IT'S not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in. This little ditty oft quoted by my granddad while shaving with his cut-throat razor came winging its way from out of my dim and distant past.

Dim being the operative word in my case. And what brought it back was when I saw the website of Reclaimed Furnishings offering custom-built coffins made from old pine.

This novel idea comes from Richard Pickles, self-taught carpenter and wit, who will soon be opening a workshop in Ricall.

The idea is you have your coffin made of reclaimed pine and use it as a bookcase/ wine rack or nick-nack holder until you step off the twig.

It comes with doors which open and close. When open the coffin looks like a book case.

Closed, it looks like a... coffin. They start from £299 plus VAT and Richard's web advert urges customers: "Buy at today's prices and get the use while still in this world."

Richard, 43, a former heavy plant engineer, admits no one has asked for a tailor-made coffin bookcase but says: "It would be a good talking point when you throw the odd - probably very odd - cocktail party.

His pal Chris Clapham, a 53 going-on-37 architectural model-maker, shows just how snug the coffins can be.

"Chris looks more dead than me, so he volunteered to be the model in my website advert and for your picture, Dick," said Richard.

Until Richard's workshop is up and running you may give him a bell on 07710 735056 to order your funky coffin.

- AND rest in peace Jimmy Johnson, Patsy Fagin and Irish Jimmy. Three names but one hell of a York character. Sorry I couldn't get to your funeral - I was writing this.

The snappily-dressed, 64-year-old pub character who died last week from a heart attack would have been pleased to know he was the subject of many raised glasses this week as friends all over the city fondly remembered him.

Everywhere I went people would stop me and say: "Did I ever tell you about the time when Jimmy, or Patsy, or Irish Jimmy said this or did that?"

Then I would be regaled with their favourite Jimmy tale.

Irish-born Jimmy from Clara crossed the water when he was 16 and the former steel erector once told me: "Bejasus, wasn't it me who did the scaffolding on the Bar Walls when they were furst built?"

But here's my best Jimmy story and I know its true because I was sitting with him in the Three Cranes in St Sampson's Square opposite two well-dressed, fit-looking middle-aged women. They were from Liverpool and just here for the day.

Jimmy had quaffed a few sherbets when his sparkling Irish eyes lit on the younger-looking of the two.

He took two paces across the tiny room and told her: "Sure, if I wus just eighteen munts yunger I'd marry ya. Yurra a beauty, so ya are."

Tears began to stream down the woman's face as Jimmy returned triumphantly to his seat next to me saying: "Jasus, I've still got da crack. Would ya look at her."

Jimmy was mortified when the woman's friend leant forward and announced: "She buried her husband yesterday, I brought her to York because he used to love it so much."

Jimmy apologised and condoled and squirmed for just a minute before beaming brightly: "I'll buy us all a drink and we'll raise a glass to him, so we will."

So we did.

- For cyclist Mick King (pictured left) it was a bridge... too late.

Like most Yorkies he celebrated the opening of the Millennium Bridge last Tuesday but it came too late to slash his journey time to work. He is now retired.

Mick, 60, of The Reeves, Acomb, used to cycle from Acomb to Imphal Barracks on Fulford Road every day when he worked there as a civilian after many years' service as a soldier.

He used trundle down Tudor Road and Hamilton Drive to Holgate Road, over the iron bridge, down Blossom Street and Nunnery Lane, over Skeldergate Bridge and up the side of the river to Imphal.

"My workmates used to say never mind, when the Millennium Bridge opens soon it'll knock ten minutes off your journey," he says.

Unfortunately, the bridge wasn't finished before Mick retired back in April 2000 so he wasn't able to take advantage of the short cut from Rowntree Park to Fulford.

But he was one of the spectators who gathered to welcome its opening today and was looking forward to pedalling across.

"I've always been a cyclist and I think this is a great thing for York," he says.

And he said he would still be able to use the bridge for journeys to see his daughter, Karen, and son-in-law, also Mick, who live at Imphal Barracks with his grandchildren.

- CENSUS forms are doing the rounds and should be filled in on April 29 so the Government can collate info about its citizens - number of people living in your house, your religion, the size of your shoelaces, those sort of things.

Apparently if there are enough people who put down a religion that isn't mentioned on the census form it becomes a fully recognised and legal religion.

It usually takes about 10,000 people to nominate the same religion.

Now Glen Willis, a net-surfing and Star Wars freak is urging everyone, via the Internet, who is not true to any particular to declare themselves Jedi.

"If you are a member of the Jedi religion then you are by default a Jedi Knight," says Glen, adding "It is only to annoy the men in suits.

"May the Force be with you."

- Best before pressed on bottom - Advice on a tin of pat.