Be-spoke for one like this
From This is Surrey Today: SCORES of cyclists formed a guard of honour for the funeral procession of a popular cyclist. More than 120 people from local clubs turned out to honour Pete Mitchell at Randalls Park Crematorium in Leatherhead last Thursday. Mr Mitchell covered a staggering 570,000 miles during 62 years of cycling. He […]
Frantisek Rint – baroque and berserk?
Posted by Vale Back in 1278 an Abbot of Sedlec came back to Kutna Hora with some earth from Golgotha in his travel bags. He scattered it in the cemetery and created the most famous and popular necropolis in Bohemia and Central Europe. Grave space was at a premium and, sometime after 1400, a chapel […]
R.I.P. and go…
By Nicola Dela-Croix Look at any comments left on fan sites, on-line news stories and Facebook pages for people who have died, and you will see it there – on comment after comment after comment – those three letters ‘R.I.P.’. Look on flower cards left at death scenes, in books of condolence, there it is […]
Welcome to Capela dos Ossos
Posted by Vale An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. These are photographs of the ossuary in the ancient town of Evora in Portugal. It is estimated to contains the remains of over 5000 people as well as two mummified corpses. […]
Fair comment?
Posted by Vale Here’s a story from last Friday’s This Is Local London website. Teddington campaign group launches petition against spiralling funeral costs Campaigners have encouraged people in the borough to sign a petition against rocketing funeral prices. The campaign group Fair Funerals aims to raise awareness about the sharp increase in prices in the […]
Has TV gone too far this time?
Posted by Vale That’s the headline on a Mail online story about tonight’s Channel 4 documentary about mummification. In it a Devon taxi driver – Alan Bills – is mummified following, as closely as possible, ancient Egyptian practices. Alan died in January after suffering from lung cancer and wanted to take part in the experiment […]
Quote of the week
‘I won’t be Tutankhamun, I’ll be Tutanalan… the grandkids will be able to tell their friends their grandad’s a mummy.’ Alan Billis, whose body has been successfully mummified using ancient Egyptian techniques.
The chaos of meaning
We have just received the following press release: In early 2011, Jimmy Edmonds’ son Joshua was killed in a road accident in SE Asia. RELEASED is a photographic essay and a personal response to the tragedy of his son’s death. Intended for publication both as an exhibition and as a book, the project features a mix […]
Habeas corpse
Funeral arrangements for many Brits must take into account the sometimes violently conflicting wishes, needs and loyalties of the various members of blended families. Compromise can sometimes be hard to reach, the more so when one party sets out to hijack the funeral and do it their way. It’s worse for Ghanaians. There, it’s the […]
Mellified man and the wonder of Wikipedia
Posted by Vale Wikipedia – that glorious monument to collaboration and, sometimes, hearsay – has some marvellously strange pages. One of my favourites is the Mellified man. This is claimed to be an ancient process of preserving bodies through use of honey.Li, a Chinese pharmacologist reports that, “some elderly men in Arabia, nearing the end […]
