CONTINGENCY

His back was the first object I saw, then the pushchair, and then, when I held the door open, a child the man said to, ‘it’s fine to stand on the pushchair but you always seem to do it at inappropriate moments like when we’re going through a doorway.’
I said, ‘I’ll wait, send it down.’
He said, ‘come on get in. You can get it in if you get it up on its end, it’s a long way up and down to wait.’
‘They going to make the lifts bigger?’ I said.
‘They say that,’ he said. ‘Don’t see how they’re going to make them wider...’
‘...nor me...’
‘...but there’s room,’ pointing at the coffin hole, ‘to make it longer.’
‘Yeh, when they going to do it, I’d like to know.’
‘I was talking to the caretaker and he said it’d be done by next week then they’ll start on this one and that’s going to be fun.’
‘It’ll mean a lot of walking up the hill,’ I said.
‘For those of us who can.’
‘Yeh, I’ve been thinking about that.’
‘I don’t think they’ve got any contingency plans,’ he said.
‘Be impressive if they did though, wouldn’t it?’