The Dabbler
Extract from the blurb for The Fixer, BBC2, Tuesday 26 Feb, 8pm-9pm: David Holmes runs a family business that’s one of the few industries to buck the current economic trend. Yet Holmes and Sons in Fleet, Hampshire, is almost dead and buried. If you haven’t guessed, they’re funeral directors. David’s young sons Olly and Toby […]
Let us now praise famous underachievers
A charmingly unsparing obituary in yesterday’s Times(£) celebrated the life and times of rock musician Kevin Ayers. Very old readers of this blog may remember him. A richly gifted singer and songwriter, Kevin Ayers made some wonderfully quixotic and engaging pop music, full of wit, warmth and whimsy. He was a founder member of Soft Machine, […]
Death and the Lady
Posted by Vole Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy with their version of Death and the Lady As I walked out one day, one day I met an aged man by the way. His head was bald, his beard was grey, His clothing made of the cold earthen clay, His clothing made of the cold earthen […]
Dead as a dodo
Posted by our ornithology correspondent Richard Rawlinson With its alliterative similarity to Shakespeare’s phrase ‘dead as a doornail’, the term ‘dead as a dodo’ also remains in usage. The extinct bird has become a symbol of obsolescence. Unable to fly and laying just one egg at a time, this three feet-plus tall, 20-plus pound woodland forager […]
Funeral poverty: whose fault?
There’s an awful lot of talk just now about the inadequacies and iniquities of the Social Fund Funeral Payment. There’s also a lot of lobbying and campaigning going on to try and fix it. And a new term is born: funeral poverty. That the Funeral Payment is presently inadequate and its administration iniquitous is a […]
Painted, young and damned and fair
Posted by Vole When I think back to the days after Diana’s death I remember a strange time: hot days and a sense of shared grief lying like a miasma over the whole country. I was working for a council in those days and the queue of people, waiting to sign the book of remembrance […]
Blogs away!
Extraordinary communiqué from Sir Basil Batesville-Caskett Bt, CDM, RLSS (Bronze) I have just been handed a note. It reads: Yo Bazza Hey, about that week’s holiday you’ve been promising me. Well, I’m taking it. I’ve gone to the seaside with my lovely missus. See ya next Monday! Blog-ed x x I of course apologise to […]
Great myths of Funeralworld
Posted by Richard Rawlinson No.7 : Cremation is greener than burial. The writer of Ilkley Moor Bar T’at was ahead of his time. Here’s a translation of the lyrics from the Yorkshire dialect: On Ilkley Moor without a hat You have been courting Mary Jane You are bound to catch your death of cold Then we […]
RIP Ted and Poppy
It’s been a tough few days here at HQ, to be honest. Ted, our faithful, faulty bull terrier was put down on Wednesday morning. He had lymphoma. Ted was rescued from Essex where he had been brutally treated. Thereafter, it was difficult to know which of his eccentric/dysfunctional traits to assign to nature and which […]
Can pills cure grief?
“The grieving process gets close at what it means to be human; it’s understandable that handing it over to professionals armed with pills approaches the most dangerous misuse of pharmaceuticals we can imagine. “Whereas depression is usually constant, grief is more likely to ebb and flow in waves and it does not usually invoke the […]
