Author: Charles

Famous last words about

28 January 2014
Charles
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Categories: Humour

“When they told me they were going to induct my friend George Harrison into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame posthumously, my first thought was – I bet he won’t show up.”

From Eric Idle’s eulogy to George Harrison

No Time

27 January 2014
Charles
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Categories: Poetry

No Time

In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.

Then, all day, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

Billy Collins

All that we are not

24 January 2014
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Back in the day – it feels like pre-history but it’s only 5 years – there was very little buzz around death (poor metaphor, I know).

Now there’s an ear-shattering din.

Back then, in a spirit of open-minded curiosity, I’d blog up anything that caught my eye — arty stuff, Goth stuff, silly stuff, serious stuff, funny cartoons… something for everybody. There’s no trick to it, just a preparedness to slog through Google Alerts, Pinterest, Vimeo, etc. Back then, people liked that – because there was virtually nowhere else to go for death stuff. It was a bit like being the only bar in a quiet, tiny fishing village way off the beaten track. Life was uncomplicated.

The little fishing village became Benidorm. There’s thousands of us, now, it’s got very competitive. Facebook’s been the game changer, the crack cocaine of social media, the essential promotional tool for everybody. The appetite for eyecatching ooh-ah stuff is huge and you can follow the numbers clicking your posts. It’d be addictive if you were a twat. Post anything requiring much more than 4 secs attention and you’re likely to be passed over. I know, I’ve experimented.

It’s not all bad. We had a chat on FB last night about whether Roy, had he followed his heart and kept Hayley at home, would have had to get her embalmed. There was a flurry of comments and the anti-embalmers ran out winners 4-0. There’s a lot of really good stuff on Facebook and there are some great new blogs.

Commentators on social media have their specialisms. The GFG has ceded territory. We don’t do instant-grat stuff from Pinterest any more, newcomers do that. We watch with a grandfatherly and slightly schizophrenic eye. Where does the GFG position itself in all this? Ans: two places at once. Our Facebook/Twitter presence is one place, the blog quite another.

The arty market has been staked out by an incursion of intellectuals, principally the Order of the Good Death and Death Salon. There’s heaps I like about them. Their fondness for morbidalia of all sorts from taxidermy to putrescence doesn’t float my boat, but no matter. The upcoming Salon in London, 10-12 April, looks very interesting. Well worth checking out. Tickets here.

So there’s lots of stuff we don’t do and there’s much that we aren’t any more. Have we lost ground? No. We know where we stand because we know what we are: a little consumer organisation focussed on improving the experience of ‘ordinary’ people needing to arrange a funeral. We’re not clever, we’re not exciting and we’re not fashionable. We try hard. Even if we were better at what we do we’d still be dull and a bit serious. Feels like home.

It ain’t Syria. There’s room for all of us.

Groundhog week

23 January 2014
Charles
15 Comments
Categories: Legal rights

22 Jan is reckoned the worst, most depressing day of the year. This week is as bad as it gets. Nodding in agreement? Reasons to be cheerless, according to Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff university are: weather, debt, time since Christmas, time since failing new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and the feeling of a need to take action.

Here at the GFG-Batesville Shard we max out on Nordic gloom in January. We use the gloom to inform realistic appraisal. We’ve been brooding about not going forwards, just round and round in circles, blogging about the same old same old time and time again, not getting anywhere or being useful. Is it time to do a Hayley and call it a day? It may be. It was fun while it lasted. How liberating to be free of it.

Out this week: the annual CDAS report on the cost of funerals. Various radio stations rang. I looked for a new angle but found there none. I did the same interviews I’ve done time and time over. Same old same old.

And then there was the Hayley thing on Corrie. I didn’t follow the build-up to the suicide so I can’t judge its usefulness in making people aware of the issues and stimulating debate. But I did watch last night’s episode where Hayley’s body was taken away by the men in black macs. It was probably the most depressing thing to happen in this week in January ever. The researchers hadn’t done their job. The doctor’s paperwork was wrong. Roy didn’t want to let Hayley go. We weren’t told that he had a choice, that he had a legal right to care for her body at home. We weren’t made aware that there are undertakers who would have helped him do that. The ‘private ambulance’ (possibly the vilest euphemism in the English language) was summoned because “it’s what ‘appens.” Reduced to helpless bystander, Roy stood aside as the wordless corpse-collectors (well cast) carried off the love of his life. He wasn’t even invited to help. It was possibly the worst home removal in the history of undertaking.

Here was an opportunity to empower viewers. All it did was reinforce the dependency culture together with every negative feeling anyone has ever entertained concerning the dismal trade. The funeral will be led by a humanist. Let’s hope something good will come of that.

Happy January, everybody.

PS This is the GFG document about legal rights, downloadable from the website. If you spot any errors or omissions, do please let us know. Your legal rights and responsibilities.

The stalemate of funeral choice

22 January 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral directors, funeral music, Personalisation, Religious funerals, Requiem Mass, Secular approaches to death

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Cherishing freedom of speech we often quote the line, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. So democrats proselytise in order to influence others, and sometimes those influenced leave one tribe and join another. A far cry from relativism, the message is, choice is good, but don’t choose them when you can choose us.

Funeralworld is no exception, and no more so than in matters of faith. To illustrate the point, let’s fisk the views of an Anglican priest who embraces the clarity of set liturgy over the burden of unfettered individualism. Fisking in red.

Father Edward Tomlinson writes:

‘In the last few years it has become painfully obvious that many families I have conducted funerals for have absolutely no desire for any Christian content whatsoever’.

Yes, it’s clear many folk book the funeral services of C of E priests without any real enthusiasm for religious significance.

‘I have stood at the crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with ‘I Did It My Way’ blaring out across the speakers. To be brutally honest I can think of 100 better ways of spending my time as a priest on God’s earth’.

If you were saying noone should ever choose Sinatra, I’d call you a snob and busybody. As you’re saying, ‘why Sinatra and me, a priest?’, I sympathise. So what are you going to do about it? You could perhaps create a sensitive compromise that gently allows God’s presence to resonate: for example, people who haven’t been to a service in years might value their choice of, say, the Beatles’ Can’t Buy Me Love being linked to the words from 1 Timothy that ‘we bring nothing into this world and we take nothing out.’ Granted, you might be scratching your head to find such a link with some secular songs. ‘My Way’? If this smacks of fudge, your other option is to decline bookings unless they request pure liturgy.

‘Today the norm is to place the liturgy in the hands of a humanist provider or ancient crumbling cleric who will do as told, in short those who will not trouble undertakers with unavailability’.

The norm is not to place the liturgy in secular hands, although civil celebrants are indeed increasingly chosen for non-liturgical services. However, you’re right that undertakers have retired priests on speed dial due to their availability. But you did say working priests were quite busy enough doing priestly things without sitting through Tina Turner at the crem. Also, it’s uncharitable to refer to old people as ‘crumblies’. ‘Wrinklies’ is more acceptable.

‘I am troubled that pastoral care is being left in the hands of those whose main aim is to make money. And I am further concerned that an opportunity for evangelism is slipping through our fingers’.

It’s wrong to assume civil celebrants and retired priests are just in it for the money. Secondly, while it’s our duty to bear witness, evangelising of a finger-wagging nature is likely to score an own goal at a funeral where mourners have not specifically requested Christian liturgy. I return to the two C of E options: decline the booking or accept it, limiting evangelism to taking the secular elements and gently and resourcefully relating them to God’s universal truths.

‘It is my passionate belief that a requiem mass and the Christian prayers of ‘commendation and committal’ are not mere aesthetic choices in a market place of funeral options. Rather something real and significant is happening, on earth and in heaven, when these take place. Because I am a priest, I want to point the way to Jesus Christ. Naturally there will be those who disagree with my beliefs, I think they should have the right to exercise this choice, even if I think they’s misguided. But if this is your position, why invite me to the party?’

I agree Christian funeral liturgy is profound and sacred, and we both hold it can’t be imposed involuntarily on those who don’t share the faith, whether atheists, Jews, Muslims or Hindus. If you don’t feel you can point the way to Christ within the context of a funeral with secular elements, there’s no alternative but to opt out.

Your frustration is no doubt caused by genuine concern that people are missing out by choosing ‘Simply the Best’ on a sound system over prayers of commendation and committal. Perhaps your exasperation is heightened as you believe more people would share your view if they truly thought about what they wanted from a funeral. Some Christian-lites might, but decided atheists would not. The purpose of a funeral is in the eye of the beholder. That’s not relativism as we can still hold firm views for ourselves.

Footnote 1: I deliberately didn’t fully identify the priest until now as there’s a twist in this tale. Father Ed homlinson shared the above views while he was C of E vicar of St Barnabas church, Tunbridge Wells. He’s since converted to Catholicism where what can and cannot be done within the requiem mass are clearly defined. So no more hand-wringing conflicts between priestly obligations and pressure to offer secular choice. The menu is set, not à la carte. It’s now down to the free will of members of the Church to choose to dine or lapse elsewhere.

Footnote 2: At the time of speaking out, Fr T got a mixed response. ‘I think that most cremations I have been to that have been run by a humanist have all been more than off key,’ said Jane Greer. ‘Give me a good burial with a proper vicar anytime. It’s the difference between Cod’s Roe and Caviar.’ Denise Kantor Kaydar disagreed. ‘It should not matter if someone wants Verdi’s Requiem or Frank Sinatra. I think he is being a little insensitive, but he could be trying to incite a debate.’

Philip Treacy remembers Issie Blow

21 January 2014
Charles
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Categories: memorialisation

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Running until 2 March at London’s Somerset House, Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore! is an exhibition celebrating the extraordinary life and wardrobe of the late patron of fashion and art. To promote the show, one of her many protégés, milliner Philip Treacy, talks here. As the interview progresses, he gets increasingly emotional as he remembers a remarkable woman for whom life became too much.

In your prayers

20 January 2014
Charles
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Categories: Uncategorised

Some sharp comment here in Monday’s Times by David Aaronovitch:

Death prattle

Pieties are by no means always religious. I don’t know when the practice began in this country of appending “our thoughts are with etc” to any tribute to the recently departed, but it has gone too far.

No one can argue with saying that someone who has died was brave, or made an important contribution, or even that he or she will be much missed. Nor, in circumstances of traumatic pain, such as those attending, say, a massacre or major terrorist incident, does it seem insincere to mention the relatives, friends and communities from which the victims came.

But now, almost every Prime Minister’s Questions is prefaced by the phrase “today our thoughts (and sometimes our prayers) are with his/her family”, followed by a set of exchanges proving, if nothing else, that the expresser’s “thoughts” were in no such place.

When Ariel Sharon died last week, at the age of 85 after eight years in a coma, Ed Miliband made a statement noting Mr Sharon’s “impact” on the Middle East and then saying: “My thoughts today are with his family after the many years of his illness.” The Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, said the same thing.

I do not believe that Mr Miliband’s or Ms Solberg’s thoughts were with the Sharons. Has Ed even met the Sharons? It seems to me not impossible that that family was feeling hugely relieved — for Ariel Sharon and themselves — that this saga was finally over. So, shall we drop this unnecessary new habit?

Down To Earth is looking for a manager

20 January 2014
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorised
QSA2colour1

 
 

Down to Earth manager

Full time, £30,656, 

One in five people cannot afford a funeral. QSA seeks a full-time manager to deliver an award-winning project, Down to Earth, which provides independent funeral advice for people on low incomes in east London. The position includes management, planning and delivery, as well as monitoring and evaluation. 

The ideal candidate has experience of delivering community projects. Experience of related sectors, such as bereavement, is highly desirable. Knowledge of end of life issues, funerals, bereavement and debt are all desirable. The role involves working with professionals and vulnerable people, so you will also be an excellent communicator, with the ability to engage with individuals from a wide range of backgrounds.

Please download the job pack (PDF) and application form (Word document, includes equal opportunities monitoring form). 

The deadline for applications is 10am on Monday 3 February 2014. 

Interviews will take place on Tuesday 11 February 2014. 

Funerals, who needs em?

19 January 2014
Charles
24 Comments
Categories: celebrants, funeral, funeral cost, funeral customs, funeral directors, funeral trends, Secular approaches to death, traditional funerals

When England first played Scotland, on 30 November 1872, both teams employed formations that would raise eyebrows today. Scotland went for a cautious 2-2-6 while England employed a more swashbuckling 1-1-8. The game was all kick-and-rush in those days.

Kick-and-rush. It’s how businesses, anxious to futureproof themselves, respond to prophecy. Some bright spark peers into a crystal ball, dreams a dream and holds up a trembling finger. No matter that their vision is little more than a projection of their wishes and values, everyone rushes towards it.

Remember the Baby Boomer Hypothesis which held that, just as baby boomers reinvented youth culture, so they would reinvent death culture? Pretty much everybody bought that, including the entire advisory council of the GFG. The theory was that these free radicals would reject bleakness and embrace creative, themed, personalised, sometimes iconoclastic celebrations of life. The good news for the industry was that there would still be good money to be made from funerals so long as undertakers made the switch from cookie-cutter to bespoke; from being po-faced solemn-event planners to bright-eyed party-planners adding value through accessorisation and offering concierge-level service and red-carpet delivery. Pretty much the package Alex Polizzi tried to sell to David Holmes in The Fixer.

It’s not happening, is it? And as we take that in, we reflect that baby boomers have, yes, always been insouciant about what went before and unsentimental in their rejection of it. They’re re-inventors, not renovators. And they’re not all going the same way.

The evidence seems to be that baby boomers are increasingly asking themselves what good a funeral would do, really. More and more of them see little or no emotional or spiritual value in the experience. They’re not all rejecting them out of hand all at once. Some are dressing trad funerals up in a gently creative way with wacky hearses, jolly coffins and startling music choices. But on the whole they’re whittling them down. The reasons are complex and we’ve rehearsed some of them here before.

Dissatisfaction with the value offered by a funeral is probably most widely evidenced in the near-universal belief that funerals are too expensive — ie, they’re not worth what they cost. The strength of this rejection of funerals is evidenced in people’s unrealistic incredulity that a basic funeral should cost much more than having an old washing machine taken away.

Read the comments under any broadsheet article about funerals. The evidence of rejection is everywhere. If the effect of a funeral is to leave you feeling, next day, beached and empty, that’s not surprising. A funeral is supposed to fill a hole, not leave a void. Here are some recent comments in a discussion forum on Mumsnet, of all places:

My MIL has said … she wants the absolute bare minimum in terms of coffin and cremation. No service, no ‘do’ afterwards. Then she wants close family to either go somewhere nice for the weekend together. 

I had it put in my will that i don’t want any sort of funeral when i die. I think the money funeral directors charge for the most simple of services is utterly abhorrent

[My mother-in-law] died recently, she didn’t care what we did by way of funeral (I think her only words on the subject were that we could drop her off the pier for all she cared…)

My uncle didn’t want a service – he just went straight to the crematorium.

I wouldn’t want to burden love ones with the cost, I have life insurance but would want the cheapest option

It is criminal how the respectful disposal of our loved ones has turned into a million pound industry!

I have left strict instructions that I am to have no funeral service and I have made sure everyone knows about it. It is written in my will and my family would never go against my wishes. They know how strongly I feel about it.

Immediate cremation, ashes in a simple box and then take me down our local and stick me on the bar whilst everyone has a quick drink. Next day, throw my ashes in the sea at the place I grew up in as a child. That will do. No order of service with dodgy photos and poems, no wittering on about my life and no-one failing miserably to pick out my favourite songs. Boo hiss boo.

I am a crematorium manager, and can confirm that plenty of people choose to have no funeral service.

I just don’t get the whole thing. I’ve only ever been to one funeral that was really a lovely rememberence and not out of duty of what they thought they had to do. I would much rather my family used money to go on holiday to our favourite place and remembered me there.

My FIL keeps saying he doesn’t want a funeral and wants to be cremated asap with no ceremony or fuss.

We chose not to have a funeral for my dad when he died. Cardboard coffin, cremation with no service. I think he would have been pleased but I tend not to tell anyone as I have some judgey reactions as if we were being cheap (was not relevant) or he was not loved (he was very much).

The Mumsnet discussion includes a few objections on the lines of: ‘To be fair, it’s not really about you. It’s about the loved ones you left behind, it’s an essential grieving process.’ But the overwhelming majority can see no good in a funeral.

This would seem to overturn the supposition that excellent secular funeral celebrants and empathetic undertakers would save the public ceremonial funeral by making it meaningful once more. But there’s a growing realisation that you don’t need to put a corpse in a box and tote it to the crem in blackmobiles, you can create a perfectly satisfying, private, informal farewell event with ashes. Direct cremation, already growing rapidly, looks set to skyrocket.

I know that there are lots of people who believe that reports of the demise of the funeral are exaggerated. They tell me to stop being so pessimistic, things are getting better. But I had lunch with Fran Hall, chair of the Natural Death Centre on Friday, and was struck to discover she thinks as I do. She said, “One day soon the industry is going to wake up and find itself dead”.

It’s possible that there’s no saving the funeral — it’s had its time. After all, it’s not just Britain that’s saying nah. But funeral people, overly focussed on commercial concerns, are putting up absolutely no concerted philosophical defence.

If the public, ceremonial funeral is worth saving, now is the time for the best in the business, from all walks of belief, to come together and be an influential voice in public discourse about funerals, much of which remains incoherent. If the emotional and/or spiritual health of the nation is at stake, who better to do it? Ans: among others, the people whose livelihoods depend on it. Come on, don’t go down without a fight. Do we really need funerals? If so, why?

Don’t all rush, I could be wrong, this may not be a Dunkirk moment. But crisis or no there still exists a pressing need to make a considered, rational and persuasive case for funerals — if, that is, you truly believe they do any real, deep and lasting good. Do you?

There are an awful lot of people out there who don’t. If you can’t demonstrate the purpose and value of your product, who’d want to buy it?

Calling all telegenic undertakers

18 January 2014
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: family funeral directors

A phone call and two emails shattered the tranquillity here at the GFG-Batesville Shard late last week. The gist was: we are currently developing a new project for Channel 4, which will be an observational documentary series set in a funeral parlour. We envisage the series being warm and informative, recognising and celebrating the crucial role they play in the lives of families and the wider community.

The proposed format is similar to that of One Born Every Minute. Interested? Here’s more:

We would like to get in contact with family-run funeral parlours and, if possible, businesses where several members of the same family work alongside each other. We’re also really interested in finding a place that also specialise in repatriations, perhaps they ever have an office overseas, and exhumations. I’ve included a bit more information about Dragonfly and the types of programmes we make below. 

Dragonfly Film and Television is a BAFTA award-winning, independent television production company, specialising in factual programmes.  We work across all the major UK and international broadcasters, such as the BBC, Channel 4, Discovery and National Geographic.  

We have a proven track record of delivering thoughtful and sensitive single documentaries and series. 

Dragonfly have worked with many people, places and institutions – including maternity wards, hotels, schools and families in their homes, to create celebrated access-based series like The Hotel, The Family and Extreme A&E for Channel 4. We’ve also made subject-led programmes like the highly acclaimed Channel 5 documentary series My Secret Past featuring well known celebrities revealing the painful experiences they have dealt with and the BBC One documentary June Brown: Respect Your Elders examined the way we treat older people in society. 

Dragonfly’s programmes have a reputation for dealing with important and often sensitive subject matters, with warmth and integrity. From giving birth in One Born Every Minute to crashing a plane in Plane Crash, we always tell stories in an honest, thought-provoking and sensitively handled way. 

We have a team of experienced producers who are excellent at working with the people they film with to create a mutually beneficial environment that everyone is comfortable with. They know how to minimise disruption and work with small crews and unobtrusive cameras.  They excel at maintaining a good working relationship from the beginning of filming, until the programmes have aired. They develop transparent and trusting relationship with everyone they work with. 

Dragonfly’s Managing Director Simon Dickson was previously deputy head of documentaries at Channel 4 where he was responsible for re-inventing the popularity of documentaries with a whole raft of award-winning programmes such The Hospital, One Born Every Minute, Coppersand 24 Hours in A&E. Dragonfly’s Creative Director, Mark Raphael, during his time at Channel 4 commissioned a range of sensitive projects, including The Murder Trial, Bedlam, Educating Yorkshire and 999: What’s Your Emergency?

Contact Sarah Rubin at: Sarah.Rubin@dragonfly.tv