Cheap trills

A roundup of the week in tweets. GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Burmese ambassador killed his wife and built funeral pyre for the body on his lawn, claiming diplomatic immunity http://bit.ly/iaBlTK 7 Feb Favorite Reply Delete GoodFunerals Charles Cowling LM Funerals cashes its chips. Up for sale at £100 million. Dignity sniffing. Thunderbolt please, God, if you’re there http://bit.ly/hCL7cw […]

Afore ye go

If we live long enough, our dying will be punctuated by lasts which we may even be able to mark off, one by one — last time in the garden; last time I’ll see so-and-so. Even if we don’t mark off our lasts, our nearest and dearest probably will, retrospectively. Our most memorable last ought […]

Conduct unbecoming

I don’t want this blog to get moany and bitter. Had I a good news story to break today I would most certainly do so. To be honest, not much has happened for a few days — and it’s all too easy for me to become lazily reactive. And a bit moany, I’m afraid. A number of […]

Legal, decent, honest and truthful?

This  advert appeared in the Liverpool Echo. This is what it says: The Fairways Funeral Plan is individually tailored to meet your needs. Everything featured in the [yawn] Fairways Funeral Plan is fully guaranteed no matter how high prices rise and we’ve created flexible payment plans to suit any budget. So even in uncertain times, […]

Perfect boutique undertaker’s for sale

In the same week that LM Funerals (“More than just a funeral service” — or less, depending on your point of view) decided to cash in their chips and put their chain of familyalike funeral homes on the market (yours for £100 million or so – go on, don’t be so tight), the GFG can […]

Down and dirty?

One must be careful what one says. And before one says it, one must try and resist distraction. I had intended to say a few words about Co-operative Funeralcare. Yes, again. Because they’re worth it. They are The Enemy. (Hello, Co-op lawyers, see if you can find anything actionable in what follows.) But, as I […]

Reet petweet

The week in tweets: GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Shop at the #Co-op and you’ll have time to bonk the missus. Yes, they really claim it! http://youtu.be/QiYW3gL3CN0 GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Professional wailing women and Scotch funerals. Great tradition subsumed by reticence, alas (Waaaaaaa!) http://bit.ly/hn2uHP GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Mobile #funeral home goes under having never caught onhttp://bit.ly/eZa6Df GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Are #funerals getting […]

Life is never seen so brief as when we die

The Digital Cuttlefish is the online alias of a person who, in his/her own words, is a “skeptic and atheist versifier”. DC has self-pseudonymised as such because: The cuttlefish will use its ink To hide itself – and so, I think Will I… The Digital Cuttlefish is a very skilful versifier indeed — stunning rhymes; […]

Are you a lightning rod?

The last time I directed you to the Hearth of Mopsus blog you were mostly pretty beastly about the writer, a clerk in holy orders who has the cure of souls in Swanvale Halt. Here’s what you said. He’s actually a bit of a sweetie, and if you like reading clerics’ diaries (I do), then […]

The Dead – Billy Collins

The Dead The dead are always looking down on us, they say, while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich, they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity. They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth, and buy discount cialis […]