Weekend Life: It's 48 hours 'til Monday

A colleague was married by a humanist a couple of years back. Part of the deal of a humanist marriage ceremony is that the people getting married choose the form of their vows. They had considered altering the line about staying together "until death do us part" to "until death do us part or seems preferable".

They skipped the gag in the end but it was a fun, if possibly inappropriate, line about a serious subject. Death, rather than marriage, is the subject of an exhibition which is currently running at Callendar House in Falkirk and, however near or far you think that your final moments may be, the After Life expo has dug up some fascinating info on funeral rituals and customs.

If you have ever wondered why black clothing is worn to funerals in Britain, how the First World War changed the UK's burial rituals or why bodies are always taken out of houses feet first then After Life has the answers. As an add-on to the exhibition, the team at Falkirk Crematorium will be running tours of the facility this afternoon and showing how they do their best to ensure both the dead and the bereaved are treated with dignity and respect.

On a slightly more light-hearted note, the organisers have been running a survey of what song people would like played at their funeral alongside the exhibition. A 2006 survey found that James Blunt's Goodbye My Lover was the most popular song to be played. At number three was a rather more upbeat choice from the film Dirty Dancing: I've Had the Time of My Life.

I was going to write about X Factor Live which touches down at Aberdeen Exhibition Centre this weekend. However, the more I looked into the reality talent show, the more death did indeed seem preferable. I'd rather happy slap myself with a spiked stick than try to drag out a hundred words or so on Jedward, whatever that is.

So, we will move sharply away from the subject of pop stars with the shelf life of a carton of milk and on to a musician whose multi-stringed career has a half life greater than that of plutonium: Richard Jobson. Fife is celebrating itself this year with a series of events under the banner of The Fifer. As part of Fife's year of culture, Richard Jobson, one of the Kingdom's more famous sons, has spent most of last week talking to would-be film makers, doing Q+As with fellow Fifer Ian Rankin and filming his new movie Into the Valley. Based around soldiers returning from Afghanistan, it stars Dougray Scott, another Fifer. Jobsonstock culminates this evening with a concert from his band, The Skids, at the Alhambra Theatre.

Visit www.falkirk.gov.uk; www.fifedirect.org.uk; www.xfactor.itv.com

• This article was first published in the Scotsman, March 6, 2010