Where do you want to be buried?
Posted by Richard Rawlinson I’m extending the Easter holiday with a visit to a village in Bordeaux, where my friends’ house overlooks the graveyard of a Medieval church. With death oft going unseen and unspoken in our secular times, a graveyard is a reminder of our mortality, prompting us to contemplate the inevitable final day, […]
If small is beautiful, look lovely
There isn’t a single successful business in Britain that doesn’t seek to grow through mergers and acquisitions. Consolidation, they call it. It’s a factor of competitive capitalism. Or greed, if you prefer. Whichever. The bigger you are, the more efficiently you can trade. Efficiency enables you to bring your prices down, blow off competitors — […]
EXCLUSIVE: It’s going to be one wacky sendoff for Downton’s Matthew
The GFG can exclusively reveal that Downton star Matthew Crawley will be cremated in a way-out guerilla funeral on the ancestral estate in a ritual created by the grief-stricken family. Devotees of toff-soap Downton Abbey were left dazed and heartbroken at the end of the 2012 Christmas special when heir Matthew Crawley was violently killed […]
Ask not what you can do for the bereaved; ask what the bereaved can do for themselves
SCENE – A village wedding. Church bells. Assorted villagers have assembled at the lych gate waiting for a glimpse of the bride. They are joined by a TOURIST who happily happens to speak perfect English. VILLAGER: There she is! Just coming round the corner now. Ooh, it’s a Rolls! TOURIST: Who’s that walking in front […]
People’s undertaker doing fine
The Co-operative Group reports that, for the 53 weeks ended 5 January 2013, funerals revenue was up 6.4% to £348m, with operating profit up to £60m from £55m.
Is competition among celebrants killing off the fittest?
The funeral was in full swing and the celebrant was midway through that thing about life being a river that gets wider and wider when his phone went off in his trousers pocket. He furtively squeezed it into silence as he stumbled on. It may have been something by Kahlil Gibran. The phone shrilled out […]
Sacred geometry
In an as-told-to piece in today’s Sunday Times, extreme expeditioner Ed Stafford describes the hardships he underwent when he was dumped naked on a desert island. He found the loneliness and isolation especially difficult to bear. “My best technique for staying sane was something the Australian Aborigines taught me. I built a stone circle and […]
All that we miss
In his new book, Levels of Life, Julian Barnes writes of the grief he felt, and still feels, following the death of his wife, Pat Kavanagh. It centres on: “the loss of shared vocabulary, of tropes, teases, short cuts, in-jokes, sillinesses, faux rebukes, amatory footnotes — all those obscure references rich in memory but valueless if […]
Inheritance tax? LOL!
Richard Rawlinson casts a jaded, end-of-life eye over this week’s Budget. Boy George Osborne’s Budget did nothing to address the 40% IHT that clobbers so many after a death in the family. There’s nowt to be done about the ridiculous significance of seven years but here are seven tips to avoid IHT: 1 Make your will […]
Good Funeral Awards 2012
Coming to your screen soon on Sky 1. Sign up to this year’s Good Funeral Awards and enjoy a weekend of great talks, good fellowship and fantastic networking here. Oh, just in case you wondering, no one was paid in the making of this film — none of us, that is.
