Author: Charles

Know your foe

26 September 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: funeral directors

Overheard at the Joy of Death convention: “I wish all these conventional funeral directors weren’t here, I think this event should only be for progressives.” My heart sank. We don’t need another postcode gang in Funeralworld. It’s beginning to feel like Peckham.

Name-calling, in-fighting, backstabbing. Somebody ought to do something about it.

And scapegoating. There are those who are wondering who exactly it was who set ITV onto the scent of Funeral Partners and, specifically, Gillman’s. Fingers have been pointed at the ‘greens’.

We have itched to feature one of these treacherous, alternative green undertakers who unaccountably know better than investigative journalists where to look for plague and pestilence in the industry.

Every time we receive a report of a sighting we set out like eager twitchers to pin down the exotic renegade and put the searing questions:  “How do you know so much? What’s your beef?”

When we get there we find a decent, modest person who meets bereaved people where they are and accompanies them to where they want to go. If anything distinguishes them it is not their militancy but their emotional intelligence. Most anti-climactic of all, they do lots of ‘traditional’ funerals — but don’t think of them that way. Try as you may, the only label you can pin on them is ‘good’

As to this evening’s documentary (ITV1, 10.35), if you’re wondering who the stool pigeons are, don’t. Put yourself in the researchers’ shoes. You want to get an undercover guy into a little independent? “Sorry mate, no jobs here.”

So you target the businesses with staff turnover. 

One of our own

26 September 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Marilyn Watts died at 4.30 in the morning on Tuesday. She had been suffering from cancer. 

Well known to many in the world of funerals, she was Anne Barber’s right-hand person at Civil Ceremonies and was instrumental, together with Anne and Professor Tony Walter, in creating a pioneering training programme for funeral celebrants designed to meet the needs of those families who want “a funeral driven by the wishes, beliefs and values of the deceased and their family, not by the beliefs or ideology of the person conducting the funeral.” 

Wry, dry, tell-it-as-it-is; incredibly hardworking; inexhaustibly supportive; immensely warm-hearted and affectionate. 

Go safe, Marilyn. Our love goes with you. We hold in our thoughts all those closest to you, especially Cliff. 

Marilyn’s funeral will be on 12 October (Friday) at around 2.00pm. Finalised details to follow.

When words fail

26 September 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Books

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

As both mother of a son with learning disabilities and also Professor of Psychiatry of Disability at St George’s, University of London, Baroness Hollins is well qualified to be founder and editor of the Books Beyond Words series, which communicates through pictures difficult messages to people with learning disabilities, including the topics of death and sex.

Am I Going to Die? tells the story of John, who is terminally ill, and deals with physical deterioration and emotional aspects of dying. The pictures highlight the importance of going on special outings, of remembering good times, and of saying goodbye to family and friends.

Other titles include When Mum Died and When Dad Died, which take a gentle and straightforward approach to grief in the family. The approach is non-denominational, and one illustrates a burial and another a cremation.

More info here.

Low cost is the price of low value

26 September 2012
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors

Barnet funeral experts are unsurprised by news that London is the most expensive place in the country to die.

Emma Sargant, Director of Churchills Family Funeral Directors in East Barnet Road said: “I haven’t put my prices up since 2008.”

However, Barry Broad of Brooks Funerals in Church Hill Road said there are options for people. He said: “Funerals are expensive but we specialise in low cost funerals and our customers say that we are about half the price of the bigger funeral directors.”

We suppose that the story is similar throughout Britain. Funeral costs double more or less every ten years, so Ms Sargant has taken a heck of a hit. 

Yes, there’s a recession on. And third-party costs have risen faster than funeral directors’ charges, especially the cost of cremation. But is that the whole story?

The GFG is inclined to encourage funeral directors to audit the value of the funerals they sell — emotional value. Give your clients more time. Work with them to achieve a better end result.

We suspect that people would be prepared to pay more if they got more from the experience. After all, they’re still forking out for weddings. 

What constitutes corpse abuse?

25 September 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Legal rights, Rights of the bereaved

We don’t have abuse of a corpse laws in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, nor Scotland, not like they do in the US. Indeed, the laws around what you can, can’t and must do with a corpse in the UK are few — so few that we’ve never managed to discover what they are. Perhaps you know?

The status of the dead body is the point at issue. A dead body isn’t property, neither is it human. So, for example, no one can rape a dead body, but there is in fact a law which criminalises sexual penetration of a corpse. It’s a different thing, you see?

In the same way, you can’t arrest a corpse for debt.

But what else can’t you do? 

In the US there are state laws which forbid abuse of corpses. They vary from state to state, but in essence they all outlaw two things:

1. treating a corpse in a way which would outrage family sensibilities

2. treating a corpse in a way which would outrage community sensibilities. 

If we had the same sorts of laws in the UK it is conceivable, if the Daily Mail is to be believed, that the outcome of Wednesday’s ITV exposé might have involved the police. 

Keeping in with the in-breath

25 September 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

Caroline Goyder, voice coach to the stars and lesser luminaries, asked us to call to mind the person we love most. Did you notice, she asked after we’d done it, that you marked their arrival in your mind with a little in-breath? 

Did you?

When you’re speaking in public, she says, you need to preface each new thought or idea or piece of information with an in-breath. It lends spontaneity, freshness and emphasis to what you’re saying. It converts the cut and dried on your page into living, just-arrived words. It transforms a reading-aloud exercise into public speaking. 

We were then put through an exercise. We recited Churchill’s Fight on the Beaches speech: “We shall fight on the beaches (in-breath) we shall fight on the landing grounds (in-breath) we shall fight in the fields and in the streets (in-breath) we shall fight in the hills (longer in-breath) we shall never surrender. 

It’s a brilliant tip. Celebrants, do try it. It’s likely to slow you up, of course. The trade-off is that it will enable you to add meaning and impact to your ceremonies.

Caroline’s tip set me wondering about the most appropriate word count for a funeral service. A hundred words a minute is normally reckoned a good ballpark delivery speed but, given the diminished mental and emotional processing power of most funeral audiences, a more appropriate delivery speed probably lies nearer seventy words a minute. 

The occasion was the UK Speechwriters’ Guild annual convention last Friday organised by our good friend Brian Jenner, the genius behind the Joy of Death convention. I met all sorts of very nice and interesting people from the UN and the EU, and addressed them at speeds approaching a thousand miles an hour about eulogy writing. 

Two closing observations. First, judging by the speechwriters present, you’d never ask a speechwriter to deliver a speech. What celebrants do — write and perform — is rare. How many actors write their own plays? 

Second, the celebrancy orgs would do well to develop ties with speechwriters, and individual celebrants ought to consider joining the UK Speechwriters’ Guild. 

Did I say two? I’ve just remembered a third. Caroline Goyder has written a book, The Star Qualities. I’ve ordered a copy. You might like to, too. 

Caroline Goyder’s website here.

UK Speechwriters’ Guild here. 

You, the good news and Channel 5

24 September 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: celebrants, funeral, funeral customs, funeral directors, funeral trends

We are pleased to pass on to you this appeal from a TV production company making a good-news documentary for Channel 5. We’ve spoken to them at length and like them. If you have created a really special funeral, or are a funeral director or a celebrant who has collaborated, or is currently collaborating, with families to achieve something special, we encourage you to get in touch. 

Planning a personalised funeral? Breaking with convention? 

We’re making a really positive television documentary for Channel 5. We would like to show the diverse range of possibilities for people to take control of their funeral and create ceremonies and memorials that are more personal and reflective of the individual concerned. The documentary aims to explore all the diverse ways this can be done which the wider public may not know about. 

As producers, it has been a real eye opener to learn that the conventional funeral is a Victorian invention and that legally we are much freer to do things differently than we ever realised. We’d love to get this across and to illustrate it we’d like to meet people who are planning a personalised funeral or memorial. We are not prescriptive and open to all new suggestions. We will be filming from mid September to the end of October. 

The tone of the programme will celebrate the diverse range of commemorations that are possible and highlight a more contemporary approach to marking death in a really positive way. We hope the film itself may serve as a good memory and we can make it available to families. In certain circumstances we may be able to contribute towards expenses. 

Back2Back Productions is a Brighton-based documentary production company specialising in high quality factual programming and you can see our work on our website.  

If this sounds interesting please get in touch and feel free to ask us anything at all about the project. anne.mason@back2back.tv or  01273 227700

Cool heads, warm hearts

24 September 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, scandals

Anticipation is building in advance of ITV’s upcoming exposé of the funeral industry. We don’t have to tell you that the industry’s pulse is beating fast in anticipation of ITV’s upcoming shocker. Pre-emptive fury and sulphurous denunciation have already broken out in the comments columns of our blog, threatening to subvert the civility and coolness which normally characterise debate here. 

A more judicious course for all of us at this time would be dispassionately to appraise the evidence uncovered by the programme after we have seen it, consider the reactions of viewers — once and future clients of funeral service — and respond constructively. What some of the more intemperate writers of comments on this blog fail to understand is exactly how their ranting and stigmatising makes them look. You thought it was bad when you watched the programme? Look what these guys say, look at the way they say it.

As Bryan Powell (commenting under his real name, as he always does) points out here, the story of Funeral Partners is not all bad.  Well, it was unlikely to be as simple as that, was it? If you know enough, it’s impossible not to feel conflicted. One of the most superb funeral directors we know works for Funeral Partners. 

At the same time, it looks as if FPL is going to have some explaining to do. There will be different schools of thought on how such a deplorable state of affairs could have developed. 

The effectiveness of the NAFD will once again be called into question, and there is likely to be renewed call for regulation. The stated position of the NAFD is as follows:

Members of the National Association of  Funeral Directors are totally committed to raising and maintaining the highest level of customer service through the strict adherence to the Association’s Code of Practice. The NAFD supports the principle of self regulation of the funeral sector, whereby any business wishing to operate within the United Kingdom would be required to be in membership of a trade association operating a strictly monitored Code of Practice and a robust and independent client redress scheme.

Looking ahead to Wednesday (ITV, 10.35) there will be facts and there will be context. Let’s not generalise. The upside of a bloody awful mess like this is that it offers an opportunity to put things right. Cool heads and warm hearts  are called for.