An Old Theme

1 4 Y A N O L D T H E M E D E R E K M A H O N I shall die in due course on a day of rain. Not in the last bed by the exit, please, with a loud sitcom on the gogglebox but in an armchair during a sunshower reading something favored by old crocks (gossip, philosophy, perhaps Schopenhauer, the bit where he says nature doesn’t care about individuals, only about the species). O√ I’ll go to the glue factory then. I shall die soon enough on a cloudy night not quietly but furious at the outrage, kicking and screaming as the lights go out. Never mind; contributing my own calcium to the world soup with rosemary, sage and thyme, I will have time to come to terms with the elemental afterlife – grimly, of course, if not without relief. We shall meet again by the shore at high tide swimming together noisily for a minute or know each other in a thick cloud of dust at a bus stop before dispersing – drops and specks of that vast entity ‘‘the seminal substance of the universe’’: new lives, the range of options infinite. ...