Joe Toby sat in the shadows at the back of his shop. It was a particularly hot summer and for the first time he’d rented a portable air conditioner. Monumental masons, as opposed to undertakers were increasingly thin on the ground, so the shop was no longer cooled by many marble slabs waiting the chisel. Some weeks he’d have no customers at all.

Lack of space in traditional graveyards, and the cost of being buried, had made cremation fashionable. Your loved one’s ashes could be compressed to form a diamond and stylishly worn like a Victorian memento, rather than lodging in a dust collecting pot on the shelf.

There were the people who believed in natural burial. Coffins that eventually broke down to feed the land. Farmers were supplementing their income by turning they’re prettier, but less profitable acres, into unsanctified repositories. Of course, a tombstone would be out of place in such a setting. When the fashion had died down, they’d reap the benefit of more fertile soil.

Joe had fallen into a slumber and was woken in the late afternoon when the shop door clicked open. Dressed in black and with a long handled shovel across his shoulder , Sam Jones the grave digger was silhouetted in the doorway by the dying sunlight.

“He sent me for you,” Sam said.

Joe’s joints complained as he rose from the chair. He picked up his tobacco pouch and pipe, flicked off the air conditioning and locked the shop door for the last time.

The vicar was already sitting on the church wall, puffing his Saturday cigar. “I’ve got the beers in” he called, pointing to a trio of frothing tankards.

The two men sat down next to the man of God and watched the sun set on the other side of the road,
behind the Angel Inn .

“Damn it,” Joe said, “I’m going to be cremated when I go. They won’t let me light up in the retirement home. Might be my final chance to smoke without the world complaining!”