Lent

Here's my book for Lent.  Andrew Rumsey works near where I once lived in North Croydon.  His Lent thoughts are hilarious and thought-provoking and here is a taste

. . . my limousine had inexplicably broken from the pack somewhere around South London's heart of drabness, Thornton Heath, and arrived at the cemetery with several minutes spare for the driver and myself to get to know each other a little better. As we stood stiffly by the graveside, he leant over and, in the conspiratorial tone beloved of undertakers, remarked,

'I don't know whether you've noticed this, sir, but if you look closely around the cemetery, you'll observe that all the headstones face towards Croydon.'

'It's quite deliberate,' he added, just to hit the nail home.

Gawping about like a halibut, I realised to my astonishment that he was quite correct. Taking myself in hand, I recovered sufficiently to counter that, if my friend were to look even closer, he might detect the residents ever so slowly turning back the other way. Nevertheless, his remark had left a deep impression: the thought of so many prone souls gazing for all eternity, not on the heavenly Jerusalem, but on the pedestrianised purgatory of the Whitgift Shopping Centre was fairly discomposing.

This memorable episode reinforced the truth that mortality is the basis or all humour . . .