I was Death once. A long time ago. People came to see me and the other first year Manchester University Drama Students in the medieval morality play ‘The Castle of Perseverance. In those days I had typical northern inferiority complex and assumed that Death, being a serious business, would speak in posh tones. So I lengthened my vowels and channelled Olivier.
Poetry and religious music down the ages have littered deathly discourse with thees and thous and thines which lend a dignity and elegance to Death,
But my experience of Death is not like that. There is nothing impressive about it. It is not a besworded angel or a skeletal harvester. Even the colour black is a chromatic anachronism.
Death is a yob, a hooligan. The sort of scum that you would cross the street to avoid. Defaced by prison tattoos, in stinking hoodlum dress and a simian walk. Death is everybody you hate all rolled up one.