The Local Primary Visit to Church

It is a Truth Universally Acknowledged that any Primary School trip to see the local parish church will end up with at least thirty minutes' worth of focusing on death.

You will tell jolly stories about harvest festivals. About marriages. You can let them splash water in the font.

Feel free to point out the stained glass windows, showing happy tales of Noah's Ark (kids aren't the slightest gone-out about the mass drownings). Let them see happy scenes of hills and sheep.

"Please - look at the lovely sheep. Not the inscription."

Explain what a pipe organ is for. Show them a hymn book. If of the right churchpersonship, discuss the electric guitar on its stand, and the drum kit.

It will be of no avail.

Let them have one nanosecond to consider. And you will hear the fateful words.

"My grandad was buried here."

That's all it takes.

You will be asked why it is that all dead people conveniently die in churchyards.

You will be told that "Nanny died." You will sympathise profoundly that they have lost their grandmother. Say a prayer for Nanny. Offer to help them light a tea light for Nanny.

Then find out that "Nanny" was the gerbil. The grandmothers are respectively called "Gaga" and "Granski" or somesuch. But still, maybe the helium balloon you were conned into sending up for Nanny will have helped with the healing.

Likewise with "Poppa". You thought it was a much-loved family dog? It was great-grandad.

You will be asked if the altar is that size because coffins fit on it so well. You will realise that small children think the only reason churches exist is to provide a portal between this world and the underworld. You will be asked how quickly people become skeletons, whether the "memento mori" skulls on the wall are real. Some children will become nervous of walking on the church floor in case they're treading on dead people.

You wanted to share a happy story of living worship, a living God, a living church.

But the six-year-olds will tell you that you walk among the dead. That the shades are around you. That your building exists only to propel souls into the next life. You will reflect that, based on the inscriptions on the wall, they may be right. You will be drawn into the vortex of realising that all life is doomed to end, all efforts consigned to futility.

And then you'll give them each a bookmark.