FANCY a trip to the moon but realise you've no hope of ever becoming an astronaut? Fear not, all you need is a is a few thousand quid.

Admittedly there is one minor drawback. You're going to have to be dead before you can make the journey.

An American company that has been doing big business sending people's cremated ashes into orbit is now planning to make a cemetery of the moon.

For around £5,000, they will send a single gram of your ash neatly encased in its own capsule to your final destination - the moon's surface. The flying "crypts" will be blasting off from the end of next year.

To be honest, having my ashes explosively propelled to the airless, arid wastes of the moon doesn't really appeal. But I don't want to end up in some dust covered urn on the mantelpiece either. In fact I don't want to end up in an urn at all.

I rather fancy the freedom of being scattered (preferably somewhere warm and beautiful), thereby becoming an integral part of the earth.

My only hands-on experience of such matters is limited to one occasion: a couple of years ago my brother, two sisters and I got together and sprinkled our mum's ashes under the yew tree in her favourite parish churchyard (yes we did ask the vicar first).

Rather than the harrowing task we had expected, the whole experience turned out to be rather good fun.

First, at her request, we took her in my car on a little tour of the houses she had lived in. We went past her sea-view flat and the house with green shutters and then up the lane to the farmhouse where we had all grown up.

Inevitably, I suppose, we found ourselves talking to the urn: "There you are Mum, they've just painted the windows," said sister number two, holding the plastic container up to the car window. We were giggling all the way.

When we arrived at the little church for our very private ceremony, it was pouring with rain and blowing a gale - Mum's last bit of mischief, we were sure.

We carefully upended the container, but no matter how hard we tried the ash flew everywhere. What seemed like vast amounts of it blew all over us and the churchyard. How she would have loved that!

She had a wicked sense of humour, and was always rather unorthodox, a little eccentric, and some would say, borderline bonkers.

She was also an ardent environmentalist. So when our scattering ritual was finally over, at her specific request, we took the plastic urn and shoved it in the recycling container.

It was a big responsibility doing the right thing with our Mum. And now we are all happy that she is where she wants to be: a place she loved, somewhere that had real meaning to her, and somewhere we can visit too.

I don't think the moon could possibly have provided that.