death and funerals

Don’t miss this!

3 May 2016
Fran Hall
2 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to death, death and funerals

Thinking Outside the Box

Brighton looks like the place to be for anyone with half an interest in funeralworld this May – GFG favourite Liz Rothschild is performing her one-woman show Outside The Box at the Brighton Fringe Festival from May 14th – 17th.

Billed as ‘A live show about death’, Outside The Box is a spoken word performance of stories collected from life’s finish-line by Liz, a performer, celebrant and manager of Cemetery of the Year 2015, Westmill Woodland Burial Ground.

The promotional flyer reads ‘This groundbreaking show combines mercurial tales and miraculous truths with a hint of history and some pithy commentary on the funeral industry (from one who knows). And there is a chance to share the conversation and add your http://www.besttramadolonlinestore.com stories to the show’s repertoire as Liz takes it round the country this year and next.’

At GFG Towers we have seen the script – and booked our tickets! If you can make it along to Village in Islingword Road to see Liz, come and join us – tickets are £8 each and available from the Fringe Box Office here 

If you can’t get to Brighton but would be interested in working with Liz to put on a performance of Outside the Box in your area contact here here

Elephant in the Room event success

30 March 2015
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: death and funerals, End-of-life issues, Plan your own funeral
Posted by Wendy Coulton

The elephant had well and truly left the room when the first event of its kind about dying matters was held in Plymouth to challenge the taboo which comes with the D word.

A positive unexpected outcome came from bringing together likeminded people under one roof which has now planted the seed for a professional forum whereby we will meet again, perhaps quarterly, in a social setting to find out what eachother is doing and identify how we can mutually support our efforts to improve the experience for the bereaved.

When I read the feedback cards afterwards I got tearful though that may have just been from exhaustion and relief! There genuinely was overwhelming support for the purpose of the event and calls for similar opportunities to be repeated.

The Lord Mayor of Plymouth and Lady Mayoress attended the launch with a keynote talk by George Lillie, South West representative of The Dying Matters Coalition. All the talks were well presented, thought provoking and informative. The free advice hub was visited by people who were just curious and others with specific questions.

We had no idea what response we would get because dying matters are not a topic people are comfortable with and tend to avoid but the elephant had well and truly left the room by the end of our event. There was respectful open discussion about a wide range of topics including organ donation, legal and money matters, hospicecare, green funerals and carer experience of death. It was a fantastic team effort.

The large red papier mache elephant centrepiece in the advice hub has been garaged…until his services are required sometime next year!

The last word in bucket lists

18 November 2013
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: cemeteries, death and funerals, Good books, memorialisation

It was nice to have Ann Treneman write for us last week about the vital importance of specifying where you want your dust or ash to repose. 

But I’m afraid I’ve got a big problem with her book, Finding the Plot: 100 Graves to Visit Before You Die. Dang it, you pick it up for a gentle browse and you just can’t put the darn thing down. 

What it was, exactly, that originally impelled the parliamentary sketch-writer of The Times to become a leisure-time graveyard rabbit we don’t know because, of course, she cannot fully account for it. You understand as well as anyone that mortality exerts a mysterious gravitational pull on people in myriad ways. The way it tugs Ann is to inspire her to go graving. That’s what she calls it, graving. 

It wasn’t long before Ann discovered that there are already lots of books about famous graves out there — so what makes hers different? 

She sets out her criteria. Her hundred graves had to be eclectic, iconic, accessible and ‘not too depressing or upsetting … I was also wary of murder victims. This book is about lives, not deaths.’ She also set herself the task of visiting every single one of them, a journey that took her as far as the north coast of Scotland. No wonder the book took four years to write. Around half are in London because, ‘per square mile, London has the most interesting dead people of anywhere in the world.’

You’ll find, of course, that some of your favourites are missing. In place of them are some you never dreamed of. There’s the grave of Anthony Pratt, inventor of Cluedo, in Bromsgrove, and that of Dusty Springfield in Henley-on-Thames. There are three graves of people obsessed with big cats. At Malmesbury is that of Hannah Twynnoy, torn to pieces by a tiger. At Hampstead lies George Wombwell, his tomb topped by Nero, his pet lion. And at Abney park rests Frank C Bostock, lion tamer, who died of the flu. 

In short, there can be no quibbling with the rich variety of people Ann Treneman has chosen to commemorate. 

The best thing about the book, after its subjects, is the way it is written. Treneman writes with light-touch humour which moves easily to touching seriousness when describing, say, the graves of the Hancock family of Eyam, six little children’s headstones clustered round their father’s, victims of the Plague (pictured below). 

Yes, it’s a very good read. Hint strongly to your partner that you’d like it for Christmas — or surrender to temptation and buy it now. We give it five stars. 

Funerals for peace?

2 October 2013
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, ceremony, death and funerals

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 Ministry of Defence is so worried that they have commissioned a study. What can they do to make the idea of going to war more appealing?

One of the answers, as ever, is by making sure we are ignorant of the consequences and for the first time it puts fds in the firing line.

The Guardian reports that the MoD had considered a number of steps, including reducing:

“the profile of the repatriation ceremonies” – an apparent reference to the processions of hearses carrying coffins draped in the union flag that were driven through towns near RAF bases where bodies were brought back.

For four years up to 2011, 345 servicemen killed in action were brought back to RAF Lyneham and driven through Royal Wootton Bassett, in Wiltshire, in front of crowds of mourners. Since then, bodies have been repatriated via RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, with hearses driven through nearby Carterton.

The MoD’s suggestion received a scathing reaction from some families of dead military personnel. Deborah Allbutt, whose husband Stephen was killed in a friendly fire incident in Iraq in 2003, described the proposals for repatriation ceremonies as “brushing the deaths under the carpet”.

What do you think? Should these ceremonies go – for the greater good of course?

You can read the full article here.

What would you like to see on your TV?

19 June 2013
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: ceremony, death and funerals, funeral, funeral customs, funeral trends, funerals in other cultures, memorialisation, Reasons to go to a funeral, Secular approaches to death

When media people phone the press office here at the GFG-Batesville Shard, their requests for information often conform to whatever they suppose to be trending.

“We’re doing something on living funerals. Are these catching on?”

“No.”

“We’re doing a documentary about the dying process and we want to film someone actually dying. Can you help us?”

“No.”

“Arranging a funeral?”

“No.”

When they say they want to expose malpractice, we urge them to shine a light on good practice, too, in the interest of fairness and balance.  We can introduce you to lots of good undertakers, we say. They always promise. They never do.

Today we received an enquiry about the growth of professional mourners in the UK. We replied a little perfunctorily that there hasn’t been. Actually, there’s an outfit called Rent A Mourner but we’ve always thought it must be a spoof. Have you ever encountered a professional mourner? We thought that would be the end of it.

But the enquirer, Malcolm Neaum of CB Films, pursued the topic on a broader front. Are British funerals being in any way cross-fertilised by multiculturalism, he wondered. And it’s a good question because, even though they haven’t to any remarkable degree, we have from time to time, on this discount cialis coupon blog, discussed the desirability of respectfully and gratefully adapting rituals and observances from other cultures with which to enrich our own ‘secular’ funerals, many of which are beautifully and expertly scripted, but are characterised by a DVT-threatening inactivity on the part of the audience. Funerals are going to go on evolving. The question is whether they are going to evolve in the direction of elaboration or extinction. 

Malcolm is keen to make a documentary about funerals — has been for some time. He tells us: ‘I’ve been working in documentaries for 15 years and have never been able to get a commissioning editor interested in even approaching the topic of death.’ 

He adds: ‘My grandfather died last year and I can’t help but feel that so much of the symbolism and power has been stripped from a modern day funeral. Hopefully, an interesting programme may be an opportunity to you explore the funeral ritual in modern times.’

Malcolm has asked me to ask you what you think. What could he most usefully make a programme about? 

It’s a rare thing to be asked what we think. I hope you will tell him. He says, ‘it’s very exciting to think what we will hear back.’ 

Go on: excite him!

ITV Exposure Responses FPL & NAFD

24 October 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: death and funerals, funeral directors, Funeral Partners, National Association of Funeral Directors

The following statement was read out after the Exposure programme 24.10.2012

‘Last month in ‘The British Way of Death’ Exposure went under cover in the funeral industry at Funeral Partners Limited revealing racism and disrespect of bodies and the bereaved.

 FPL who own the branches in Slough and Tooting, where we’d been filming, have apologised, five people have been sacked, one has resigned and a seventh is currently suspended.
The company says it’s investing in diversity training and will be improving facilities and equipment where needed.
They’ve also offered to reimburse fees paid by a widow who was shown being racially abused at her husband’s funeral.

The NAFD has said that “in the light of the Exposure programme it will begin a root and branch review of its code of practice.” ‘

 

Buried in a ‘Wasp Rockery’

30 August 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Art and death, cemeteries, death and funerals

Posted by Vale

Gore Vidal died at the end of July aged 86. Although he would have wanted to be remembered as a writer and thinker, he was perhaps better known as a raconteur and wit with a vicious line in put downs. He had a long feud with writer Norman Mailer and once goaded the belligerent Mailer so much that he knocked Vidal down. As he fell to the floor Vidal managed to say ‘Ah, Norman, lost for words again’.

But then, with an insouciant air the GFG itself likes to sport, he believed that ‘Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.’

Dick Cavett, who used to host a TV chat show, has said that ‘You can be sure of one thing. Gore Vidal hates being dead. Unless of course we die and go somewhere you write, drink, have sex, appear on TV and, above all else, talk.’

It’s less well known that he had chosen and laid out his final resting place many years ago. His headstone of polished granite, marked with his date of birth, was in place and waiting only for his own death and interment for its inscription to be completed. The headstone includes Gore’s lifelong companion, Howard Austen, who died in 2003.

It’s in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington DC which dates back to the early 1700s. Christopher Hitchens called it a ‘WASP rockery’. You’d expect the patrician Vidal to want to keep distinguished company. Perhaps more unexpected is the suggestion that he chose his plot for another reason altogether. Nearby is the grave of Jimmie Trimble, a school friend and lover of Vidal’s who died on Iwo Jima. Jimmie was, the New York Times has suggested, ‘the only person with whom [Vidal] ever felt wholeness.’

Sources: Dick Cavett, Huffington Post

In jest?

29 July 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: alternative funerals, death and funerals, Dress codes, Formality vs informality, funeral, funeral directors, Humour

Lockwood woman’s colourful funeral request – including a jester to walk in front of hearse

Funeral director Debbie Ingham dressed as a jester at the funeral of Margaret Harper

IT WAS a fitting end to a colourful life.

Lockwood grandmother Margaret Harper had only one dying wish – that no-one wore black to her funeral.

Friends and family rallied around this week to dress as brightly as possible to celebrate the 81-year-old’s life.

And funeral director and family friend Deborah Ingham stuck to her promise by leading the cortege dressed as jester.

The funeral procession turned heads in Lockwood as it slowly made its way towards Huddersfield crematorium.

Mourners then gathered at Lockwood Baptist Church – where Margaret was a member and ran the Sunday school for many years – for a celebration of her life.

Her daughter Geri Harper, 55, said: “There was a big cheer and laughter when everyone saw the procession. Someone even said ‘only at Margaret Harper’s funeral could they turn up and everyone bursts into laughter.’

“That is what she would have wanted.

“Debbie is a friend of the family and used to live next door to us when she was a kid.

“When she became a funeral director, my mum would tell her there was no way she would wear black to her funeral.

“She was even going to knit Debbie a poncho but never got around to it.

“That was her only request at her funeral, that everyone would wear bright clothes.”

Source

Read more about Deborah Ingham here

Posted by Evelyn

All in a state funeral

6 March 2012
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: death and funerals, funeral, funeral customs

Posted by Vale

When is a state funeral not a state funeral?

Back in 2008 there was speculation in the press about plans for a state funeral honouring the life and achievements of Lady Thatcher.

The rumours were denied at the time but have never gone away or stopped being controversial. Look at the reactions to the recent film The Iron Lady. It’s clear that the memory of Lady Thatcher still has the power to stir people up. One conservative commentator has has even argued that she should forego the honour – not because she doesn’t deserve one, but because celebrating her life so publicly would divide rather than unite the nation.

Here at GFG we have no political views. We are aloof. We rise above.

We do recall though that the last PM honoured in this way was Sir Winston Churchill – a great man who was himself not universally loved. And we were intrigued by the epetition that appeared recently on the Direct Government site here. It simply states that ‘we the undersigned believe that’:

In keeping with the great lady’s legacy, Margaret Thatcher’s state funeral should be funded and managed by the private sector to offer the best value and choice for end users and other stakeholders.

The undersigned believe that the legacy of the former PM deserves nothing less and that offering this unique opportunity is an ideal way to cut government expense and further prove the merits of liberalised economics Baroness Thatcher spearheaded.

We do not comment on the merits or not of the idea. We do, though, wonder what a privatised ‘state’ funeral might look like?

State funerals are rare. They involve lying in state and a funeral procession in which the coffin is drawn on a gun carriage by sailors from the Royal Navy. Royal Ceremonial Funerals (as for State but minus gun carriage and sailors) happen more frequently. Princess Diana’s and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s funerals’ were Royal Ceremonials.

So what might a ‘private’ state funeral look like? Fewer sailors, but more cars? The cavalcade that took Diana to Althorp would be an example. What could the industry do for Lady Thatcher?

Drive thru’ funeral

20 February 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: alternative funerals, death and funerals

 

Posted by Vale

They’ve been operating in Los Angeles (where else?) since 1974.

Lately though they’ve become especially popular with local gangs – many of whom are killed in drive by shootings and who feel safer behind the bullet proof glass.

Found on the web here.