'DESPITE age and failing health, she never turned into an old lady. Her wardrobes are full of smart clothes. I never saw her without her make-up on. Her front room is stylish, with a shiny, wide-screen TV squatting in one corner.

"She was witty, subversive and eminently likely to tell you not to be so *** silly if you needed to be told."

That's a younger member of her family's accurate tribute to the nearly-90-year-old whose affairs and funeral it fell to me to arrange last week. At least she'd made a will and a 200-year-old firm of solicitors in her city is doing the difficult stuff.

To me, 100 miles away most of the time, fell the jobs the solicitor advised me to do "because it could prove expensive if we do it".

With a phone grafted to my ear, except when I'm e-mailing or searching the internet, all I can say is, I'm glad I'm (comparatively) young and wick enough to survive the experience.

It's also given me a very sour view of the term "help line" in general. It hasn't seemed to occur to public utilities or commercial organisations that someone may need an option "if you want to report a death".

The wooden spoon must go to BT for the worst maze of "press one for this, two for that" I've ever met, then, when I got to the point where I was allowed to hold for a human being, Recorded Rita advised me to go on to their web site for details of products.

I didn't want a product, I wanted to explain why their direct debit would not materialise and arrange to keep the line as long as I was trekking back and forth to clear the house.

Our phone has a time display. It showed 10 minutes before I reached a human voice. Given everything else I had to do that day, however, waiting was probably quicker than hanging up and going through the press-button routine every time.

Passports have to be returned for cancellation. The nearest passport office would be in the phone book. Wrong. "Please see our advert" it said, but the advert gave no addresses. Luckily, we're on the net at home and I found an address there.

I needed post codes. I just hadn't time to fiddle around registering on the Royal Mail web site.

The number in the current phone book is defunct and a recorded message gives a 50p a minute premium number for daytime calls. Then the code was rapped out as "4 Quebec Lima". Good job I know that alphabet. As we use post codes for Royal Mail's convenience, it's a bit rich.

An organisation to which I handed a death certificate personally has just written to say it needs one. That's yet another phone call to say: "Where have you put it?"

There were exceptions. Yorkshire Water has just won an award for customer service. It's well-deserved. The bank branch near my home is liaising with the branch where the account was held. Sylvia at the funeral directors is solid gold.

But ... this feisty old lady had no children. If I'd been, say, an equally elderly spouse I think I'd have drowned in confusion.