Any of you FaceBook members? Maybe it was because today is my 63rd birthday, but when I logged in today up popped an advert saying, “”Nearing your 65th birthday? Then don’t delay. £10,000 life insurance from £1.16 a week. Cover your funeral and leave your family a cash gift…”

Great. Another birthday reached, with plenty of FaceBook wishes for many happy returns and there’s some creep pops up and reminds me that another year gone by is another year nearer meeting my maker. Cheerful. Thanks buddy.

But what about that? “Cover my funeral”? I won’t be there. Well, I will, by definition, but only the chemicals that were once this handsome, rugged hunk of a man. I won’t know about it. At least I hope I won’t. So put me in a waste plastic bag and consign me to land fill. Feed the vultures. Give me a burial at sea, or, since we’re a long way from the coast, weighed down with a few bricks in the local canal. Don’t waste money on a funeral. If you want to follow the cliche of celebrating my life, do it before I pop off; do it when I can get something out of the experience.

Moving on to the other bit, they want me to leave my family a gift? What!? They already took everything I had when I was alive, and they want more when I’m dead? Sheesh! The only pleasure I can get from the idea of dying is imagining my kids arguing over who inherits my collection of ketchup bottles and cream cheese labels. Don’t worry, it’s a growing trend; they’ll be worth a fortune soon, take my word for it. The more of you that start to collect them, the higher the value will rise, so get in early. My prize possession is a 1965 Heinz “medium” bottle I got in a store in Cairo, totally unspoiled and still sealed with original content. I call it “The Sauce of the Nile”. Must be worth several times what I paid for it.

Anyway, back to my funeral, if I must. Will my ex wife turn up to gloat? That would annoy me, if I was there. I’d like to think I could leap out of the obligatory wood box (“brass carved handles only $3 million extra, sir”) and say, “Hard luck, the joke’s on you,” but, to be honest, I don’t think that’s likely to happen.

How long will it be, I wonder, when someone takes the above advert and really goes commercial? Maybe I’ll start a little business. Ahem… “Organise your own funeral. A choice of finger buffet or four course meal. We recommend a selection of wines from our cellars…” (I have to get the under-the-ground jokes in) “… and we can provide a full entertainment’s package.” I’ll call it “From Grave to Rave” or something like that.

So my mind turns back to this gift. A cash gift, did they say? Forget it, buddy. That lot squandered most of my cash when I was alive so I’m not going to let them do it when I cease. They’ll only fight over whose banknotes are newer than others’. No, not cash. Something to make them really think of me each time they see or use it. Maybe a big brass Buddha. No, I’m not religious (could you tell?) but it would remind them of my physique. Maybe instead of a cash gift I should create the concept of anti-cash. You’ve heard talk of anti-matter, the direct opposite to matter? Well this is the fiscal version; the opposite of cash. Like a monetary black hole it seeks out any cash and makes it disappear. Nah, that’s no good, they already did all that years ago. Anyway, they all earn more than I do now. So I want to die as I hand over my last few quid to a very attractive lady who promises more than my failing body could ever live up to. No, you misunderstand – not for what you’re thinking; she doesn’t have to do that for the money. All she has to do is tell my kids and friend that she did. That I did.

Not gonna work, is it? Oh, hang it all, I refuse to go.