Birth, and copulation, and death
That's all the facts, when you come to brass tacks
Birth, and copulation, and death.
T S Eliot

A Christian and royalist Eliot may have become, and what he wrote here may have been sardonic, but for me, at nearly 80, it exactly coincides with my position. Religion never had a look in. I was confirmed at Stowe, but was never convinced at the time. In early adolescence I visited every Christian denomination in town, but even Unitarianism, the faith of my Swiss forebears, failed to hook me.

Then I bought a book on surrealism and discovered surrealists were all strict atheists, and so have I been ever since. When the movement still existed I was a dedicated observer. I would never enter a Christian or Jewish place of worship except to look at the architecture. Although, if it was a particular mate of mine on his knees, at the font or becoffined, I would attend what northern folk call "the do".

But increasingly, I have become less rigid in my observances. If the dead are real friends I will attend their obsequies and even, in one approaching case, the reception, because the convert in question was once my lover to whom I behaved very badly but who remained protective and affectionate.

More and more often now I also attend to memorial services where I bump into many an old acquaintance I haven't seen in years and discuss our contemporaries who have already "left the building"

I have never thought about becoming agnostic; I find it a form of insurance, a hedging of bets. Pascal, the most clever of all Christian theologians, took on a wager with an atheist that God existed. "After all," he said, "if he's right I won't have to pay him. If I'm right, though, he'll have to pay me." I would have and would still pick up his wager.