Last Saturday night I made two girls scream in the City of London. It was a misty evening and I was on my way to a dinner at Tallow Chandlers' Hall.

Naturally, as the properly-dressed priest about town, I was wearing my long black cloak. The girls screamed more loudly even than the constant police car sirens wailing their way out of Snow Hill on one of their many wild goose chases.

Because it was a couple of days before Halloween, those two lasses mistook me for a vampire. I must say it's come to something when folk see me in the street and instead of thinking "parish priest", their first thought is "Dracula"! I was harmlessly on my way to some liver pate and red wine - not virgins' blood and entrails. Virgins? Ah well, recalling the way those two girls were turned out, I had better not write the remark that springs readily to mind.

That cloak was a recent Christmas present from my wife - a replacement for the one worn threadbare from wearing since 1972. Buying that first cloak was the best bit of theological advice I've ever had. It was from the days when I was a raw curate in Leeds and my boss the vicar, Howard Garside, said: "Get somebody to buy you a cloak lad - you'll be spending more time than enough standing over open graves in the dead of winter". And indeed I have - more time standing by graves than Dracula himself, I should think.

And what a jolly time it often is. For it's always the most solemn occasions that turn up something to give you the giggles. Another piece of that good old Yorkshire vicar Howard Garside's advice to me was this: "Always get between the grave and the mourners. Just in case any of 'em looks as if they might be going to do summat silly". He meant chuck themselves in. Though suttee in Leeds 15 was thankfully rare.

But one day, years later, when I was Vicar of Tockwith, near York, I was standing in the churchyard in a snowstorm ready to say: "Ashes to ashes..." over the mortal remains of one of my favourite old girls in the parish who had died aged 91. This lady had always been extremely thin. Her younger sister - chief mourner at the funeral - was just the opposite: big as Farmer Cosgrave's barn she was. As I got ready to say the solemn sentences, this lady pushed her way forward rather vigorously. It had been snowing all morning and the ground was treacherous.

Fr Howard's cautionary words leapt back to mind: She might be going to do summat silly. So I got between her and the grave just in case. No, no - no such thing. The old girl was of sound mind and typical old Yorkshire temperament. She pushed me out of the way, leant vertiginously over the grave and said in a loud voice: "By 'ell - it's going to be a tight fit!" Bearing in mind the ample figure of this lady and the fact that she had booked the grave as a double plot, ready for her to join her sister when her time came, I knew exactly what she was thinking - that she might be too big.

Well, I got the giggles and I wasn't the only one. There were a dozen within ear shot and they all cracked out laughing - couldn't stop. It's quite difficult to pray: "Deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death..." with a grin on your face wide as a banana split. It set the tone for a riotous funeral tea - actually Sam Smith's bitter and pork pies at The Boot and Shoe. As I say, the jolliest funeral I ever conducted.