A noble undertaking

I adore undertakers. Unlike dentists or buses or boyfriends, they’re always there when you need them: even if you call in the middle of the night you will be answered by a human, not an answer-phone message. Funeral directors (as they prefer to be called) are surely the only businesses in Britain never to greet a customer with the words: ‘Sorry love, we’re just closing.’ They are unfailingly courteous and full of good sense. They listen reverently while you recite your woes; like a therapist, but without the side effect of making you hate your family. In an age when even consultant surgeons dress in trainers, there is a pleasing dignity in the formality of their dress. I think of them as the equivalent of midwives, essential couriers on the journey from one world into the next.

First and foremost, they take a corpse off your hands. If, like me, you have seen your fair share of dead people, you will know how welcome is the arrival of the undertaker.