Grim reaper

There's a jolly piece by Andy McSmith in today's Independent. Entitled Dancing on their graves and triggered by Tina Turner's unsurprisingly cool response to her ex-husband's demise, it casts an eye over some of the more memorably sour, if not downright cruel, reactions to other people's deaths. As someone who's never been at all afraid to say good riddance at the news of some despicable shit shuffling off his or her mortal coil, I thoroughly enjoyed the article and am looking forward to being able to celebrate the sound of, say, Margaret Thatcher or Eggs Benedict's bucket being resoundingly kicked.

On a style note, this short post contains four different ways of referring to mortality (plus one in the title). You may have noticed and wondered why. The fact is that I've decided to avoid repetition, that bulwark of robust English prose, and adopt the Latinate use of synonyms as a gesture of goodwill towards my Italian readers. I do this without irony. Pietro Citati, kiss my ass. Ovvero Osculate my posterior.

On a purely informative note, the first pages to appear if you Google 'death' are two Wikipedia articles on, first, a death metal band called Death and, second, death metal music itself. These are followed by a fascinating site called the Death Clock, which tells you how long you're likely to live and provides a countdown, in seconds, to the actual moment of, er, death. (Yes, back to repetition.) It's a fun thing to do. By the way, optimism helps.