Life & Society
Julian’s week
Published 24 January 2008
All this talk of presumed consent and organ donation is making me maudlin
Some years ago, when I was looking for a bolt-hole in Brighton, I was shown around a flat in Adelaide Crescent. The estate agent explained that the previous occupant had been an old lady who died suddenly while out shopping. Only distant relatives could be traced, and they wanted a quick sale, contents included, so they could divvy up the proceeds.
Everything was just as she'd left it that fateful morning: the bone china cup and saucer on the draining board, the Vladimir Nabokov novel, splayed open on the page she had been reading, next to her reading glasses on the bedside table. Even her fluffy slippers in the hall, faithfully waiting for their mistress to return. Now it was all to be sold, got rid of.
Wandering around her flat, perusing her bits and bobs like a burglar, I got a real sense of who this woman was, and I liked her. It rather upset me at the time and I almost bought it, just to preserve the remnants of her life. Instead I opted for a property with white walls and beige carpets. Somewhere to place my own bric-a-brac, my own slippers.
When we die there is so much “stuff” left behind. Clothes, furniture, letters. Things that mean a lot to us when we are there, but nothing much to anyone once we are gone. The most we can hope for is that a loved one might treasure our cheap jewellery, or offer a home to our occasional table, pausing periodically in their busy lives to remember us. My home in Kent is furnished almost exclusively from the Hospice Shop in Dymchurch. I’ve got barley twist chairs and tatty trolleys that I just know served their previous owners well and do a fine job for me. They breathe and speak and are grateful to be spared the bonfire.
If I sound a little maudlin this week it’s all Gordon Brown’s fault. All this talk of presumed consent about organ donations has got me thinking, not only about my darling liver and kidneys, but everything else I shall leave behind when my time is up.
I really should make a new will. The current one is a bit silly. I made it about ten years ago and left everything to a one-night stand called . . . I can't remember now. I thought it would be funny. I liked the idea of random good fortune happening to someone I hardly know. Like something out of a Jane Austen novel. He was a nice man, but the belated reward for his (as I recall) enthusiastic endeavours seems, a decade later, misplaced.
As for organ recycling, I remember being given a hard time by the other boys when I was at primary school because of my voice. "You sound like a girl!" they would taunt. Unable (or unwilling) to butch up my effeminate tones, my seven-year-old brain came up with a cunning explanation. "That's because I had to have a lung transplant when I was a baby," I lied, "and I was given female lungs. So there!" That shut them up for a couple of days - until Andrew Spragg asked to see my scars. Then it was back to witty playground chants of "Clary is a fairy".
Even so, I think I'll gamely opt in to any transplant scheme our forward-thinking government comes up with. But there are a couple of conditions: whoever takes my kidneys must also take my face. I think it's only fair. And if they're going to look like me they might as well take my name as well. A smart, laminated "Julian Clary Fact File" will be delivered to the lucky recipient as soon as they're wheeled out of surgery.
I don't care who they are, they can kiss goodbye to man-made fibres, watching films with Tom Hanks in and heterosexual sex. I won't hear of it. And they should note that my face is accustomed to expensive moisturisers and liberal injections of Botox. Play their cards right and it could be passed on to their grandchildren. In fact, I wouldn't object to it being sewn on to a well-bred Staffordshire bull terrier - as long as it was gay, obviously.
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