This blog is rolling up its trousers, fashioning a newspaper hat and taking itself off to the seaside for a week.
I shall try to do emails and stuff but I’ll be on a dongle and it’s a painfully slow connection on the island of dreams — they don’t want our chatter to interfere with that of the mariners who ply our waters with their cargoes of spices, apes, gold moidores, etc.
Have a great week!
Royal wedding route will be the same as that to be taken by Queen’s cortege – http://bit.ly/ie1Xtf
Interesting that political campaigning should be reckoned disrespectful of a dead politico – http://bbc.in/gp8KCX
Man dies at best friend’s funeral – http://bit.ly/fKDMxb
RT @beachwordsmith: Sia Furler and Six Feet Underhttp://bit.ly/eZcaLs Such a great song!
Judicious juxtaposition. Hat tip @StNeotsFuneralshttp://fb.me/Tzkt4nbs
The Funeral Director (2009). Maddest movie of all time?http://fb.me/FQOvRUbp
The excellent Mr D Cuttlefish on what atheists believe (and don’t) –http://bit.ly/g6560F
Man hanged for murder gets Christian burial – http://bit.ly/ihzEp9
RT @DenOfGeek The growing problem with death in science fiction movies and TV shows – Den of Geek http://bit.ly/eUaDcj
How can any crematory be so incredibly incompetent?http://bit.ly/e0YRHE
Grievers bang to rights for out of order parking up at t’crem –http://bit.ly/eker1D
Scan those prints for the family archive + a BEAUTIFUL photo –http://bit.ly/fs1H7E
Is that nice Mr Mugabe on his last legs? http://bit.ly/flqQx3
Not Dead (Alive) Beard-o-Bees Remix – ‘a cerebral celebration of life’. Not of mine, ta – http://bit.ly/hadl6q
ShineOnBrightly shineonbrightly by GoodFunerals
At Ghanaian Funerals, a Time to Dance and Celebrate –http://nyti.ms/eTGMd9
beachwordsmith Brian Jenner by GoodFunerals
I May Very Well Vomit…The Snoopy Dance…Responses From Fans | Six Feet Under Conventionsixfeetunderconvention.co.uk/2011/04/i-may-… New blog
Country star’s father won’t die – http://aol.it/hSJFH4
Clock stopped never to go again when the old man died –http://bit.ly/flWAkB
Good website and very promising new death blog from UK academic – innovation and spirituality. Worth following –http://bit.ly/g7886G
New disposal technologies a reinvention of the wheel? Natural burial all we need, thanks? Comment here: http://bit.ly/fojbaw@NaturalBurials
New nbg in Lincs. 20 years in the planning. Twenty years??!http://bit.ly/ey2LjQ
Daily Mail bashes travellers with grievers. Are there no depths to its malign ingenuity? http://bit.ly/etsKN5
Co-op Funeralcare wants us to Like them on Facebook. Just one person does when I looked. Where’s the love?????http://on.fb.me/f4TntE
ECRI_Institute ECRI Institute by GoodFunerals
Great blog conversation on #ptsafety blog post “The Messy Business of Dying” http://bit.ly/gfw3Pl National Healthcare Decisions Day @NHDD
suebrayne Sue Brayne by GoodFunerals
Wonderful R4 Bk of Week Marie de Hennezel’s Warmth of Heart prevents Body rusting. Available on podcast http://bbc.in/Z9yMk
OK, so who do you think cocked up, the Co-op or the florist? –http://bit.ly/hmawgd
Hereford mortuary to charge undertakers £50 a day to store bodies. Sign of the times? http://bit.ly/heFg2x
New consumer resource to guide grievers in choosing the right services and the right funeral home – http://bit.ly/fsnDkL
The Co-operative Funeralcare’s trading profit last year (2010) was £46,000,000, achieved from 100,333 funerals. They performed 4000 more funerals than in 2009, and profits are up £7.7 million.
£9.5m was invested in vehicles and £11.1m in funeral homes.
Bond sales were up 29 per cent on 2009.
Funeral Excellence Scores, calculated from the consumer survey below, stand at 91.5, which is 0.5 higher than the target score.
1. Did you receive all the information you needed at the time of the arrangement?
2. Did you feel that we had fully explained to you what would happen on the day of the funeral?
3. Did we contact you to confirm the arrangements before the day of the funeral?
4. How would you rate our service… At the time of the arrangement?
5. How would you rate our service… On the day of the funeral?
6. Would you use our services again?
Funeral numbers for this year aren’t as good as they might. They are 435 down on last year and 1060 fewer than budgeted for. Week 14 has been better, though. Numbers are 324 better than last year, though 160 fewer than budgeted for.
Pre-paid funeral plan sales are healthy. 8919 have been sold so far this year, 2287 more than budgeted for and 2318 more than last year.
Source: weekly bulletin sent to all Co-op branches, 15.04.11.
I am innumerate. Do these numbers say anything to you?
James Showers, sole proprietor of the Family Tree Funeral Company, undertaker to the discerning decendents of Gloucestershire, has been badgering me to rediscover something he lost on his computer. He thought it might be on mine, since I once sent it to him. It’s not. But by dint of indefatigable googling I have unearthed it. It’s far too good to keep between me and James. Here are some extracts which will send you galloping in a jostling, whooping horde to the blog whence it came. By jingo it’s wonderfully well written.
…perhaps you won’t mind if I recount the Funeral Parlor Affair … For lo, and it did come to pass that the sibling and I were obliged to saunter along to the Sparkman/Hillcrest Funeral Home, Mausoleum, and Memorial Park to pick up the patriarch’s ashes. For some reason — maybe because we’re not a couple of swooning Victorians — we’d expected to stroll in, palm the urn, and buzz along home.
…
But no. The consummate weirdness with which modern American death-angst imbues the mortuary biz turned what should have been a 5-minute transaction into a Gothic theatrical production that dragged on for half an hour.
…
I dare anybody to keep a straight face who darkens the stoop of the Sparkman/Hillcrest Funeral Home, Mausoleum, and Memorial Park. You wouldn’t believe this joint. It was like the set designers from Twin Peaks and Napoleon Dynamite had fused with Elvis Presley’s interior decorator and been reborn as Liberace’s angst-ridden evil twin, who then suffered a psychotic break, and bought up the world’s supply of harvest gold flocked wallpaper, brass upholstery tacks, and fake oak paneling, and ate it all with fava beans and a nice Chianti, and then puked it up all over the living room from Sartre’s No Exit.
…
But nothing in my education or upbringing could have prepared me for our encounter with the Funeral Director. I almost spontaneously combusted when this specimen materialized out of the Stygian mist. The dude was the ne plus ultra, the transcendental essence, the Platonic ideal of funeral directors. He was still. He was shadowy. He was bloodless. He was creepy. He wore an ill-fitting suit made of larceny and doom.
You may have seen the story in the papers. Briefly, a Salisbury undertaker (1 hearse, 1 other vehicle, a Rover estate) arrives at his funeral venue in Tamworth, 150 miles away, and looks about for somewhere for his staff and himself to take a break. He tries the church. Locked. He tries the cemetery. No luck. By this time they are all probably crossing their legs and whimpering. They are in a strange town. So they drive to a supermarket. The staff go in and pee and buy tea. The undertaker sits in the second vehicle, two cars away from the hearse, and makes a call on his phone. He feels it would be disrespectful to make a call from within the hearse.
As he does so, inside the supermarket cafe, two women storm over to the table where the staff are sitting. They have seen the hearse in the car park. They are outraged by the apparent abandonment of its occupant. Their outrage is exacerbated by the fact that the staff are drinking tea and eating cake. They feel this makes the abandonment even more disrespectful.
I don’t know about you, but I feel for the undertaker. This sorry tale has gone round the world.
There’s almost enough in this one story alone to enable a clever academic to write a doctoral thesis about British attitudes to death. The dead, the bereaved and those who care for the dead are firmly expected to inhabit peripheries. We don’t want them in the community, do we?
But to go to the heart of this: what’s respectful and what isn’t? Dammit, it’s an elaborate etiquette that takes in phone calls and cake. What about the jaw suture?
Read two versions of the story here and here.
I’d love to know what you think.
Movie synopsis: The Funeral Director (2009) So far as I can find out, it never got distributed.
“A broken-hearted man, Kevin, finds company in a pet cricket. After ditching a lucrative advertising job, he signs on as an apprentice in a funeral home and finds himself not only working for a sexually starved pre-menopausal funeral director, but also rooming with her free spirited nymphomaniac niece. In a strange way, Kevin becomes like one of the old Renaissance masters by taking the dead corpses to study and advance his art by photographing them. While the nymphomaniac becomes addicted to the idea of helping him win back his ex-girlfriend they find themselves exploring loss, death, and resurrection. In a dark romanticism, Kevin attempts to artistically reincarnate the dead people by dressing them up in elaborate costumes and makeup, trying to recapture the memory of their best human quality and to defy the tragedy of their death.”
If only I could find you a clip or a trailer!
I recently had a row with Eulogy magazine. They were slow to pay me for an article I wrote for them. It’s never a good idea to smash up a contact. I had no beef with the editor, Alfred Tong, who seemed nice, bright and funny. It was the accounts dept where my rancour lay. I considered all that and went ahead anyway. I was cross.
It looks as though I might have caught them at a very bad time. Alfred Tong has issued a extraordinary press release announcing nothing less than a relaunch of Eulogy after what appears to have been period of teeth-gnashing, uproarious lunacy and the departure of some of the original partners. It must have put years on him. Here’s what he says:
“Thankfully, the people we started off with are no longer involved. Their departure has given the remaining members of the editorial and publishing team some time to reflect on where we went wrong and the changes we needed to make.”
He is aware of terrible mistakes: “just before the July 2010 launch came the declaration in the advertising trade’s weekly newspaper, Campaign, that Eulogy would be, ‘the world’s first grief brand.’ Since when did an emotion become a brand?”
Read his remarkable, wither-wringing account of what went on here: The Life and Near Death of a Magazine
Alfred’s vision for the relaunched magazine could make it a formidable player. I hope that will happen and I wish him and his team every good fortune. The vision for the magazine is this:
1. Eulogymagazine.co.uk will be a forum for charities, support networks, and organisations that do the valuable work of helping people cope with bereavement and those facing death through terminal illness. Eulogymagazine.co.uk will assist these organisations in their fundraising and promotional drives.
2. Eulogymagazine.co.uk will be a place where the extraordinary nature of ordinary people’s lives can be celebrated. To that end there will be a significant amount of space for reader-submitted eulogies, stories, podcasts and videos.
3. Eulogymagazine.co.uk will offer advice for readers, as well as a range of other blog, comment and multimedia content designed to be thought-provoking, comforting, and helpful. It will also host content, which promises a much-needed laugh, when you need it most.
MuchLovedUK MuchLoved RT by GoodFunerals
Download @MuchLoved‘s facebook app and add your tribute. Every time someone comments/contributes or makes a…http://fb.me/DyrepjgV
DeathRef Death Reference Desk RT by GoodFunerals
Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die. “You want to talk about where…http://fb.me/V1mQWbPO
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Go on, Like Mortlake crematorium on fb. Let it feel your love.http://on.fb.me/ezHzNO
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Fascinating case of assisted suicide – http://bit.ly/gCIrWL
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
First world war Naval deaths go online. Guardian article –http://bit.ly/hvbbOS
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Funeral potatoes recipe: http://bit.ly/iciTwj Funeral food, great song by Kate Campbell – http://bit.ly/hm2ylb
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Emmerdale is going to do an assisted suicide. Good writing.http://bit.ly/gNiINb
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Last ditch fight to save Bretby crem from the damned Co-operative –http://bit.ly/fzCMpY
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Gay stone age man dug up in Czech Republic – http://bit.ly/fuDbxz
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Gay cave man story bollocks, it seems. Too good to be true –http://bit.ly/g22aJy
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Statistically, 0% of people die of old age in the UK — however old they are.
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Try out a coffin at Le Salon de la Mort. Photo essay –http://bit.ly/hN2MjJ
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Erykah Badu performs her new song Fall in Love (Your Funeral) – live studio performance : http://bit.ly/hyBIxb
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Iconoclastic boomers and online funeral planning –http://bit.ly/fbH7m5
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Edward Stobart funeral report – http://bit.ly/i19rdI
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Lemmings. http://bit.ly/i8RZ9t
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
‘In the history of the Troubles, funerals have spawned more funerals – occasions for reinforcing tribal solidarity.’ http://bit.ly/e0rTIe
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
What happens if the burial ground is frozen? http://bit.ly/e8Umqx
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Ripping off the dead. Some Chinese cemetery owners are billionaires – http://bit.ly/gDk3TZ
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling
Would Jesus believe in evolution? http://bit.ly/fLfmtX
If you like waking up to war, famine, pestilence and people shouting at each other you like Radio 4. Oddly, I do.
This morning I emerged from a day-denying doze to hear medical people warning of the cancerous perils of alcohol, even small amounts of it. You too perhaps. Chilling stuff. The advice seems to be to knock it on the head altogether, though if you’ve ever drunk, stopping only partially reduces your chances of avoiding, in Betjeman’s words, ‘A losing fight with frightful pain / Or a gasping fight for breath.’ The tones of the medics’ voices seemed to be high in gloat-factor. Read the Indy report of this latest health scare here.
As both a resolute drinker and a tenacious smoker I should have been especially terrified but I wasn’t at all and lit up instead. I don’t kid myself, as these doctors seem to do, that the healthy alternative to life-enhancing recreational drugs is immortality. On the contrary, I wanted to reach out to them and warn them that if they eke themselves out rather than use themselves up they’re in for the most terrifying fate of all. The price of longevity can be the cruellest death of all.
In response to the terrifying longevity epidemic that is now beginning to overwhelm ‘advanced’ societies, an excellent website, SOARS, has established itself in Brighton. It promotes rational suicide for the over 85s. It’s well worth an hour or so of your time. Here, to whet your appetite, are some extracts:
In 1900, the average life expectancy at birth for the world as a whole was only around 30 years, and in the Western world just under 50. The figures now, according to an Economist report last year, are 67 and 78 respectively, and still rising.
SOARS is mainly concerned about those who are 85 and older. Today, in the UK, there are 1.3 million individuals in this age group: by 2020, it is believed there will be at least two million: and, by 2035, it is estimated that there will be 3.2 million, accounting for five per cent of the population.
A Newcastle University “85 plus” study, published last December, stated that nine in ten of these elderly people would be expected to have at least three health problems, such as heart disease, osteoarthritis and impaired vision, which would require treatment. Ageing populations put increasing burdens on a nation’s health and social services. In an ideal world, the rising financial costs involved should not be an issue, but, unfortunately, this world is very far from ideal.
“In my 30 years as an Emergency Room physician, I have watched many people die. I’ve learned from them that the modern American death is often a chronic illness, spanning some five to 10 years, in which a person slowly looses their mobility, their independence, their ability to perform basic activities of daily living, their intellect, and all ability to enjoy life. At some point in this decline, many of us would choose to say, ‘enough suffering, just let me die” – Dr. Jeanne Fitzpatrick, writing in The Huffington Post, February 9, 2010.
SOARS website here.
You may or may not remember a post here about an ad placed in the Liverpool Echo by the Fairways Partnership, a wholly owned subsidiary of the damned Co-operative Funeralcare. If you can’t, refresh your memory.
A good, decent, ordinary man who also happens to be a very, very good funeral director, complained about it to the ASA.
He lost.
Read the entire sorry story here. Gnash your teeth or do whatever you do.
Hat tip to the vigilant and indispensable Simon Irons for this.
