Actuarially, we’re all dying younger — just — perhaps
From The Actuary, 24 January 2013: The total number of deaths in England and Wales in 2012 was 499,000 – 15,000 more than in 2011 and in excess of the total for any of the three previous years. Mortality worsened by 1% over last year for the combined male and female population – after a 3.8% improvement […]
‘I am expecting to kill myself’
Writing in the BBC News Magazine, writer Will Self has news for you. Here are some extracts: This may seem rather shocking to you but I am expecting to kill myself. Really I am, and if you’ll hear me out I hope to at least nudge society in the direction of considering suicide acceptable when – […]
Getting it all at once
You can have the GFG blog highlights delivered weekly to your inbox by signing up to our free subscription service. It won’t take you a minute, and once you’ve done it you can relax without worrying that you might miss anything. Eric (above) will bring it to you every Monday morning. Click here. The GFG — […]
Euphemism of the week
Euphemisms for ‘died’ abound. That nasty old tell-it-as-it-is d-word — nah, we can’t be doing with it. In a letter to the Oldie, Chris Butler alerts us to a new one: The department of Energy and Climate Change’s recent ‘Impact Assessment of the Introduction of Air Quality Requirements into the Renewable Heat Incentive’ leads off […]
The f-word
Some people in Funeralworld get in a pickle about formaldehyde. It’s an f-word. Natural buriers won’t have it. Embalmers get cancer from it. MDF coffins are damnably full of it. It’s bad. How bad? The World Health Organisation published its own findings as long ago as 1991. I’m grateful to the Funeral Consumers Alliance for putting […]
Go gentle
Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country … Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never […]
A gothic tale of a dazzling light in a drab world
Posted by Richard Rawlinson (at his very best — Ed) It was while writing about Medieval music here that my thoughts turned mechancholic about the loss of Isabella Blow, the fashionista who committed suicide a few years ago. A uniquely English eccentric, Issie loved the Middle Ages, and both her wedding and funeral were held with Gothic pomp […]
Seeing is disbelieving
An Indiana funeral director said he was fired for refusing to use random body parts to create fake cadavers for three his funeral home lost. David Eckert said his employer, Alpha Funeral Service of Indianapolis, routinely loaned cadavers to Indiana University’s School of Medicine, Courthouse News Service reported. When three cadavers went missing, Eckert said […]
Keeping tabs on Dad
There’s a very nice piece in the New York Times about a brother and sister who devised an ingenious way of keeping tabs on their ageing and determinedly independent father. Here are some extracts to whet your appetite: My brother and I created a shared Google calendar — an online calendar in which we could both make […]
Let’s hear it for the good guys
“Nice guys”, they say, “don’t win ball games.” Well, maybe they don’t – but they certainly make nice coffins. Here’re two of them. First, come with me to Scotland to the tiny fishing village of Johnshaven (above) and meet Robert Lawrence and his wife, Charlotte. In his workshop Robert, artist and lover of wood, makes […]
