Bury me in Poland!

Egypt was looking good, but the chance of ending up in a glass case being prodded by archaeologists some time in the next millennium is too high. America offers a lot of luxury options (in-coffin air conditioning, Wi-Fi, etc.) but I've seen the movie 2012 and apparently the whole place will be underwater in a few years. I almost chose Mexico, which has very cool Day of the Dead celebrations, but it might be noisy and I’m allergic to avocados.

The Polish way seems right to me—not too quiet and not too frantic. We don't have anything like Wszystkich Świętych in England. The only festival we have at this time of year is Guy Fawkes Night, which is essentially a celebration about burning Catholics. I'm not sure why it never became popular here. Perhaps with the right marketing and a name change I could bring it to the Polish market. If I know anything about Poles, it’s that they are always ready for another day off work and a party.

I think the Polish method of being dead will suit me. You lie down for much of the time doing nothing and relatives come by once a year to tidy the place up and give you flowers—it's not dissimilar to my current lifestyle. There are probably a few details I need to sort out first. I assume you need some kind of permit to be buried in Poland. Judging from my experience of getting hold of official pieces of paper here, I should probably start now—if I live to the average age of 75, I should have just about enough time.

One thing you often see in Polish graveyards, but almost never in English graveyards, are headstones with photographs of the deceased on them. I find this a simultaneously brilliant and creepy idea. I always wonder how the photograph is chosen. They usually show the dead person in late middle age, rather than as they looked just before they died, which is understandable. It would be a difficult subject to bring up: "Okay Grandma, smile for your grave photo!" You may have heard the expression: 'The tree from which your coffin will be made is growing somewhere' but consider this: ‘Has the photograph that will appear on your headstone already been taken?’

Cemeteries are generally solemn and humourless places, which is why people choose solemn and humourless photos of their relatives for headstones. Most of them look like the kind of photos you need for official documents, which tends to make the headstone itself look like a very permanent meldunek. I think this is unfair: once you are a full-time graveyard resident can't you leave the solemnity to the visitors and relax a bit? I'm thinking of including a codicil in my will that insists my surviving relatives use a photo of me being slapped by a chimpanzee. For hundreds of years, random people walking past my grave will be unable to resist laughing. You can't make a better contribution to history than that. In fact, why stop at a photograph? I hope to incorporate a video screen into my headstone that will loop a three-hour documentary about my life staring robot versions of the cast of Friends.

Jamie Stokes