There are a few celebrity spots in and around Bournemouth. Robert Louis Stevenson lived, and wrote, here. Harry Selfridge is buried with his wife in nearby Christchurch. But our most famous dead resident is Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, buried in St Peter’s church in the very heart of the town centre. With her mum, her son, he daughter-in-law and her husband’s heart. Not his liver, lungs or other internal organs. Just his heart. Because home, truly, is where the heart is. Her son found his ticker in one of Mary’s desk drawers a year after her own death. Which begs the question. Was Frankenstein a feature of her vivid imagination, or documentation of her own scientific experiments? Probably the former…

When I first arrived in Mexico, my (now) father-in-law, asked a genuinely practical question. If I were to snuff it, where should my corpse be delivered? It seemed only right, we decided, to pack my bones in a case and post them back to England. I’ve changed my mind since. They can lay in whichever nation they fall. My preference would be Mexico. And to elaborate on my recent post, I would like my tomb in the chosen graveyard to be a bench. It’s a certain way to ensure I will be the centre of attention on Day of the Dead every November. A place for the living to rest their weary bones on my buried bones.

I would quite like to be kept in one piece though. Rather than have bits and pieces of me stashed away in drawers. Having said that, if I meet an untimely end in England, I am on the Organ Donor list. I’m not sure anyone would want my lungs. But I don’t drink an awful lot, so my liver and kidneys should be in good order. You can actually choose which organs you will or won’t donate when filling out the form. It seems a bit fickle to me. If you’re gone, you’re….well, probably not going to notice which bits get pilfered and recycled. But nonetheless, I have left instructions that my eyes are not to be removed, thank you kindly. I’m just a bit squeamish about my eyes.