The week in shorts
Royal wedding route will be the same as that to be taken by Queen’s cortege – http://bit.ly/ie1Xtf Interesting that political campaigning should be reckoned disrespectful of a dead politico – http://bbc.in/gp8KCX Man dies at best friend’s funeral – http://bit.ly/fKDMxb RT @beachwordsmith: Sia Furler and Six Feet Underhttp://bit.ly/eZcaLs Such a great song! Judicious juxtaposition. Hat […]
Counting the takings
The Co-operative Funeralcare’s trading profit last year (2010) was £46,000,000, achieved from 100,333 funerals. They performed 4000 more funerals than in 2009, and profits are up £7.7 million. £9.5m was invested in vehicles and £11.1m in funeral homes. Bond sales were up 29 per cent on 2009. Funeral Excellence Scores, calculated from the consumer survey […]
Picking up the patriarch’s ashes
James Showers, sole proprietor of the Family Tree Funeral Company, undertaker to the discerning decendents of Gloucestershire, has been badgering me to rediscover something he lost on his computer. He thought it might be on mine, since I once sent it to him. It’s not. But by dint of indefatigable googling I have unearthed it. […]
Storm in a teacup
You may have seen the story in the papers. Briefly, a Salisbury undertaker (1 hearse, 1 other vehicle, a Rover estate) arrives at his funeral venue in Tamworth, 150 miles away, and looks about for somewhere for his staff and himself to take a break. He tries the church. Locked. He tries the cemetery. No […]
It got made!
Movie synopsis: The Funeral Director (2009) So far as I can find out, it never got distributed. “A broken-hearted man, Kevin, finds company in a pet cricket. After ditching a lucrative advertising job, he signs on as an apprentice in a funeral home and finds himself not only working for a sexually starved pre-menopausal funeral […]
Eulogy back from near-death experience
I recently had a row with Eulogy magazine. They were slow to pay me for an article I wrote for them. It’s never a good idea to smash up a contact. I had no beef with the editor, Alfred Tong, who seemed nice, bright and funny. It was the accounts dept where my rancour lay. I considered […]
The week in tweets
MuchLovedUK MuchLoved RT by GoodFunerals Download @MuchLoved‘s facebook app and add your tribute. Every time someone comments/contributes or makes a…http://fb.me/DyrepjgV DeathRef Death Reference Desk RT by GoodFunerals Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die. “You want to talk about where…http://fb.me/V1mQWbPO GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Go on, Like Mortlake crematorium on […]
The terrifying price of too-long life
If you like waking up to war, famine, pestilence and people shouting at each other you like Radio 4. Oddly, I do. This morning I emerged from a day-denying doze to hear medical people warning of the cancerous perils of alcohol, even small amounts of it. You too perhaps. Chilling stuff. The advice seems to […]
Good 0 Evil 1
You may or may not remember a post here about an ad placed in the Liverpool Echo by the Fairways Partnership, a wholly owned subsidiary of the damned Co-operative Funeralcare. If you can’t, refresh your memory. A good, decent, ordinary man who also happens to be a very, very good funeral director, complained about it […]
Rite on
Presently, more than 50 per cent of people who die in an NHS hospital do not receive last offices. How did it come to pass that hospitals stopped performing last offices for dead patients? How was it that a ritual as old as time was so coldly abandoned? How did it come to be acceptable […]
