What price eternity?
Following Michael Jarvis’s piece earlier today, I’m beginning to wonder whether death-denial isn’t more prevalent among the elderly than the young. In the September Oldie magazine (strapline: ‘ticking the right boxes’) agony aunt Mavis Nicholson prints a couple of letters from readers: Dear Mavis Re your piece in the Summer issue on dying, I’m so glad I’m […]
Taboo or not taboo?
Posted by Michael Jarvis, onetime Manager of the Natural Death Centre For very many people in the UK ‘death’ is a subject left unmentioned. If you are reading this then you are part of a minority. A minority, furthermore, who would generally like to see more public openness regarding dying, death and funerals. We know the benefits: […]
J’accuse!
It was always going to be risky, this business of recommending funeral directors. We set out purposefully, hoping for the best with the best possible intentions, knowing that if you’re going to make anything in this world, you’re going to make mistakes. We’re optimists. It seemed, and still seems, to be a good thing to do, to […]
One planning problem we don’t have over here
Authorities in an eastern Polish city are trying to stop a funeral company from building a crematorium in the same neighborhood as the former German Nazi death camp of Majdanek. Full story.
Thoughts of a funeral-goer
Posted by Lyra Mollington Editor’s note: before reading Lyra’s latest thoughts, it may be helpful to read last week’s Thoughts of a funeral-goer. Whilst everyone else was making their way to the cloisters to look at the flowers, I popped back to have a chat with the young lady chapel attendant. I pretended that I had […]
Buried in a ‘Wasp Rockery’
Posted by Vale Gore Vidal died at the end of July aged 86. Although he would have wanted to be remembered as a writer and thinker, he was perhaps better known as a raconteur and wit with a vicious line in put downs. He had a long feud with writer Norman Mailer and once goaded […]
For the post mortem amusement of…
Posted by Vale Richard Brautigan was a writer and a poet. He died not long ago, which makes this poem very timely. Ed Dorn wrote it ‘for the post mortem amusement of Richard Brautigan’. Let’s hope he is: A B H O R RE N C E S November 10, 1984 Death by over-seasoning: Herbicide […]
Disinherited!
Posted by Vale Once in a while, looking around, it dawns on you that getting to the kitchen has become an obstacle course; setting off for the bedroom an orienteering event. It’s the moment you realise that your books have stopped furnishing your rooms and begun – like a literary occupy movement – to take […]
Suicide note
Posted by Richard Rawlinson I picked up the London Evening Standard today and may as well have logged on to GFG. Of the three cover stories, one was about the health of the nonagenarian Duke of Edinburgh; one about the suspended death sentence of a Chinese woman convicted of murdering a Brit, and another about the […]
The revolution will be televised
A premier-league TV production company (we’re not allowed to say the name) is presently shooting a documentary about the GFG Awards, complete with behind-the-scenes peeks at some of the nominees at work in their own workplace. They want lots of human interest. Some nominees have already been contacted; the rest are advised to stand by. […]
