Oh bits from obits
Posted by Jeanne Rathbone Noel Coward said funerals were the cocktail party of his set. James Joyce called them funforals and GB Shaw said ‘ Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh’. I am a Humanist celebrant and have conducted hundreds of […]
Britain’s Youngest Undertaker
Posted by Charles Did you see Britain’s Youngest Undertaker on BBC3? It’s on the iPlayer and it’s worth a look It’s a documentary which follows Mike Ryan’s funeral business in Newport through the awkward experiment of testing the vocation and aptitude of his younger daughter, Rachael. For Mike, this is all about legacy. He’s sixty […]
A picture tells a thousand lies
The Daily Mail captioned a photo of the Mark Duggan funeral A salute to a ‘soldier’: Mourners lined the streets and raised their palms to say farewell to the father-of-four. Implicit was the allegation that this was a gangster salute, something guaranteed to send surges of fear and loathing through the indignation-hungry hearts of its chav-porn-addicted […]
First Darkness
Posted by Denise Wyllie and Clare O Hagan The two Artists and filmmakers Wyllie O Hagan (Denise Wyllie and Clare O Hagan) presented their multi-award winning film First Darkness at the Inaugural London Funeral Exhibition 2011 held at Woodland Burial Parks in Epping Forest on the outskirts of London this Summer. The film forms part of […]
What a rubbish funeral!
Artist Serena Korda collected dust from houses, businesses and institutions, compressing her finds of hair, dead skin and assorted waste products into 500 commemorative bricks. These bricks were displayed as part of the Wellcome Collection’s Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life exhibition. Now that the show has reached its end it’s time to dispose of […]
Keeping them honest
Posted by Charles What do we think of e-petitions? Democracy at its finest? A place where the mad, the bad and the rabid can loose off a bit of spleen? Something in between? HM Gov describes e-petitions as “an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK”. We never supposed our governing […]
What do atheists profess?
Posted by Richard Rawlinson, religious correspondent Vale makes interesting points in the thread beneath my Beyond the Abyss post, which discusses the gap between secularist individuality and religious communal ritual: We (I) believe that community and the communal celebration of key events is important – yet secularism, at least as it finds expression in the […]
Trouble up at t’crem
Posted by Charles When East Staffordshire Borough and South Derbyshire District Council sold Bretby crematorium to Midlands Co-op there were those who said no good would come of it. It’s been just a few weeks and the doomsayers are already feeling grimly vindicated. The Co-op has been refurbing the car park with this consequence to […]
The Last Outfit
Posted by Charles These last outfits were chosen by some of the 23 people taking part in a photo project initiated by The Straits Times, the leading Singapore daily, in partnership with Lien Foundation, a Singapore philanthropic house. Entitled “The Last Outfit”, the project showcases individuals in the clothes they wish to wear for their […]
On the map?
Posted by Vale Are you on the map? On the 1st August a new information service for consumers was launched. It’s called ’Funeralmap’ and it aims to make it easier for someone to find out about funeral related businesses in a locality. You enter a postcode or the name of a town, select the type […]
