Grief is a funny old thing, ain’t it?

And I’m talking about real grief here. Yeah, I know that you were really sad when the guy who played Joey on ‘Home Improvement’ died, or whatever, but that’s not the kind of grief I’m talking about. Actual grief isn’t just sadness. I got sad when Manchester United were knocked out of the Champions League by Real Madrid at the quarter final stage in 2000, but I don’t think you could accurately claim that I went through the grieving process. Yes, Redondo took us so thoroughly apart in that game that I am still suffering from post-traumatic shock, but that’s a separate thing. Real grief is far deeper than that. Your gran dying in 2003 was definitely a solemn moment, but she was 98 years old; hadn’t been able to take a shit since the late 1980’s; had three separate tracheostomies; still smoked 40 fags a day by sticking it one of the holes in her throat; and would angrily complain about you not letting her watch the latest episode of Minder long after that show was canceled in 1994. Also, she was really racist. Like, a proper vintage racist who still used terms from the mid 20th century that everyone else has forgotten, so you never realised how hateful and bigoted she was being every time she called your friend Kai a “spam fritter”. Yeah, it was a bit of a bummer when Granny Edna died, and you definitely called it grief when you managed to fenangle three weeks off work, but, come on, you didn’t really give that much of shit.