David Charters: The Obituarist's job is to tuck his subjects safely into Heaven

Mar 4 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

"THE job of an obituarist is to see his men and women safely tucked-up in Heaven,” I thought while sitting on the floor, sprinkling my woollen bedsocks with gently scented talcum powder.

This is a splendid tip for any dizzy young chap, who wishes to share a bed with the love of his dreams, unaware that his moods of high excitement are frequently expressed by involuntary bouts of inter-toe sweating.

Soon, however, he will discover that the secret to unlocking passion lies in dry feet, rather than a string vest or wage-squeezing baubles, though they, too, have their place. Such sound advice returns with the clarity of an optician’s spectacles, when your memories are steamed by the hot water in a bath.

Of course, I mused on, the obituarist should allow for a few lumps in his subject’s mattress and a little tickling from the sheet under the chin, but the overall picture should be generous.

At that moment, the peace was pierced by a triumphant bellow from the lounge. “I have just killed their best swordsman,” called our 12-year-old son, who becomes a hooded assassin on a computer game, set in medieval times, in which he is to kill as many fanatics as possible. We must hope that they are now resting in the paradise promised to them in prayers.

“Come on, Dad, quick. Watch me cut them down,” he continued. I smiled at his generous use of the word “quick”. For I was then, as you will have gathered, sitting on the bath-mat, clutching a red container of Imperial Leather talc. From it rose a smell redolent of claw-footed baths, puckered skin and the creaking floors of childhood.

I reached for the basin’s rim and hauled myself into an upward stance to the accompaniment of groans so anguished that they reached the ears of my lovely wife, shuffling our credit cards in the bedroom. “Come on, you can do it,” she exhorted from the dressing table. “One more thrust.”

With that, I achieved my full height, a shaving under six feet, tied a towel around my waist and hurdled downstairs to watch the slaughter on screen. “Rather gory, isn’t it?” I suggested.

“Yes, but you know it’s not real life,” he said.

“Hmm,” I said, not entirely convinced. Then I recalled a scene from earlier that Saturday, enacted on the hockey fields outside Chester, where our son was to play in a match. Before his match started, I watched some young women with awesome thighs thundering up and down the pitch, wielding their sticks with a ferocity which made the hooded assassin seem a puny innocent.

Anyway, our son’s team won and we returned home in fine fettle. “Isn’t this nice country,” I said, when we were approaching Lower Bebington, which, the estate agents tell us, is as near to Heaven as you will find this side of the great divide.

“Yes,” said the boy, with a cunning smirk, “except for the dead body.”

“Dead body!” I exclaimed. “Where?”

Then I noticed that they were both pointing at me. How we all laughed! The convulsions of mirth left me feeling weak. But there was more to come. “Do you know what they’ll put on Dad’s headstone?” asked my wife. There was a pause as we awaited the punchline. Clouds bunched together, shoulder to shoulder, and we stared at the spreading estates that have replaced the old fields and woods. The houses, though new, mocked the styles of earlier ages – Elizabethan, Georgian and Victorian. “We’re such a nostalgic people,” I thought.

But anticipation in the car was swelling at a feverish pace. “What will they put on Dad’s headstone?” urged our son.

“Has anyone seen my glasses?” gurgled my wife, as tears bounced down her cheeks. “The poor old fellow is so forgetful these days.”

Well, the car rocked so much to our guffaws that I thought we might provoke another earthquake and that would not have pleased the estate agents at all. Finally, we reached our house in high spirits, if a little drained by the ceaseless merriment.

And that night we lay in bed, as darkness closed over the sky, and the village cats yawned and stretched in the chilled air beneath the street lamps. We were both thinking that the weekends are so packed with activities that there is hardly any time left for relaxation, surely their main purpose.

“Are you wearing your bedsocks?” asked my wife, unexpectedly.

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“Are they powdered?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered again.

“Good,” she said. “Everything is as it should be.”

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk