Who needs one anyway?
KEYZER, Jacques (Jack) C.L. October 15, 1926 – January 27, 2011. It is with the deepest regret and extreme sadness that we announce the passing of Jack Keyzer, beloved husband to Kay, grand-father, father and dear friend. Born and raised in Brussels, Belgium, Jack and his family emmigrated to South Africa when he was 13 […]
Hideous or beautiful?
There’s the usual row going on in a cemetery (Colchester, actually) about who can dangle what from where, if anywhere, and what is decorous and what is simply grieving trash strewn by frightful common people mad with grief and commonness. Yes, the great memorialisation debate will run and run. I say memorialisation, but used not […]
Sage concern
In recent months there’s been quite a bit of interest in Britain’s bentest undertaker, Richard Sage. A glance at the search terms people use to find my website tell me that, since June ’10, 330 have been hunting ‘Richard Sage’ and another 110 ‘Richard Sage Funeral Director’. That makes him almost as popular as coffins. Run out of Manchester […]
Fogey funerals
There are two ways of looking at it – aren’t there always? Either funerals, by loosening up, jettisoning the f-word and calling themselves celebrations of life, are becoming more meaningful, more expressive of what people want to express; or they have become merely conventions of gaudily-clad denialists engaged in an altogether silly and fruitless buck-u-uppo […]
Resurrecting Six Feet Under
I’m delighted to host a post by Brian Jenner. Brian is a words-for-hire person (I know how that feels) who does everything from gilding the tongues of politicians to writing terrifically good books. This summer he is holding a Six Feet Under convention in Bournemouth. As soon as I heard about this I fired off […]
Crestone End-of-Life Project
Crestone Colorado is a bit like Totnes on steroids. It is home to all manner of nice folk and all sorts of religious communities. Alternative. (To capitalism on steroids). Crestone is home to one of only two legal open-air cremation sites in the US. That’s two better than the UK, where open-air cremation was declared […]
A time to die
Every week in the Spectator magazine Peter Jones takes an occurrence or development in contemporary society and politics and considers it in the light of what the ancients did when faced with the same circumstances. This week he considers the art of dying. I’d now bung you a link but I can’t: the Speccie does not […]
Caw blimey
Here’s a roundup of my week’s tweets — and not a weak link in any of them. Before you look through them, make sure you haven’t missed this week’s most important discussion. It was about shrines and it features two of this blog’s brightest and most questing minds, those of Rupert Callender and Kathryn. Find […]
Decompiculture and the Mushroom Project
“Decompiculture is the growing or culturing of decomposer organisms by humans. The term is intended to establish a contrast with the term agriculture. Agriculture encompasses the production systems based on the culture of herbaceous plants and herbivore animals. In effect, agriculture is human symbiosis with select organisms of the herb-herbivore-carnivore food chains comprising the live […]
Exclusive! Dover undertaker achieves UK first.
I was going to blog today about the public meeting at Redditch town hall to debate the contentious matter of whether or not the crem should be used to heat a nearby swimming pool. I wanted to give you a blow-by-blow account. But in the event it was a non-event. There were perhaps thirty people […]
