Dunnarunna
The team at the GFG-Batesville Tower has decamped to the seaside, where it is presently sitting on a deckchair in a vest, eating whelks and supping strong lager, and keeping a fatherly eye on the pallid little interns as they hoot and caper in the surf. We are very grateful to the wider (still, and […]
In jest?
Lockwood woman’s colourful funeral request – including a jester to walk in front of hearse Funeral director Debbie Ingham dressed as a jester at the funeral of Margaret Harper IT WAS a fitting end to a colourful life. Lockwood grandmother Margaret Harper had only one dying wish – that no-one wore black to her funeral. […]
Quote of the day
Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. Albert Camus, The Outsider Hat tip Richard Rawlinson
Good to go
DEAD GOOD GUIDES Autumn School 22-25 October in Frome Gilly Adams & Sue Gill The intensive 4 day course will examine the Hows and Whys of ceremony and celebration in a practical and experiential way. We will investigate how both positive and negative life events can be distilled into myth and poetry and create meaningful […]
Let’s hear it for extravagant funerals
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Since the Dispatches exposé, we’re all sounding like Jessica Mitford, the ‘red sheep’ of an aristocratic British clan who naively embraced wretched communism while settling in comfortably capitalist California, and wrote The American Way of Death (1963), which accuses the US funeral trade of exploiting vulnerable grievers. First, let me say I’m […]
Brahn Boots – Stanley Holloway
Our Aunt Hanna’s passed away, We ‘ad her funeral today, And it was a posh affair, Had to have two p’licemen there! The ‘earse was luv’ly, all plate glass, And wot a corfin!… oak and brass! We’d fah-sands weepin’, flahers galore, But Jim, our cousin… what d’yer fink ‘e wore? Why, brahn boots! I ask […]
Not cricket
Upset by the sale of Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to PSG, a group of AC Milan supporters expressed the widely held disappointment of their fellow football fans by leaving a small funeral arrangement outside the club’s via Turati offices. A funeral card, candles and flowers were set up near the building’s front door in the […]
London’s Pyramid of Death
Posted by Belinda Forbes In the second of BBC Radio 4’s series Unbuilt Britain, Jonathan Glancey describes one of the most audacious buildings ever planned for London – it would have been the largest pyramid ever built. Church yards were so crowded at the beginning of the 19th century that corpses were literally bursting out […]
The view below the radar
An article in the Times dated 15 July, based on an interview with Mike McCollum, ceo of Dignity plc, offers one or two (no more) features of interest. His definition of an undertaker? “We’re event organisers,” says McCollum. “We arrange a family event for you on very short notice, which you wish you didn’t have […]
First impressions
By Richard Rawlinson You want celebrants to say good things well, but how do you want them to dress? If you’re opting for a civil funeral, do you want them business-like in a dark suit or to join in any sartorial theme requested by the departed? If you’re opting for a religious funeral, do you prefer […]
