What’s the youth of them?
First it was young women in the dismal trade who grabbed the prurient gaze of the media — that intriguing juxtaposition of beauty and beastliness, fragrance and foetor; the tantalising question: What makes a nice girl want to hang out with corpses? It makes for good photos. Slim young black-clad cane-wielding lovelies can induce a certain […]
Happy tail
Charming story here from Australia about funeral director John Hopkins who brings his dog Finbarr to work every day. “He’s a great icebreaker,” John said. “Families come in here not knowing what to expect. “They often haven’t dealt with a funeral home before and they’re apprehensive. “He gives them a lick and will lie at […]
Cheap boos
Real ale made by boutique brewers has at last begun to drive down sales of lager for the first time in half a century reports yesterday’s Observer. Intriguingly, the Society of Independent Brewers (Siba) reports that while its 420 members enjoyed a combined sales rise of 4 per cent last year, its smallest and boutique-iest […]
There’s nowt so crap as a crem
Over in Lufkin, Texas, a new funeral home has opened. What’s different about it? It offers one of those familiar back-to-the-past initiatives which mark progress in funeral service: it’s owner is making his clients aware that they can have the funeral at home – if they want. “It used to be that before there were […]
Habeas corpus
I was emailed last night by someone who wants to visit their dead parent at the undertaker’s. The undertaker won’t make an appointment. The client thinks the undertaker is prevaricating. The undertaker tells the client that the customary time to visit a dead person is the day before the funeral. This is not soon enough […]
From rags to riches
Whether or not funerals are too expensive depends on how much money you’ve got and how you like to spend it. Some like to say it with a Batesville casket, mountains of flowers, a fleet of vintage Bentleys, prancing horses, a military band, the Red Arrows—the sky’s the limit. If you’ve got lots of dough […]
Teen Undertaker
The media loves death and funerals — wacky music, funky coffins, all that sort of stuff. Best of all, the media loves to find people working in the funeral industry who do not conform to the common conception of deathworker as inhabitant of a dark and terrifying otherworld. Normal people; people like us. Better still, […]
Embalming: a matter not of if but when
Nobody I can think of would dispute the assertion that it’s good for the bereaved to spend time with their dead, contemplating their absence – what I like to call their very present absence. There is a debate about how dead a person should look. Some people want to spend time with an embalmed, cosmetised […]
Funeral directors as social entrepreneurs?
Yesterday I wrote about the two problems that most bedevil funeral directors. First, in the public perception, they offer poor value for money, a charge of which they are, most of them, innocent. Second, they may feel that they occupy a marginalised position in society because people wonder what’s under their fingernails. As ever, it […]
Something for the weekend
An insight here into the Nigerian way of death. For mankind, death is an inevitable end. Whenever it comes, no matter the age of the dead, pains, sorrow and unquantifiable anguish are its accomplices. Ironically, this is simply not so for those in the business of coffin making and funeral management. While their patrons mourn […]
