Pugnacious priests and supine celebrants
A little while ago a United Reformed Church minister wrote this: I’ve had a bit of a narrow escape : I’m doing a funeral today and went to see the family three days ago. As I was leaving the house, something they said suggested that they had requested that “the curtain should not be closed”. […]
Burial depth – my last word
For some time now I have been nagging natural burialists about the depth at which they inter their bodies. My concern has been that, beneath the topsoil, a body is not going to enjoy the ecologically positive rot envisaged for it. I have had this response from Emma Restall Orr at Sun Rising. I think […]
Bookcase coffin
I know I’ve blogged about this before. I’m doing so again because William Warren, the ingenious designer of these handsome shelves which can be reassembled as a coffin is now offering free instructions so that you can make your own. Simply email him your height and build and you’ll be able to construct something bespoke […]
Priceless
There’s an interesting letter in this month’s Funeral Service Times from a funeral director, Brian Howard. Actually, it’s more of a suicide note, but we’ll come to that. He’s fed up with people ordering funerals they can’t pay for, or for which their dead people did not make any provision. “In our experience,” he says, […]
Open air cremation – it’s for all of us
Following my post of yesterday, I have had the following response from Andrew Singh Bogan: Dear Charles, Thank you for your email; I read the blog with interest and have taken time out of my hectic schedule to submit this response. The EHRC website (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/) advises that their “…job is to promote equality and human […]
Open air cremation – latest news of the appeal
On 19 and 20 January 2010 the Court of Appeal will hear the appeal of Davender Kumar Ghai against the prohibition of open air cremation upheld by the High Court in May 2009. It was a case made notorious by the intervention of Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who asserted that indigenous Britishers would be “upset […]
Digital floorboards
My friend Simon likes to say that no one’s internet history bears close inspection. He’s speaking for himself, mostly; he’s always flirted more dangerously with depravity than me. My history is saturated with death. Of its concomitant, sex, not a jot. Yes. How boring. It has not always been so. When my ex-wife got inside […]
Cross
Just once in a while things, if they are little enough and come in a cluster, can subvert the sunny disposition for which I am justly famous. This morning I was at Sutton Coldfield crematorium, my first time. I had already got the measure of the place. A telephone enquiry yesterday about whether there was […]
Comin’ for to carry you home
The Office if National Statistics (ONS) is beginning to release detailed stats showing who died of what last year. Fascinating. We’ll all be one of those, one day. All sorts of things I didn’t know. Twice as many women die of Alzheimer’s than men—a factor of men dying so much younger, I suppose. I was […]
