Author: Charles

Something for the weekend

3 September 2010
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: music, something for the weekend

A little while ago I had a debate with Jonathan Taylor within this blog about funeral music. I have no interest in music, I said, can think of nothing that would describe me or sum me up, want nothing. I prefer spoken words. Jonathan then had one of those moments of heady inspiration, the greatest attraction of this otherwise rather plodding blog and the reason why you all come to it, and suggested I have the shipping forecast. If you don’t know it, it’s on Radio 4 dead early in the morning at again shortly after midnight. It is meaningless to a landlubber but the words make their own music:

Low, Rockall, 987, deepening rapidly, expected Fair Isle 964 by 0700 tomorrow.

Bliss!

I have thought about Jonathan’s suggestion. I love it. I want the version above, read by the great Brian Perkins, please!

Is it curtains for cardboard?

2 September 2010
Charles
12 Comments
Categories: coffins, National Association of Funeral Directors, natural burial

There are lies, damned lies and carbon footprint stats. Their most impressive feature is that they are so often counter-intuitive. Here’s an example:

Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand…recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption…  [T]hey found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Read on here.

The same sort of statistical sleight of hand can demonstrate that a coffin shipped from the other side of the world racks up the equivalent of no more than half a dozen road miles. Suffering as I do from severe and incurable innumeracy, I am ill-equipped to do more than shrug in puzzlement. I’m hoping you’re rather better than me at this sort of thing, because I’d like to ask your opinion about the following.

The National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) has published an article in its journal, the Funeral Director, titled Dispelling the myth about cardboard coffins. It makes this assertion: “Corrugated cardboard coffins may appear to present a green image and are perceived as a low cost alternative to traditional coffins, but in fact they’re not as cheap and environmentally friendly as they look, particularly if they’re made from recycled cardboard.” This dismayed me because I know Will Hunnybel at Greenfield Creations and I’ve always happily reckoned him to be a pretty straight, green sort of guy. The article goes on: “… the overall cost to the planet may be more than that of a solid pine or chipboard veneer coffin.”

That rang an alarm bell. Why would the NAFD’s environmental consultant, Martin Smith, stand a pine coffin alongside a chipboard coffin? Even a dunderhead like my good self knows that a pine coffin is carbon neutral. But what do I know?

Reading further, I find that cardboard coffin makers go about their business is a most beastly, even eco-vindictive, way: “Pine trees, from sustainable forests, provide the basic raw material … the branches are stripped off … torn into small chips and cooked in a solution of”, to cut a long story short, a lot of nasty-sounding chemicals including “sulphates, sulphides and” (can you guess?) “sulphites.”

Bastards, I hear you mutter; all that stripping and tearing and cooking, and sulphates and sulphides and sulphites. Quite so. How unlike the home life of our own, dear chipboard makers. We learn that they do it by much gentler means, “by pressing timber fibres together with glue and heat” employing “fewer chemicals, glues, energy and water than cardboard coffins.”

Friends, am I to remove Will Hunnybel and all other cardboard coffinmakers from my Christmas card list? Was I wrong to suppose that chipboard contains traces of formaldehyde? Is the bottom about to fall out of cardboard coffins?

Do leave a comment, please. This is important.

Friendship

2 September 2010
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to death, Formality vs informality, funeral food

A delightful account here from the funeral in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, of Sir Frank Kermode, eminent literary critic and, most important, very nice man, by John Naughton. It was, says Naughton, “elegant, moving, celebratory and only slightly elegaic. I think he would have approved.” Fittingly, “Afterwards, there was a splendid tea in the Senior Combination Room.” How very Cambridge!

“Ursula [Owen] told a lovely story about a trip she and Frank had gone on together — to the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, where he had been invited to lecture. When they settled into their seats on the plane, Frank opened his folder and realised that he’d brought the wrong text. So they checked into their hotel and he then calmly reconstructed the missing lecture, walked out and delivered it.”

But what I enjoyed most was this reflection by Anthony Holden on the nature of friendship, the value of which is enhanced by the fact that it was delivered by one supremely analytical brain and endorsed by another:

“At the end of his eulogy, Tony said something that rang true for all of us. “What I did to earn Frank’s regard”, he said, “I’ll never know”. Me neither. To be granted the friendship of such a great man was a wonderful privilege. So I’ll just count it as one of my blessings and leave it at that.”

Read the entire post here.  More about Sir Frank here, including his thoughts about death: “Death may be, is likely to be, a little too early or a little too late.” And (another) very nice tribute to Sir Frank, again by John Naughton, here.

A Guide to Natural Burial by Ken West

31 August 2010
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

That the natural burial movement began in the UK may be a source of pride if patriotism is your thing. That there are now more than 200 natural burial grounds in the UK compared with, say, around 20 in the USA, may serve to augment that pride. But if you could see some of the burial grounds in the UK that badge themselves as natural and where, you might conclude, the dead look as if they have been fly-tipped, your pride might shrink sharply. It might desert you entirely if you discovered that this nascent movement has already spawned two villains who have had to flee the country. Having considered the range of natural burial grounds, their locations, their avowed environmental purpose and their actual practices, you might find it very difficult to answer the simple question, What is natural burial?

The answer to that and a thousand other questions is answered in a timely new book, A Guide to Natural Burial. Because it is written by Ken West, the man who started it all, the only person employed in Bereavement Services ever to be awarded an OBE, it will do more than merely command respect.

Ken is much more moderate than me in his choice of vocabulary (except perhaps where he mentions Margaret Thatcher). Wherever his own feelings and preferences may lie in such matters as memorialisation, he is keen that natural burial should accommodate as many different tastes as possible so long as they can be accommodated in an environmentally principled way: “I accept that natural burial can be developed under different guises.” Though he sometimes records cases of unprincipled or simply incoherent practice, he does not dwell on them nor does he grow polemical. He prefers instead to accentuate the positive, look ahead and give natural buriers the knowledge and tools to get it right in the future; to do it well and thrive.

This is an important book because no one else is as well qualified to have written it. Ken has been burying people since he was a lad just out of school in 1961. As a lifelong local authority employee he has close on fifty years’ hands-on experience to draw on. As a balancer of budgets, he has thought long and hard about financial sustainability. As an environmentalist, he has thought urgently about ecological sustainability. He is the pioneer, the man who, against the odds, made it happen. He has mud on his boots, knowledge in his head and passion in his heart. He has everything to teach us.

For those who own and run natural burial grounds, this book will be the bible for years to come. Writing it must have been a herculean task. It covers absolutely everything: understanding the market, habitat creation, mowing, infrastructure, memorialisation, management, financial issues, planning issues, gravedigging and marketing. Each topic is dealt with in minutest detail. Ken covers all the nitty-gritty practicalities. In the hands of a natural burial ground owner, this book will become as thumbed and dogeared as any cook’s favourite recipe book.

Although much of what Ken writes about may be reckoned dry, I found even the driest parts compellingly interesting. The section on mowing is strangely unputdownable and Ken has a way of livening things up with personal reflections: “The English striped lawn has become a modern day icon representing the sheer absurdity of our relationship with nature.” The how-to section on gravedigging is similarly enthralling. I was especially pleased to read his exhortation to potential natural burial ground operators to “select a site containing fertile soil and to inter as shallow as possible … work to 24” (61 cm) depth of soil over the coffin.” I was interested to learn that he assumes that re-use of graves will have been legalised within 75 years.

He concludes by revisiting a cause dear to his heart, what he calls an “integrated funeral service,” a version of a scheme he initiated at Carlisle whereby the local authority contracted with a local funeral director to provide a lowest-possible-cost funeral. It came apart when the contracted funeral director subverted the spirit of the arrangement by upselling coffins. In this evolved version, Ken suggests that natural burial grounds might act also as funeral directors: “With minimal staff, no need for a hearse … reduced road travel and dual use of site staff and their offices, overheads are kept to a minimum.” This would ensure that “the total funeral income is retained by the natural burial site, and not shared with a conventional funeral director.” This is unlikely to endear him to the Dismal Trade, but it shows you that he has written this book as much with his head as with his heart. Ken has a strong sense of social responsibility.

This is a dense work which I defy to you to devour in a single sitting. And it fulfils its purpose: to inform anyone wanting to understand the funeral market; anyone wanting to understand the commercial, environmental and social impact of funerals; and those wanting to take control of their own funeral arrangements.

At an economics-driven £39.50 it’s by no means a low-cost option. Except that it’s not an option. It’s the only one there is.

Bloggledegook

25 August 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Humour

The personation and responsibilities of a funeral supervisor has evolved order cialis in uk over the eld from someone who precooked the someone for interment to the bodoni funeral directors of today, who accomplish umpteen remaining duties to helpfulness the home finished their ambitious measure of expiration. Funeral and monument accommodation duties that were formerly handled by friends, bloodline or clergy quite often prettify the musician’’s area.

More of this delicious nonsense here.

And an alternative translation here:

The persona and responsibilities of a funeral musician has evolved over the age from someone who spread the human for inhumation to the moderne funeral directors of today, who action numerous different duties to ply the family through their baffling reading of red … A funeral director oversees every crew in the intellection and provision of a funeral … All the info are handled by this someone so the soul’’s association and friends can suffer funeral directors without having to accumulation with paperwork and another legalities.

There’s nowt so crap as a crem

25 August 2010
Charles
18 Comments
Categories: celebrants, ceremony, crematoria, funeral directors, funeral trends, home funerals

Over in Lufkin, Texas, a new funeral home has opened. What’s different about it? It offers one of those familiar back-to-the-past initiatives which mark progress in funeral service: it’s owner is making his clients aware that they can have the funeral at home – if they want.

“It used to be that before there were funeral homes, the funerals were held at home,” said Philip Snead, CEO and Funeral Director of Snead Linton Funeral Home. “We’re just going back to the way that people used to do business. We do in-home visitations too, and we’re always mindful of health issues.”

I like it. So much better to hold a funeral on familiar ground than up at t’crem. So much better to hold a funeral on your own terms, in your own way. Best of all, it gives families so much more to do (decorating the venue, bringing the food…), and makes it so much easier for them to  run the show, buy tadalafil australia stand up and speak, do away with professional strangers. You don’t have to have the funeral at home, of course. There are community centres, hotels, cricket pavilions…

So forbidding is a crematorium, so alien, so marginalised, so exclusive of everything but death and deathmongers and the grieving bereaved, it is little wonder that people outsource the terrifying ordeal of running the show to someone they’ve briefed.

Says Mr Snead: “Since we’ve been offering the at-home services, people have responded favorably. The older generation grew up seeing their grandparents brought back to the home instead of being taken to a funeral home.”

How many UK funeral directors explore alternative venues with their clients, I wonder?

We will know, as a society, that we are getting funerals right when every crematorium ‘chapel’ in the country stands roofless, derelict and hooted at by owls. Of one thing we may be certain: there’s nowt so crap as a crem.

Hyper

24 August 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: Uncategorised

I’ve been messing up my hyperlinks for the last ten days or so. I’ve mended them, now, so if there’s anything you want to follow up, go back and have another go. If there’s anything I’ve left unmended, do let me know: charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk.

Apologies — and thank you!

Jimmy Reid’s memorial service in full

24 August 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: Formality vs informality, Humour, Memorial service

At an hour and forty minutes, this full version of Jimmy Reid’s memorial service held me spellbound. As befitted him, there was some splendid oratory. If you like a good funeral, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this.

I can’t embed it. Click the link here.

Making the best of old age

24 August 2010
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, funeral plans

On a slow news day, I quite enjoyed this piece by Jane Miller in my favourite newspaper:

Many of us have been possessed at times by thoughts that the life we are living is not the real one, but some botched job we somehow fell into, provisionally as it were, fine for the time being, until we’ve decided what we really want to be or do.

Old age certainly sorts that out for us. Saying to yourself that this is it, all it was ever going to be, has its consolations, allowing us to shed the frustrations of a lifetime of try-outs.

…

In Coda, the book written by playwright-Simon Gray when he was dying of lung cancer, he ended one chapter with the words: ‘I wish there were a way of just dissolving in the sea, without having to go through the business of drowning first.’

I like that idea, but my absence from my own death and my own funeral robs both of a good deal of interest. My funeral is not, after all, a family occasion I shall be required to organise. And what will be the point of it, anyway, if I’m not at it and in a position to check who has made the effort to turn up and who has not?

Read it all here

Habeas corpus

23 August 2010
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, independent funeral directors

I was emailed last night by someone who wants to visit their dead parent at the undertaker’s. The undertaker won’t make an appointment. The client thinks the undertaker is prevaricating. The undertaker tells the client that the customary time to visit a dead person is the day before the funeral. This is not soon enough for the client. The email concludes with the client asking me what their rights are.

Leaving aside the matter of rights (it’s quite clear what they are), anyone who knows how the funeral industry works will know what’s probably going on here. Let’s hazard a guess.

The undertaker is part of a chain operating out of a satellite branch. The dead parent is not, as the client may fondly suppose, at that branch. No, the parent is in a central mortuary some distance away with, perhaps, a hundred other bodies from other satellite branches. It’s difficult for the undertaker to arrange for the body to be brought to the satellite branch because businesses of this size operate on the fewest staff they can. At this busy time of the year it is impossible to find spare manpower to bring the parent out to the satellite.

Perhaps

The bigger the business, the more incapable it becomes of flexibility and, therefore, of personal service. There ought to be a trade-off here. The big businesses, with their car pools and central mortuaries and staffing rotas to keep everyone frantically busy, enjoy economies of scale which ought to enable them to undercut their competitors. But that’s not the way it works. Economies of scale are not passed on to the consumer. In the case of, say, Dignity that’s not surprising. They’re in it for the money. Their shareholders expect. In the case of Co-operative funeral homes, however, there’s a case to answer.

Let us not deplore this state of affairs too loudly. It is because the big beasts, the Dignitys and Co-ops, charge so much that the little independent businesses are able to thrive despite their higher overheads. Not only are they able to thrive, they are even able to undercut the big beasts. The law of the jungle is not working here. Long may it not.

I decided to find out how widespread is this practice of deterring people from visiting their dead. I made some phone calls and asked undertakers how much notice they required. Here are my results.

Co-op Funeralcare, Aylesbury: Later the same day.

Arnold Funeral Service, High Wycombe (independent): None. Walk in off the street. If the chapels of rest are full you may have to wait for up to an hour or so.

Midlands Co-op, Stirchley, Birmingham: None, but prefer families to visit three days before the funeral.

Henry Ison and Sons, Coventry (independent): None – unless busy.

R Morgan, Dudley (a satellite branch of Dignity): Will try to make an appointment for you to visit buy cialis online in canada when you make your funeral arrangements. All bodies stored in a mortuary in Birmingham where they are embalmed (optional), washed, dressed and coffined. You can visit before the body goes to the mortuary: they will put a dead person on a trolley and make him or her as presentable as possible.

T Hadley, Halesowen (independent): None – unless busy.

T Broome and Sons, Baguley, Manchester (United Co-op): Prefer appointments but around an hour’s notice usually enough.

Haven Funeral Services, London (independent): None

Co-op, Hammersmith: None, but prefer you to make an appointment when you make arrangements and hope that’ll be the day before.

AW Lymn, Nottingham (many satellite branches): None. All bodies kept at city centre mortuary, or at Long Eaton. Either pop down there, or the body can be sent up to the satellite. They have a bed with quilt if you prefer that to visiting your dead person in a coffin. If they’re really busy and no one’s available to drive a body out to a satellite, “management will step in and do it.” Oh yeah? “YES!”

I stopped ringing. The picture is clear enough. Small, independent funeral homes are very responsive. Members of chains aren’t, with the exception of Lymn’s, quite so willing: they’d rather tie you down to an appointment made when you make funeral arrangements. That’s a heck of a lot of big decisions to make in a very short time!

My emailer’s undertaker would appear, thankfully, to be a rare exception.

While ringing round I made a discovery I ought to have made ages ago about transparency of ownership. This is a debate which rages and will go on raging. When a big beast buys out an independent it goes on trading under the old name in which all the good repute is tied up. There’s nothing unusual about this. No one demands that Harrods change its name to Al Fayeds. But in the case of a funeral home it can be misleading to those who are looking for an independent funeral director.

Here’s a scenario. Someone has died and I am looking for an independent, family undertaker close to me in Moseley. What do I do? I google funeral director birmingham moseley. What do I get?

Funeralsearch.co.uk tell me about N Wheatley and Sons. Good-oh! So does zettai.net. And fastfiners.co.uk. And 192.com. And uk.local.yahoo.com. And yell.com. And businessclassified.com. And cylex-uk.co.uk. And sheriffratings.com.

That’s only for starters. There’s plenty of help on the internet. But what none of these sites tells me is that N Wheatley and Sons is, actually, in the ownership of the Midlands Co-operative Society.

I needed to know that.

My apologies for the sudden reappearance of this. I’ve been doing a spot of categorising, resulting in the usual inexplicable nonsense, of which this is but one example.