Robert has come up with a flaw in my otherwise acceptable funeral plans.

He has pointed out that one of the likely, indeed almost inevitable consequences of strewing ashes from bridges or anywhere else is that of the onlookers being covered in ashy debris. He says, and he should know, that even pouring ashes from an urn into a hole in the ground, tends to cover the officiant in a thin layer of ashy dust.

Well that won’t do. I do not wish you all to end up in the pub in a grimy state. Most undignified. Mick was not poured into a hole in the ground from an urn. His ashes were placed in a tiny casket which was lowered into the grave in a sedate manner by means of a long, white ribbon, by the ebullient funeral director. I shall be launched into the river in a box. Not a shiny, wooden box. We don’t want me to be bobbing off down the river, to the alarm of ducks, swans and innocent passers by. A well-made cardboard box, about the size of a cake box. Weighted down with a little stone to prevent bobbing.

I am also a little alarmed by the number of you who have commented that you have noted my funeral requirements but that you expect to pre-decease me by a long way. What do you lot know that I do not? Why are you all going to pre-decease me? What am I supposed to do, left here all on my own, while you lot are all occupied with daisy pushing? It won’t do, you know. It won’t do at all!

We had a wonderfully quiet weekend. We did really very little. We went to the supermarket and that was more or less it. We didn’t even go as far as Chatsworth. We spent most of Saturday in the garden (overcast though it was) and most of Sunday morning pottering about doing gardening things. We were going to go to the allotment on Sunday afternoon but in the end decided not to because large black clouds kept hovering overhead (though, in fact, we had no rain – we could really rather do with some. The ground is very dry). Instead we sat inside and drank wine and watched the cricket and surfed the net and ate some really lovely roasted halibut with roasted Jersey Royals. It was a perfect antidote to the mad dashing about we’ve been doing lately.

Peter is poorly sick. He has pneumonia. He’s 85. It gives a rather unnerving sense of déjà vu. Happily, he is not in the hospital, so I don’t think there’s urgent cause for concern yet. Penny seemed reasonably optimistic when I spoke to her yesterday.