Author: Charles

And it’s goodnight Vienna from him

23 February 2012
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Hearses

Former HGV driver Darren Abey has created a hearse fit for fans of Del Boy and Rodney and is marketing it under the snappy business name of Only Fools and Hearses.

Says Mr Abey, ‘I got two scrap cars, both three-wheelers, which weren’t worth anything and only useful for their fibreglass parts. We stripped and gutted them and cut up the vehicle to stretch it to a length of 8 foot 8 inches, so we had a stretched three-wheeler that would be suitable to use as the trailer.’

The conversion cost him £8,000. His hearse even has leopard print fake fur on the dashboard.

We can’t find a website for Mr Abey’s business, but we can tell you that the full story is in the Daily Mail here.

Die to let

23 February 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Bastards, bureaucracy

In Dorset a woman has been billed for £3,000 because her father negligently failed to give his care home 28 days’ notice of his own death. Full story in the Daily Mail here. 

Thought for the day

23 February 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to death

A culture that keeps death out of sight and mind is one that is increasingly lost for words when comforting others in their grief. Instead of having that important conversation in the supermarket with the lady down the street who has lost her husband, we slip down the next aisle with the self-justifying thought that we do not want to disturb her … Where death becomes a private matter, it becomes so much more difficult to reach out to others precisely when they need it most.

Source

Remembering Dory Previn

22 February 2012
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: music, obituary; epitaph

Posted by Vale

A week or so ago one of my heroines died – the musician, writer and singer Dory Previn.

She hasn’t recorded much, but for those who know her work she is unmatched in her musicality, wit, dark humour and willingness to explore the darker parts of the mind and a woman’s experience of the world.

My favorite album was Reflections in Mud Puddle. If I haven’t put you off, you can find it here.

In the meantime enjoy The New Enzyme Detergent Demise of Ali McGraw. Come on folks you must remember Love Story?

Mine was a Wednesday death,
One afternoon at approximately three-fifteen,
I gave up and died and nobody cried.

Mine was a bloodless death,
Not grim, not gory,
More like Ali Macgraw’s new enzyme detergent demise,
In Love Story.
Neat and tidy,
Unlike Christ’s on Friday.

Friends were fooled by the fact,
I still breathed, and I spoke, and I smiled, and I lied,
In my handy, dandy, imitation life disguise kit.
I sent away for it.

The styrofoam face fits so neatly in place,
With the pre-recorded voice of your choice,
And it almost sounds real – it’s a guaranteed deal
And you don’t feel a thing,
And you can teach it to sing,
And all your friends are deceived,
And nobody grieves.

Mine was a Wednesday death.
One afternoon at approximately three-fifteen,
I was quietly laid to rest,
And nobody guessed.

A handy disposable heart,
Marks time in a plastic breast,
And so it goes, and nobody knows,
I am non bio-degradable.

You can read more about her life here.

Cremnivores

22 February 2012
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: crematoria

Gloucester crematorium’s Arbor restaurant is now offering Sunday lunch. Observes one Gloucester resident wryly:

“It seems a bit odd – and perhaps even slightly macabre – for them to be offering roast meat to people, given that their main business is to cremate bodies. I’m not sure I’d like to eat my Sunday roast in that environment really. It could be awkward complaining that meat is too well cooked or even burnt in such a restaurant.”

Full story here. 

Short cuts round the back

22 February 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, scandals

Chicago, Monday. Police receive a call about a suspicious person in a car outside Carter Funeral Chapels. They go, and find the back door off its hinges. There is no electricity in the building. It transpires, after investigation, that in winter corpses are left in the garage of this funeral home to keep cool; in summer they have frozen waterbottles placed underneath them. Some bodies are stacked on top of each other. Police and firefighters in protective clothing find bones on the roof and a rat problem. 

We never get howling scandals like this in the UK.

Yet we can be sure that there’s really quite a lot of deplorable, corner-cutting mortuary practice going on out there. 

More on this story here, here and here.

 

 

 

Ash Wednesday – buy now!

22 February 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Death; Good death

Posted by Vale

Every age has a genius, a spirit, a particular character. The Victorians, for example, excelled at sentimentality and three volume novels, while, in ancient Greece, philosophers lounged on street corners making public nuisances of themselves.

But what of our own age? What do we do that defines us? There are lots of candidates of course, but one of them, surely, is our gift for making money out of our great days of ritual and celebration. Christmas of course; All Hallows, or Halloween, as it has become; but, to my mind, our greatest achievement is Easter. Who would have thought, even a few years ago, that you could start selling easter eggs not just before Lent, but before Christmas as well! No one could deny there is a sort of genius at work there.

You’d think that, by now, we’d have covered all the bases, but I think there are still some untapped opportunities. Take Ash Wednesday for example: it’s a quiet time of year (if you overlook the pre-Lenten easter eggs); it’s ancient, long pre-dating Christianity’s colonisation, and the fact that it involves death hasn’t hindered Halloween at all.

In fact it’s a fascinating day: if All Hallows reminds us about the spirits around us, Ash Wednesday challenges us to think about our own mortality. In the lovely words of the King James’ Bible, we are asked to:

‘Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return’ (Genesis 3/9)

And to reinforce the words our forehead’s are daubed with ash.

It’s a wise tradition. Stoics (those pesky Greeks again) said that thinking about our own ending made us less afraid of death. And wouldn’t we feel more keenly alive through the rest of the year if, on this one day, we stand alone on the shore of the wide world ‘and think – till love and fame to nothingness do sink’.

But, as the Hindus would say, this is Kali Yuga, the darkest of dark ages, and we have its spirit of to consider. So – wisdom aside – aren’t the commercial possibilities obvious? If we are thinking about our own death, isn’t Ash Wednesday the perfect day to think about pre-need funeral planning too?

Come on people, there’s a chance being missed here…

Quote of the day

21 February 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Quotes

“Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.”

Writer Cormac McCarthy 

No smoke without pyre

21 February 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: funeral pyres

Unlike most countries, cigarettes are sold in singles in India and most shops that sell them have electric lighters attached to the wall for their customers to use. An anti-smoking campaigner fitted the lighters with a device which plays the Indian death chant every time someone lights a cigarette. “Raam Naam Satya Hai” is chanted when a dead body is carried to the funeral pyre. Most smokers observed in this experiment couldn’t bring themselves to light up.

Source

Afterburner

21 February 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral pyres

After washing his eyes reddened by a heavy dose of marijuana, Sadhu Premdas steps into the Bagmati river, looking for some half-burnt logs of wood to light a fire at his place.

Belonging to the Aghori sect of sages, Premdas does not accept fresh firewood distributed by the Pashupati authority: he loves a fire made from logs already used for cremating a body.

Another Baba from Benaras, India, Devananda Das, who arrived in Kathmandu four days ago, has also been collecting logs partially burnt with a body. Under the auspicious setting of the temple at this time of the year, every morning of these Aghori sages begins with the collection of charred logs thrown into the Bagmati after putting out a funeral pyre at Aryaghat.

“We only use logs burnt in the pyre,” Devananda said, basking in the warmth of burning logs on a warm Sunday. “I get divine satisfaction at the warmth emanating from logs already used to cremate bodies.” According to him, Aghoris consider it pious to apply ashes of wood already used in cremation. The Aghori Sadhus, according to Premdas, are “the master of spirits” and using such wood strengthens their control over the spirits.

“People may hate us for our behaviour, but we don’t care,” he says, arranging dreadlocks above his left ear. “This is how we are.” 

Source.

More fascinating info on the Aghori sect here.