When the fog feels like a cage without a key
All so-called caring professions suffer from it. The difference is that they talk about it. If the British stiff upper lip is making its last stand, it’s down among the undertakers where resistance is mutely fiercest. We’re talking about Can’t-Take-It-Anymore Syndrome, aka compassion fatigue, burnout, depression, nervous breakdown. Read all the symptoms here. How could […]
Remembrance Day #3
The window of the Individual Funeral Company, Oxford. Proprietor Lucy Jane tells us: ‘Almost everything in the window was donated by my cousins Lewis & Chay Coulbert and was used by them in Afghanistan. They also gave me lots of pictures. The large one in the front of the window is Lewis while he was […]
RIP R Sage ur a ledgend & ull be back
In case you missed it, the Mary Mayer Funeral Home, run by the mischievous Richard Sage under the moniker of Mark Kerbey, is in liquidation. He’s still there and was sighted at the crem a couple of days ago. Our spies have him under observation with strong binoculars. Where next will he rise again […]
Undertakers on parade
Undertakers aren’t noted for versatility when it comes to window-dressing, and they’re not to be blamed for this. If you’re in the death business there’re all sorts of things you simply can’t put on display. Not that this in any way excuses an assortment of dusty headstones and urns dotted by dead flies and […]
Introducing the Citroen Type-H hearse
You’ll be wanting to give a warm welcome to John Turvill’s Citroen Type-H van hearse. He’s been getting it ready for a while now, and we have enjoyed corresponding with him as he has drawn closer to launching. The website’s not finished yet — his photographer hasn’t managed to make time yet to snap it […]
Habeas corpse
Bristol undertaker Thomas Davis has been branded a “‘Burke and Hare’ operation” by MP Caroline Noakes after her constituent Peter Williams accused the undertakers of taking his mother-in-law’s body from Bristol Royal Infirmary and keeping it for ten days without asking. She said: “Thomas Davis acted unlawfully, because all that had been requested by the Williams family […]
While you’re at it, why not lob another ancestor cult into the pot?
As you don your sad-rags, zombie gear, horror clobber, skeleton onesie or whatever it is that floats your boat at this season which sees the ungainly coupling of All Hallows Day, Samhain and the Mexican Dia de los Muertos enhanced/corrupted by commercialism and rendered incoherent by cheap thrills and facepainting, the team here at the […]
The scandal waiting to happen — again and again
Some of you will not be surprised that the following story involves Andrew Baker. It doesn’t end with him, guilty or not. When it comes to the mis-selling of pre-need funeral products, we ain’t seen nothing yet. From the Gloucestershire Echo: Andrew Baker, aged 50, who lives in Pebworth near Honeybourne in Worcestershire was arrested […]
Carpe diem
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Some of us enjoy our jobs; the social and creative buzz, and the income. Some of us also look forward to retirement; liberation from work routine, and time to pursue other interests, be it camper van touring or attempting a novel. But anecdotes about retirees reveal pros and cons. Retire too early […]
Longevity may not be all bad after all
An article in the New York Times reviews a new memoir about caring for an elderly relative in this age of protracted dying. It is“The Fifth Season: A Daughter-in-Law’s Memoir of Caregiving,” by Lisa Ohlen Harris. It’s about “the pressures of having Jeanne, the active mother-in-law who moved in to help with the kids and […]
