Back to business after the ‘blitz’
Posted by Richard Rawlinson It may be the 300th anniversary of the completion of Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral but 2011 will be remembered as the year the great building closed to the public for the first time since the Blitz due to health and safety fears after anti-capitalist protesters set up camp on […]
Quote of the week
“A crematorium would stink up the neighborhood. Essentially, we would be breathing dead people.” Stephen Thorburn of Las Vegas in response to a proposed crematorium in his neighbourhood.
You have 30 seconds – impress me
You’re the first internet based funeral service. You want to make sure people know you are different and you have 30 seconds of TV time to get your message across. How would you do it? Yesterday we presented the advertisement that Basic Funerals in Canada created. You can see it here. We thought it was […]
Funeral spend has plunged in Ireland
From the Irish Independent an alarming trend (if you’re an undertaker) and a familiar issue: Undertakers say the average cost of a funeral has dropped by almost 40pc in the past five years. They say cash-strapped families have had little choice but to compromise on funeral ceremonies by foregoing extras that they once took for […]
Quote of the week
“Well, there’s me Nana’s funeral song sorted.” Commenter Tipatina on the Guardian X Factor order cialis online uk liveblog after hearing Janet Devlin sing ‘Somebody to Love’.
All things to all people?
Posted by Richard Rawlinson For better or worse, depending on your viewpoint, you know where you stand with both civil and Catholic funerals – give or take a few 1,000 variations on a theme. However, I’m not sure what to make of this organisation, and would be interested to hear your take on it. For […]
Cockup
We don’t often flag up Co-op cockups on this blog any more because they dim our spirits. We’d rather spend our time looking for people to praise. Anyway, for what it’s worth: A family is refusing to pay for a “funeral from hell” for their mother after a catalogue of problems – including the grave […]
The Living Dead
Enterprising US undertaker Cecil Gilmore is set to offer an enhanced embalming service. He wants to go beyond the casketed look and display his dead doing what they always did — very much in the spirit of the Puerto Rican embalmer who, in July 2010, displayed a miraculously embalmed David Morales Colon on his motorbike. […]
Santa turns Reaper
The Daily Mail reveals rather unsportingly that East Enders junkies are going to be rewarded this Christmas day with the festive death from maybe cancer, possibly a heart attack, who knows, of the character known as Pat Evans. What is it about the British??
Peter Roebuck
I once saw Peter Roebuck, the ex-Somerset cricket captain who yesterday took his own life. He was pacing up and down outside the pavilion while the pitch dried out, deep in thought, consuming a brooding cigarette. An analytical, introspective loner, he was no stranger to melancholy and controversy. The title of his first book, ‘It […]
