MAUD LARGE, WHO FELL ASLEEP & GLADYS TUFFIN, WHO CLIMBED TO HEAVEN

And Elon Musk, who created an army of deathless clones before deleting the planet

How a person thinks about death tells you a lot about their character, which is why I’ve decided that from now on, the only first dates that are acceptable to me are ones which take place in graveyards. It’s important to me that anyone I end up with is able to laugh about the fact that we’re all going to die. Because it is actually kind of funny, when you really think about it.

Then when you really, really think about it, it stops being funny and starts being something else. Mildly disconcerting, maybe. The kind of uncomfortable feeling that triggers your average Guardian columnist to churn out a 5,000 word review of the celebrity death doula they had come to their home in Notting Hill to deliver an expensive but therapeutic magic mushroom enema which helped them come to terms with the idea of shuffling off this mortal coil by making death seem a bit more spendy and middle class.

The thing is, we are all going to die. I know that scientists are working on various elixirs of youth and anti-ageing technologies that may eventually give humans the ability to live far longer than we currently do, in exchange for our souls or our reproductive organs or possibly in exchange for looking weirdly like Elon Musk. (Which, come to think of it, might explain why Elon Musk looks like he does. Although the only thing that actually explains Elon Musk is the theory that this world is a simulation created by a teenage boy who has read one too many Philip K Dick novels.)

Realistically, though, unless you’re a billionaire working with Elon’s top scientists on your cryogenic insurance policy, you and everyone you know and love (and hate) is going to die one day, and not come back to life as some kind of mega-wealthy alien-looking tech-villain. And some day, a couple who met on Tinder may well walk on top of your rotting bones and laugh, because they don’t give a flying fuck about you, because you’re dead. Ha ha.

Halloween is of course the time of year to think about scary things, like online dating and Guardian columnists. And also death. Indeed, you’d assume that all the ghoulish reminders of ghosts, the afterlife, and the spirit world would have us fearfully wondering about our mortality. But of course, the putative existence of ghosts, an afterlife and/or spirit world rather softens the blow.

Coming back as a ghost, for example, sounds like the perfect way to ensure that your loved ones continue to think you’re an annoying cow for many years after you’ve gone. Or in my own mother’s case, an annoying mouse. It seems that my sister and her daughter believe my mother to be responsible for the mice that have taken to popping up and startling them in their home. “Nan loved sugar mice,” says my niece, which I agree is a fair point. Also, she was quite small, and prone to making startling appearances where she wasn’t wanted, such as in the kitchen and, well, most places really.

There are those who strongly believe that our spirits go on somehow, although not necessarily in mouse form. Those like Gladys Tuffin, currently rotting in Fulham Cemetery, who believe that when the time comes, they’ll climb to heaven and live with the angels. Floating around on a little fluffy cloud in a state of everlasting bliss. Or, like Maud Large, there are those who are expecting to simply fall into a very long, very deep sleep, probably also on a little fluffy cloud, and I suspect they’re quite looking forward to that, too.

Then of course there’s the atheists and materialists, those who think there’s nothing else in the whole of existence except for rotting bodies. They haven’t got much to worry about either, other than the potential embarrassment of dying and then finding themselves lounging around in the afterlife, having copies of The God Delusion thrown at their heads by Maud and Gladys and thousands of other plump Victorian ladies floating past on their little fluffy clouds.

But what of those of us who really don’t know what to expect? Not-knowing is the most honest and logical position to take on such matters. But how are we supposed to think about death, when we don’t have the faintest idea of what it actually is? Will we suffer? Will our souls leave us and merge with the Great Oneness of the Universe? Are we to be punished for our faults in this life by being reincarnated as a series of annoying rodents? Or worse - as Guardian columnists? Or will we become mulch and mushrooms, helping to spread vast fungal networks underground until the whole Earth transforms into one giant truffle presented to an other-dimensional Goddess as an appetiser before she devours the entire Milky Way? We just don’t know. And as everyone agrees, the not knowing is the worst bit.

Or is it? Look, I’ve never had a near death experience, but there was one time that I was forced to spend an afternoon in Walsall, so I feel that I can speak with authority when I say that there are worse things than death. Maybe death isn’t the big problem that it’s cracked up to be. Maybe it’s just there to remind you to live laugh love, and give yourself plenty of time to catch your connecting train. Maybe it's a message to seize the opportunity of a first date. Wander around a cemetery, carve an aubergine emoji on a tree. Treat your date to an angry rant about the sexism embedded in the way the women’s graves are always inscribed ‘wife of’ some man or other rather than with her own achievements, then stop in your tracks as it strikes you that maybe it actually was the most important part of her life, being a wife, and maybe you would understand that if you were also a wife, instead of a lonely weirdo being squired around a cemetery at Halloween by some Tinder loser hoping in vain for a fumble in a church doorway.

No, listen, don’t do that, actually. The first date thing, I mean. Because let’s be honest, the only thing worse than facing the rest of your finite existence loveless and alone would be spending it with some lump of boiled ham you met on Tinder, just because he was a good laugh in a graveyard that one time.

But the point is, all of this only means anything because one day it will no longer be possible to do it. One day, all this will be gone. As far as we know, it will all be gone forever. You, me, Maud Large, Gladys Tuffin, everyone on Tinder and even people in Walsall, though they may not notice - one day, we will all go through that inevitable, irrevocable portal. Except for Elon Musk who, when the time comes, will simply burst out of his skin suit and turn into a Tesla which zooms up to Mars where he’ll finally switch off the Earth Simulation, saying, “Well, that would have been a lot more fun if the flesh robots hadn’t bloody well moaned so much about dying all the time.” THE END.

Happy Halloween!

The best thing you could put in that child’s bucket is a healthy appreciation for the fact that all of life is but a fleeting illusion. Or Maoams.