A knotty question: To dress up or down for a funeral?

I didn’t mind putting on my old suit (dark grey, with nice wide lapels and once upon a time the best thing the 30-shilling tailors had to offer), but I felt I ought to show a bit of respect with a collar and tie, even though I can’t stand the things.

Now as you can imagine, there’s not much call for formality in the shed or down the breakwater, but there at the back of the wardrobe was the black number I’ve worn to more funerals that I care to recall. I put it on, and though I spent the morning twisting my neck this way and that trying to get comfortable, I thought I looked all right.

However, when I sat down in that place up at Westmount where I’ll be bound for the last time one day, I looked around and saw that although there were plenty of ties, mine was one of the few black ones. Some were even those flashy ones that I always associate with spivs selling black-market nylons. Isn’t it funny how fashions change – even when it comes to saying the Big Goodbye.

As I sat there among the mourners, I was also reminded that there are two sorts of tie-knot: the Windsor and the half-Windsor, I think they’re called. I’ve always gone for the half-Windsor on the grounds that the other’s a bit poncey, but each to his own.

Anyway, without the help of the Other Half I would be pretty hard-pressed to tie either, though I can manage a bowline in the dark with one hand behind my back.

Anyway, by the time I go up the old crem chimney, I reckon it’ll be all open-neck sports shirts and not a tie in sight – which’ll suit me just fine, though a bit of polish on the shoes of those who come to see me off would be much appreciated.

I see the boys and girls of Oddsocks, the theatre group, are coming back to the Island to give us a bit more of their version of Shakespeare.

They often tread the boards up at what I still think of as the Zoo, though they seem to have changed the name to Le Vavasseur dit Durell or something very similar.

Bit chilly for the great outdoors, so the players will be inside, but I have to say that I won’t be going to see them.

Having been dragged unwillingly out on a previous occasion to see them do A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I can tell you that my doubts about what they had to offer soon went by the board. They were very good and I had a good laugh, especially at the fairy in hobnail boots. But this time they promise a ‘slapstick’ Romeo and Juliet, and that’s just not right in my book.

I left school at 14 when the parish elementaries kept most of their pupils on after the age of 11. Some of the smart lads – and all the rich ones – went on to Vic College, but the rest of us stayed local, even when we started to outgrow the desks and chairs.

This might be seen as old-fashioned today, but let me tell you the three Rs were hammered into us – sometimes a bit too literally. By the time I left to help the old man on the farm full-time, I could do all the sums I’ve ever found useful, including long division in pounds, shillings and pence, and, as you can see, I also learned to write plain, serviceable English.

It might surprise you to hear that we were also taught some Shakespeare and that I can still recite whole chunks of it from memory. A particular favourite of mine was Romeo and Juliet which, I supposed, touched something in the romantic side of me that you’ll have detected so often in my weekly column.

Anyway, for me the tale of the Capulets and the Montagues is a tragedy pure and simple. There’s no room for slapstick as far as I’m concerned, even if the nurse is a bit of a figure of fun and Mercutio is a bit of a lad until he gets a rapier in the bread-basket.

I’ve no wish to be a killjoy, so I’ll be pleased enough if Oddsocks play to capacity audiences, but I’ll say a polite ‘no thanks’ to Romeo and Juliet played for laughs.

I usually leave the wildlife stuff to the boy Stentiford, on the grounds that he can tell a cirl bunting from a Dartford warbler at 100 paces, whereas I can’t. But I have to tell you that I’ve been watching a battle lately just outside

the shed window.

I always make a point of throwing out a few crusts and whatnot for the birds in winter, but the run-of-the-mill blackbirds and thrushes which appreciate this have been shoved aside by some foreigners.

First came the redwings – with not so much as a 1(i)K licence or a J-cat among them – and they were followed by a couple of hefty fieldfares which, I assume, couldn’t hack the weather up north.

The fieldfares now rule not the roost, but the emergency supplies, warning everything else off with surprising displays of feather-fluttering aggression.

Ah well, when it warms up they’ll be gone. They don’t stand a chance of sticking around to get their quallies, so the blackbirds and the thrushes will soon get back to their rightful place in the pecking order.

And finally … I’m all in favour of freedom of the individual, but what’s all this opposition to compulsory cycle helmets?

Freedom is a wonderful thing, except perhaps when it’s freedom to bash your brains out and become a drain on the state, a burden to your family or, perhaps, dead.