Good Funeral Awards, Sky 1 tonight at 10.00pm
The Good Funeral Awards is an hour-long documentary, one of a series covering a variety of heartwarming events designed to lull viewers into a good feeling that all’s well in a world that has such people in it. Well, that’s what we were led to suppose, and a number of bereaved people let us into […]
Bespoke poems as funeral eulogies
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Poems are often read at funerals. Here are just a few, including WH Auden’s Funeral Blues, which moved many cinema-goers to tears when featured in Four Weddings… ‘He was my North, my South, my East and West/My working week and my Sunday rest…’ But are many celebrants confident enough in their word […]
Nina Wigglesworth on Pre-Planning
Guest post by Kateyanne Unullisi I love dogs. God I love dogs. And now it’s nearly time for a dog I love to die. Nina, my daughter’s dog. The Golden Retriever puppy she got when newlywed in 2001 is now 13-years-old; and though lumpy and halt, she is ever patient and tender with their three […]
No Way
Over in the Philippines, karaoke is a popular pastime. According to the New York Times, after a hard day’s work, there’s nothing a weary person likes more than to find a bar, glug a beer and belt out a classic or two. This is not a matter of audience indifference. You’ve got to be good […]
Come on, it’s not rocket science
Churchill was mulling over a cabinet appointment, weighing up the merits of a candidate. Glancing towards his principal private secretary he enquired: “What about So-and-so?” The PPS murmured: “Simply won’t do, Prime Minister.” They talked like that, then. They understood the thermonuclear power of understatement. That same PPS might have pronounced the same judgement on […]
Nominate someone now for a Good Funeral Award
When the GFG first pressed its impertinent urchin nose to the window of Funeralworld and started commenting on what went on, responses from the inhabitants were predictably growly. Unaccustomed to consumer scrutiny, and holding themselves in a somewhat tender self-regard, many undertakers muttered reproachfully. Well, sorry, but consumer scrutiny is what you get in any […]
Now we are five
Ooh, the conjurer’s just arrived. Yes, it’s all party hats and facepainting over here at the GFG-Batesville Shard. Jelly, pizza fingers, crisps and ice cream. A whole lot of bunting. Our blog is five years old today and we’re awaiting the arrival in his much-loved Daimler DS420 of our patron and sugar-daddy, Sir Basil Batesville-Caskett Bt, CDM, […]
Tea with Daisy
In which our guest blogger Richard Rawlinson is compelled to account for a socially questionable hobby I googled your name recently and found you on some funeral blog site. What’s that all about? Ha ha, oh yeah, I know the guy who runs it. Just help him out every once in a while. I think you’re […]
#Bomo2013 – 7 & 8 September
It’ll be the third time we’ve done it, and it will have its third working title: Good Funeral Awards. It keeps on getting bigger and it keeps on changing its shape. We hope that this year will be better than ever. We’ve tried to keep prices as low as possible. Do come. We’ve published a […]
Feasting on brains
Weekends? Ha! We don’t believe in them here at the GFG-Batesville Shard. Probably you don’t, either. Because, like you, I know that the number one regret of the dying is: I wish I had worked harder. So on Sunday, noticing my bank manager had nodded off in a deckchair, I slipped my fiscal leash and […]
