. There is a photograph of my wife standing beneath a beech tree in which all three of my sons are perched. That’ll do nicely.
Ex Libris – the book or text you are least likely to tire of reading.
In the past I’ve unhesitatingly answered In Parenthesis, by David Jones, when asked this question. Occasionally The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. The OED, I think would be a good bet. But thinking about it this morning, I don’t think I would need to transport those texts because they are with me. I have poor recall for written things, but I’d remember the feelings easily. I could transport myself into the atmosphere, the busyness, the strange weird sacred jumble of In Parenthesis without having it with me. But what I’d really miss, or mourn, is the great expanse of stuff in this life. I love stuff. I’m a hoarder. I collect toys and stones and postcards and tapes and Japanese sweets and Pez machines and I think I’d like my book to tickle this hunger, to remind me of the spectacular infinite museum of things. So, I’ll take a lovely book I found in a charity shop called 1001 WONDERFUL THINGS. I guess wonder is the thing, and from these 1001 I could travel memory branches to thousands of other things, and I could spend the afterlife marvelling at the strange miracles I briefly coexisted with. I’d need to resist the temptation to sink into a depression (occupational hazard of hoarders, ghosts, descendants of Quaker farmers) when contemplating man’s monstrous cluttered litter bin of civilisation. I think I’d have good days and bad days in that regard. But the clever thing about 1001 WONDERFUL THINGS is that it juxtaposes the natural and the man-made so breezily. If “Hemikinesimeter” plunged me into a funk about the folly of progress, then “Hebrides: Fingal’s Cave” would surely cheer me up.
Lucky Deposition – a bonus selection chosen by the guest – can include transport.
I don’t know if I’m pushing my luck by asking for a tree. I hope I’m already in the river, but if I can float underneath a tree, climb out and touch it, watch it through the infinite seasons, climb it, jump from it into my deep clean river, then I’m truly grateful. If you could make it the aforementioned beech tree, then you may as well chuck in my family, and then really you are spoiling me.
A Message from Beyond the Grave – an entirely discretionary option – leave a note for a future generation to find.
I think we’ve left quite enough notes, scars, junk, echoing howls of pain and lakes of nuclear waste for future generations to deal with. I choose silence.