Author: Charles

Cock-up

22 December 2010
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Co-op

As the old year subsides into a snowdrift, readers will have observed that this blog has been doing the same. There’s not much going on.

Forgive me, then, for getting out my baseball bat and once more shattering the kneecaps of the Co-op. Yes, it’s boring. But Ebenezer Google and his tribe of scribbling Cratchits notice. And then they push the GFG higher up page one of their online organ for anyone seeking to discover if the Co-op is the undertaker for them. It’s what my webman, an excellent fellow who never looks more fetching than when wearing his bespoke anorak, calls an SEO thing.

This is good news for independent funeral directors everywhere.

Mandy Ten Wolde of Somersham in Huntingdonshire engaged JH Landin and Son of Chatteris to look after arrangements for the funeral of her mother. JH Landin and Son is not, as you have already guessed, the premises of JH Landin and his son. No, it is an outpost of Anglia Co-op.

When Ms Ten Wolde asked if she could come and see her mother, the artist formerly known as JH Landin and Son said, she alleges, that she was welcome to do so provided she brought £2600 with her. She baulked, and they settled on £300. Once inside the ‘chapel of rest’ Ms  Ten Wolde was appalled to see marks on the face and body of her mum resulting from the post mortem examination. She is quoted in the Hunts Post as saying: “It was horrendous. We all sat there with our mouths open. We were so distressed. I’m hoping they will not put anyone else through this.”

Things went from bad to worse. At the funeral itself, Fenland Crematorium played the wrong music. Of course, no blame attaches to Anglia Co-op for this.

Fenland Crematorium is run by Dignity Caring Funeral Services.

Our condolences and sympathy go to Mandy Ten Wolde, her family and friends, whose distress we can only begin to imagine.

No link to the Hunts Post available as yet. I’ll post it if they put the story online.

Hat-tip to Andrew Hickson of Kingfisher Funerals, St Neot’s, for this story.

The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away

20 December 2010
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: celebrants, Humanists, Secular approaches to death

Here’s an extract from the blog of a religious minister (clerk in holy orders, he terms himself). I like his rigour. Very bracing.

You wouldn’t expect me to enjoy humanist funeral services very much. Perhaps ‘enjoyment’ isn’t the right word for funerals anyway, but you know what I mean. I’ve been to a couple and always find them ‘thin’ compared to Christian funerals … But what I most dislike came in front of me on Wednesday. That afternoon I took a funeral service at the crematorium and noticed a folder on the table where I was putting my things. This turned out to be the notes left by the officiant at a humanist funeral earlier in the day. Usually humanist funerals spend the vast bulk of their time waxing lyrical about the heroic achievements of the deceased, but there was no trace of a biography in the notes, so I assume somebody else had read a tribute or something of that sort. Instead there was a passage from Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura and some heartwarming statements along the following lines.

For those of us who hold that the individual life concludes with death, it is nevertheless not the end … Arnold may be gone, but he lives on in your memories.

It is nevertheless not the end? Yes it is … As for Arnold ‘living on’ in his loved ones’ memories, no he doesn’t. They may have memories of him, but those memories are not ‘him living’, they’re a set of synaptic responses in the brains of those who shared some aspect of his life when it was a life which will themselves decay and come to an end.

What we have here is an attempt to accommodate through linguistic sleight-of-hand what the officiant believes, or doesn’t believe, with the perceived need to comfort Arnold’s family and friends with the thought that in some way he ‘lives on’. Shouldn’t atheists be brave enough to combat this weak-mindedness? Or perhaps it doesn’t really matter?

Read the entire post here.

 

End of life care for the homeless

17 December 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: End-of-life issues

The NHS has just published this booklet: End of life care – achieving quality in hostels and for homeless people. It is “designed to provide a practical guide to support hostel staff in ensuring that people nearing the end of their life receive high quality end of life care.”

The average age of death among homeless people is around 40-44.

Download it if you’re interested here.

A job with QSA?

16 December 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral reformers

If you live in London you may be interested in this job. If you don’t, you’ll still be interested in what Quaker Social Action is doing. In its own words:

Quaker Social Action exists to resource, enable and equip people living on a low income in east London.

We work to tackle social exclusion, seeing poverty as not just material but also social.

We put people at the centre of what we do, striving to find practical and creative solutions to the problems which affect people living on a low income.

QSA recently started a new project, Down to Earth:

Very few people leave clear instructions or financial provision for their own funeral.  Down to Earth is developing support for people during this difficult time. We want to help order tadalafil online bereaved people to plan a funeral that honours and celebrates the life of the person who has died, but which will not have a negative effect on their own financial future.

We also agree with the Natural Death Centre, that “a preparation for dying is a preparation for living”.  We therefore want to find creative ways of helping people think about and discuss death before they have to.

We are now recruiting for a Down to Earth development worker.

The post will be a full-time, permanent position, based at Quaker Social Action at 17 Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green.

The post will be advertised in the Guardian on the 15th December 2010 and an application form is downloadable from our website:

http://www.quakersocialaction.com/index.php?p=15


Sleigh to go

16 December 2010
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorised

If ever I am surprised by genius and give birth to a great idea I always offer it up for adoption at the mewling and puking stage. This is because I am a 99 per cent inspiration 1 per cent perspiration person. The last great idea I brought into the world was Viking funerals for cremated remains. Its delighted adoptive parent is bringing it up in a secret shed somewhere in Sheffield. It will come to market and make his fortune. No regrets. The world needs starters and the world needs finishers.

I’ve got a new one to give away.

As global warming kicks in nicely it is clear that we are in for a run of arctic winters. Last year’s snows showed up the propensity of conventional funeral vehicles to lose their heads, slither and sashay on icy roads, sideswipe milk floats, glide sideways at roundabouts – in short, fall from grace.

We need a seasonal alternative, one which does not suffer from wheelspin. Like all good funeral futurists I looked back to the past and it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.

A sleigh hearse and sleigh limousine. Drawn by huskies, stocky ponies, reindeer – even mourners. You can’t have jingle bells on a hearse, of course, and I puzzled over how you can get them to toll. You can’t, can you?

No matter. I don’t do development. It’s all yours.

Burning issue

15 December 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral customs, funeral pyres, funerals in other cultures, open-air cremation

There was much excitement when Davender Ghai won his case for open-air cremation at the Court of Appeal in February 2010.

It established the legality of the principle of open-air cremation but, as Rupert Callender noted at the time:

“this is only a battle that has been won, not the war. The next impenetrable ring of defence, our Orwellian and inscrutable planning system and our perversely selective Environmental Health department will no doubt dig in for a long siege. For those of us who dream of blazing hilltops lighting up the night sky and illuminating dancing crowds, we still have miles to go before we sleep.” [Source]

In court, the battle raged around the legal definition of a crematorium. Baba Ghai’s lawyers argued: “The expression crematorium should mean any building fitted with appliances for the burning of human remains. ‘Building’ is not defined. We say it should be given a broad meaning.”

When the judgement was delivered, everyone noted the difficulties which could be thrown up by planning and public health legislation should an application be submitted.

Over in India a new, eco-friendly pyre is catching on – the Mokshda green cremation system, a simple heat-retaining and combustion- efficient technology. The Mokshda crematorium is a high-grade, stainless steel and man-sized bier with a hood and sidewall slates that can withstand temperatures of up to 800 degrees Celsius.

It’s a building, all right. That’s encouraging.

But it doesn’t solve the vapourised mercury problem…

Read more here and here. Read other blog posts on this: click on a category below to bring up the archive.

 

Bringing death to life

15 December 2010
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, crematoria

Like you, I haven’t a clue what this ‘ere Big Society is all about. They say, I think, that it’s all about empowerment. It sounds more like the government walking off the job. It certainly means less of everything and of course it’s entirely like politicians to try and kid us that less = more.

Wha’ever. If there’s an upside it is that publicly funded outfits are being creative, looking for new revenue streams. And it seems that, according to blogger Dizzy, Canon’s High School in Edgware is hiring out its hall at weekends for funerals. I can’t find any corroboration of this. According to Dizzy “This has meant some kids have witnessed the coffin, people in black and all that goes with funerals.” He concludes: “Not an image that many parents may want their kids witnessing you’d think.”

It’s a customary and not unboring response. The presence of a corpse in a room has been shown to lower air temperature by ten degrees centigrade for at least six months; to induce poltergeist activity; to infect children with melancholia, nightmares and religious mania; and, worst of all, to impact on teaching and learning, causing a school to miss its targets by miles.

If these cuts can break down the barriers between the bereaved and the ungriefed that will be a beneficial if entirely unplanned spinoff. We need more mortality in the community and less of the prevailing apartheid.

So we may take heart from the prevailing financial plight of our crems, I think, as many of them wonder where the heck they’re going to find the money for new filters or even a fresh coat of paint.

There’s no way they can turn a profit operating as they do, five short days a week (around 40 hours out of a possible 168). They need to up their occupancy. There aren’t enough dead people to do that so they must set out their stall for the living. And what a great venue a crem would be for all sorts of things – lectures, recitals, taiko drumming, ballet classes, birthday parties…

Of course, they’d have to tear up the fixed seating. Hey, and that’s only the start!

Bloggledegook

14 December 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Bloggledegook

When someone passes away in your family, your house gets all gloomy and miserable. Aside from consoling yourself for the passing away of somebody you adore, you should also try to be there for the rest of your family. From time to time, everything could be just so upsetting that all you want to do is to lock up all day long in your room. Yet, you can’t do that.

Source

Two o’clock in the morning

13 December 2010
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies

Seventy per cent of us want to die at home, surveys tell us.

Probably ninety-eight percent of us, having cared like mad for a dying person, want the corpse out of the house as soon as possible no matter what time of day or night.

I don’t get it. Why the hurry?

Newsy morsels

10 December 2010
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: funeral customs, funerals in other cultures

Two really nice stories here.

First, a marvellous and extraordinary insight into funerals in Gaza — community, ritual and politics. Here.

Second, the ten most loathsome lunacies of the Westboro Baptist Church (the GOD HATES people), who are so biblecrazy they once protested outside a shop selling Swedish vacuum cleaners after a Swedish pastor was prosecuted for being horrible about homosexuals. Now they’re going to protest at Elizabeth Edwards’ funeral on the grounds that she did not praise God enough while dying of breast cancer. Here.

Have a lovely weekend!