And the coffin was made by… Greenfield
You saw it here first. Yeah, well okay, you first saw it here. Hayley’s coffin was, we can now reveal, made by Will Hunneybel and his team at Greenfield Creations. As I write, (9.08) you could boil an egg on Will’s servers and the GFG coffins page is going bananas. A good day for the […]
Then as now
A minimalist funeral reported in the Leinster Express, 1914: The funeral of the Rev. T. Pym Williamson, for 45 years vicar of Thelwell, near Warrington, was conducted in accordance with his desire that it should be marked by the utmost simplicity. He wished for nothing more than what would be accorded to any of his […]
Being A Man
Posted by MC I am not a new man, according to my wife. To qualify as someone who is even slightly in touch with his feminine side, I would have to empty the kitchen bin. Without being asked. It’s not an especially good time to be a man. I knew we were in trouble when I […]
Undertaker’s windows: the Individual Funeral Company
The Individual Funeral Company is a young business in Oxford run by Lucy Jane. At one time she rode motorbike hearses for Paul Sinclair. Lucy recently took on a new member of staff, ‘paw-bearer’ Joplin. Joplin is a French bulldog and has made a great hit with passers-by, many of who have hurtled through the […]
Undertakers’ windows: Heaven On Earth
Believe it or not, this beautiful undertaker’s window is full of the iconography of death. Heaven on Earth is in the city of Bristol and is run by Paula Rainey-Crofts and Simon Durgan. It is one of the pioneer ‘alternative’ undertakers. (There has to be a better term than ‘alternative’, what is it?) Urbi et orbi = […]
Londoner wins national photo competition £1000 prize
What follows is a press release from MAB which, of course, we’re delighted to publish. Dead Art? Then & Now. Earlier this month Fulham resident Robin Bath won the £1000 prize for a national photo competition designed to capture the beauty of stone memorials. The Memorial Awareness Board (MAB) runs the annual competition that challenges the public […]
Remembering a suicide: outward appearances and inner selves
By RR I’ve recently attended the memorial service of a friend I’ll refer to as B, who committed suicide towards the end of last year. He hanged himself with his belt in a hospital room, just an hour after being sectioned following previous attempts to take his own life. Having had an intimate funeral at […]
Funeral wishes are no more than wishful thinking
‘You can decide everything in advance if you wish, down to the kind of music you’d like – and there’s no charge for changing or updating your wishes at a later stage.’ Golden Charter ‘…pre-planning your funeral is actually a thoughtful and responsible way to show that you care your family … your family are spared […]
Window dressing
An email arrived here recently from a person who has been struck by the way undertakers dress their windows. ‘Dreadful’ is one of the adjectives she used, ‘depressing’ another. She’d like to set up a small business and put them right. Whether or not undertakers’ windows are on the whole dressed badly is a matter […]
Famous last words about
“When they told me they were going to induct my friend George Harrison into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame posthumously, my first thought was – I bet he won’t show up.” From Eric Idle’s eulogy to George Harrison
