Did Marc Bolan predict his own death?
Posted by Richard Rawlinson T-Rex star Marc Bolan died, aged 29, in a car crash in west London in the early hours of a September morning in 1977. His girlfriend Gloria Jones was driving him home from a night in Mayfair when her purple Mini smashed into a tree by the side of the road. Even […]
The makes-you-proud-to-be-British way of death
Alice Pitman, in the Christmas edition of the Oldie magazine, describes her extremely unwell 88 year-old mother rising to the occasion in hospital: Eventually a porter came and perfunctorily wheeled her to theatre. [We] followed down an interminably long corridor, the Aged P issuing instructions over her shoulder about what we were to do if […]
Caitlin Moran offers posthumous advice to her daughter
Here’s one we missed earlier: journalist Caitlin Moran’s draft last letter to her daughter published in The Times in July of last year (remember 2013?). You can find the entire article (£) here. My daughter is about to turn 13 and I’ve been smoking a lot recently, and so – in the wee small hours, […]
Should women be allowed to go to funerals?
I don’t suppose there can be many ‘indigenous’ funerals held these days which prohibit the presence of women. There may be one or two redoubts in Presbyterian Scotland. Bucking the trend in the wider community, though, many Muslims prohibit their presence. Why ban women from funerals? To spare their feelings, mostly. Or put it another […]
Funerals for peace?
Posted by Vale Why don’t we want to fight any more? After centuries of sending out the gunboats, the bombers or the troopships, with a wave, a cheery heart and perhaps a chorus of ‘Goodbyee’ suddenly we are not so keen. Britain’s reputation is at stake. Has the British bulldog turned into a lapdog? The […]
What’s next?
Don’t underestimate the insistence of the human ego on a negotiated immortality and the dread of losing even this. If all the people on earth die, and there are no more to come, it also means that my traces, my genes and the children who carry them, my influence on others, words I have written and […]
The Protestant death ethic
WHEN any person departeth this life, let the dead body, upon the day of burial, be decently attended from the house to the place appointed for publick burial, and there immediately interred, without any ceremony. And because the custom of kneeling down, and praying by or towards the dead corpse, and other such usages, in […]
Death Over Dinner
It seems that Death Cafe has spawned a little brother, birthplace Portland Oregon, dob sometime earlier this summer. It’s name is Death Over Dinner. The aims of Death Over Dinner are pretty much the same as those of Death Cafe, namely, to get folk together to talk about you-know-what. It’s the initiative of Michael Hebb, […]
Tea with Daisy
In which our guest blogger Richard Rawlinson is compelled to account for a socially questionable hobby I googled your name recently and found you on some funeral blog site. What’s that all about? Ha ha, oh yeah, I know the guy who runs it. Just help him out every once in a while. I think you’re […]
Does death really matter so little?
Citizens of the UK have no statutory right to bereavement leave. Momentous as the event of a death may be, it is not reckoned to be of sufficient magnitude to enjoy equal rights with birth. Says a lot about our cultural attitudes to mortality, doesn’t it? There’s currently an e-petition calling for a legal right […]
