Skills Post Mortem.

I often think about what skills I’ll need to learn when I become a ghost. So far I’ve got:

1. How to float outside people’s windows at night while my mouth opens and closes like that of a cod fish, silently.

2. How to get children to talk to me so their mothers can say ‘Who are you talking to?’ and the kid can answer ‘Mr Jeffrey.’ ‘Who’s Mr Jeffrey?’ ‘The nice man who comes and reads me stories after you and daddy have gone to bed.’

3. How to manifest to people in the form of a wizened old man with long, straggly hair and a gaping hole on the left side of his breast, to which I can point and say ‘Look what you did to me’ (in a croaky voice.)

4. How to blow cold air into people’s ears just before they go to sleep, while whispering ‘Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes.’

5. How to be invisible to humans but visible to dogs, so I can have fun persuading countless canines to make whimpering noises while wagging their tails, pushing their ears back, and staring into empty space.

6. How to get every spider in the house to congregate on somebody’s pillow.

7. How to get the radio to come on just as a person starts reaching out to press the switch.

8. How to crawl out of the TV set in the middle of Loose Women.

9. How to make the top of the ketchup bottle shoot off and the red sauce ooze out and run onto the table.

10. How to change the alarm clock to 4am instead of 7.30 on three successive nights.

11. How to flush the upstairs toilet while everybody is downstairs.

12. How to get under the sofa and make gurgling noises.

13. How to make the milk smell like cow dung.

14. How to call from the top of the stairs: ‘Do come up, my dear. I’m waiting.’ (Followed by a deep chuckle.)

I expect what they’ll actually try to teach me is how to write on walls in red paint and move fridge magnets around. I hope not; I’m so beyond that sort of thing.

But first I’d like a couple of days off to create my new environment in which my two lovely, late dogs will come bounding joyfully towards me while a bunch of young Chinese women shuffle dance in the sand. And the ice cream will be home-made and free. Hauntings can wait.