Author: Charles

Brahn Boots – Stanley Holloway

26 July 2012
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: Etiquette, music

Our Aunt Hanna’s passed away,
We ‘ad her funeral today,
And it was a posh affair,
Had to have two p’licemen there!

The ‘earse was luv’ly, all plate glass,
And wot a corfin!… oak and brass!
We’d fah-sands weepin’, flahers galore,
But Jim, our cousin… what d’yer fink ‘e wore?

Why, brahn boots!
I ask yer… brahn boots!
Fancy coming to a funeral
In brahn boots!

I will admit ‘e ‘ad a nice black tie,
Black fingernails and a nice black eye;
But yer can’t see people orf when they die,
In brahn boots!

And Aunt ‘ad been so very good to ‘im,
Done all that any muvver could for ‘im,
And Jim, her son, to show his clars…
Rolls up to make it all a farce,

In brahn boots…
I ask yer… brahn boots!
While all the rest,
Wore decent black and mourning suits.

I’ll own he didn’t seem so gay,
In fact he cried most part the way,
But straight, he reg’lar spoilt our day,
Wiv ‘is brahn boots.

In the graveyard we left Jim,
None of us said much to him,
Yus, we all gave ‘im the bird,
Then by accident we ‘eard …

‘E’d given ‘is black boots to Jim Small,
A bloke wot ‘ad no boots at all,
So p’raps Aunt Hanna doesn’t mind,
She did like people who was good and kind.

But brahn boots!
I ask yer… brahn boots!
Fancy coming to a funeral,
In brahn boots!

And we could ‘ear the neighbours all remark
“What, ‘im chief mourner? Wot a blooming lark!
“Why ‘e looks more like a Bookmaker’s clerk…
In brahn boots!”

That’s why we ‘ad to be so rude to ‘im,
That’s why we never said “Ow do!” to ‘im,
We didn’t know… he didn’t say,
He’d give ‘is other boots away.

But brahn boots!
I ask yer… brahn boots!
While all the rest,
Wore decent black and mourning suits!

But some day up at Heavens gate,
Poor Jim, all nerves, will stand and wait,
’til an angel whispers… “Come in, Mate,
“Where’s yer brahn boots?”

Not cricket

26 July 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Humour

Upset by the sale of Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to PSG, a group of AC Milan supporters expressed the widely held disappointment of their fellow football fans by leaving a small funeral arrangement outside the club’s via Turati offices. A funeral card, candles and flowers were set up near the building’s front door in the scene made to symbolize the faith some fans have left in the club after selling two of their best players.

London’s Pyramid of Death

26 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: burial, cemeteries, memorialisation

Posted by Belinda Forbes

In the second of BBC Radio 4’s series Unbuilt Britain, Jonathan Glancey describes one of the most audacious buildings ever planned for London – it would have been the largest pyramid ever built.

Church yards were so crowded at the beginning of the 19th century that corpses were literally bursting out of the soil.  Some people believed that a necropolis for the dead might be the answer.  In 1829 the architect Thomas Willson came up with a proposal for the storage of millions of dead bodies in a pyramid situated in Primrose Hill, North London, one of the highest places in London.  Constructed from brick with granite facings, it would have been 94 storeys high and the base would have covered 18 acres.  In his prospectus, Willson claimed that the mausoleum would have made about £10,000,000 – an enormous amount in those days.   He hoped that people would enjoy looking up at this splendid monument as they ate their picnics.

The City of London Archive holds Willson’s drawings and ground plans.  Catharine Arnold, author of ‘Necropolis: London and its Dead’ said that the pyramid was to have been ‘compact, hygienic and ornamental’.

At the time of Willson’s plans, there was a fashion for anything Egyptian so his proposal was not as outlandish as it seems.  Thomas de Quincy, in an opium induced trance, dreamed of meeting Isis and Osiris and ‘being buried…in the heart of eternal pyramids.’ However, public opinion stopped this monumental pyramid of the dead from being built.  It was regarded as too over-bearing.  The idea of a garden cemetery was the preferred option of the General Cemetery Company. If the pyramid had been built, it would have cast a great shadow over the park of Primrose Hill.

Jonathan Glancey’s fascinating programme is available on BBC iPlayer here.

The view below the radar

26 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity, funeral cost, funeral directors, funeral trends, Marketing, pre-need plans

An article in the Times dated 15 July, based on an interview with Mike McCollum, ceo of Dignity plc, offers one or two (no more) features of interest.

His definition of an undertaker?

“We’re event organisers,” says McCollum. “We arrange a family event for you on very short notice, which you wish you didn’t have to arrange.”

He adds:

“And, on the day of the funeral, we’re the master of ceremonies. The funeral director makes sure everything goes exactly to plan, to the second, and hopefully makes sure everybody, in an unfamiliar situation, knows where to sit and where to go.”

He doesn’t say if he regards this model as eternal, nor whether he is aware of trends towards empowered mourners who take a different view of the brief of a funeral event planner.

Concerning the travails of his reassuringly inept rivals, ‘Co-operative’ Funeralcare, he is defensive of the hub model and reckons “it’s time people accepted some home truths”.

“The definition of a mortuary is a place where dead people are kept. When people die and they can be in different conditions. You need specialist refrigeration, specialist conditions. You’d expect them to be clinical, to use stainless steel equipment, to be easy to clean. They’re not necessarily going to be nice places to be.”

Hmn.

By way of assuring Times readers who are also Dignity shareholders, the article points out that Dignity’s market capitalisation has risen from £180m to £446m and the share price from 230p to 810p. The writer does not detect the present injurious effect of underfunded funeral plans. Nor does he point out Dignity’s Achilles heel, its high prices, vulnerable, in an increasingly price-conscious market, to consumer scrutiny. Nor does he question Dignity’s policy of brand omerta, a remarkable stance for an outfit in the event-planning business.

Would you buy shares in Dignity?

Source (paywalled)

First impressions

25 July 2012
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: celebrants, Formality vs informality, funeral customs, Religious funerals

By Richard Rawlinson

You want celebrants to say good things well, but how do you want them to dress? If you’re opting for a civil funeral, do you want them business-like in a dark suit or to join in any sartorial theme requested by the departed? If you’re opting for a religious funeral, do you prefer traditional vestments or those favoured by the more progressive clergy?

Ash astray

25 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: ashes

A man suffered humiliation and distress at the hands of an airport security agent when she insisted on opening a jar containing his grandfather’s remains and then dropped them on the floor.

John Gross, of Indianapolis, was trying to bring Mario Mark Marcaletti’s ashes home from Florida and had them in his bag in a tightly sealed jar clearly marked ‘Human Remains’.

The 91-year-old’s remains had been divided up among family members after he died in 2002 and Gross had been given a share by his uncle during his trip.

He was confronted by the TSA [Transport Security Authority] officer and explained what was in the container.

‘They opened up my bag, and I told them, “Please, be careful. These are my grandpa’s ashes.”

‘She picked up the jar. She opened it up.

‘She used her finger and was sifting through it. And then she accidentally spilled it.’

As a third of the jar’s contents fell out onto the floor Gross frantically tried to gather it back up, a line of passengers waiting behind him.

‘She didn’t apologize. She started laughing.”

Full story here.

Hat tip to Evelyn Temple

New life for dead house

25 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

For sale, a beach hut fit for an undertaker, Goth or melancholic. It’s the old mortuary at Saltburn-by-the-sea, it comes with its original  slab, it’s Grade 2 listed and it’s on the market, guide price unknown. For further details, contact Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.

Hat tip Tony Piper

Deathbed marijuana

25 July 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Psychoactive drugs

From NorthJersey.com:

As a funeral director, Joseph Stevens regularly heard mourners talk about how they had purchased marijuana on the street to ease their dying loved ones’ suffering. They would mention how the drug improved their ailing relatives’ quality of life during the last weeks of their lives.

Marijuana provides relief to people on their deathbeds while allowing them to remain conscious, capable of functioning and interacting with their loved ones.

“It was unbelievable, the stories I heard,” said Stevens, 50. Grieving relatives would say “the last conversations they probably would’ve never had if it wasn’t for marijuana.”

Read the rest of the story here.

ED’S NOTE: In our opinion, it’s high time medics engaged with the benefits of psychoactive drugs in end-stage care of the dying.

Mourning glory

24 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: ashes, Dress codes, Etiquette, funeral customs, funeral trends, memorialisation

By our funeral historian, Richard Rawlinson

Ashes into Glass is a jewellery company that inserts cremation ashes into crystal glass rings, pendants, earring and cufflinks. See the results here

“It has helped me feel a little calmer about losing my dear Mum by knowing that a little part of her is always with me,” says Teresa Evans Mortimer in one of the customer testimonials.

There’s something rather Victorian about companies marketing their products specifically at the bereaved (bereaved people). Queen Victoria made jet beads soar in popularity along with lockets holding curls of hair from deceased loved ones. 

Stationers such as Henry Rodrigues of Piccadilly offered black bordered note paper and envelopes, and the London General Mourning Warehouse advertised in The Times (1 November 1845) that “millinery, dresses, cloaks, shawls, mantles, &c., of the best quality can be purchased at the most reasonable prices.” Such an emporium would be a Goth’s paradise today.

Then again, when Victoria died, the Secretary to the Drapers’ Chamber of Trade, wrote to The Times (26 January 1901) to suggest that the 12 months of Court Mourning would profoundly impact on the retail drapery trade which ordered colourful cloth three or four months in advance. 

Ironically, although expected to mourn, women were generally advised against attending funerals. Cassell’s Household Guide for 1878 discourages the practice pointing out that it is something done by female relatives in the poorer classes.

Ready, steady, gone.

23 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: ADRT, End-of-life issues, Longevity

“Most of us do not want to die in the ICU tethered to tubes — not the quality of life we expect. Yet only 30 percent of us have made arrangements to prevent this from happening. Death and dying is a tough subject for us to broach. Be aware that very few of us will die in our sleep — most have a slow sometimes excruciating decline to death.

“I bet you didn’t know that less than one in seven CPR recipients live to leave the hospital (don’t feel bad, many doctors don’t know this). Other studies show that few elderly patients or patients with cancer live to leave the hospital after CPR. Despite the fact that CPR was developed to resuscitate patients in cardiac arrest, CPR is mandatory to rescue the terminally and critically ill, unless there is an advanced DNR directive. One in five people die in intensive care with the last few months of life being expensive, painful, and futile exercises in medical care.”

Source