Happy birthday to you!
Trawling through a stack of local papers of a weary Friday afternoon, the GFG’s gannet-eyed media monitoring team came across some advertorial in the Ipswich Star which gladdened their eyes. It was half a page of advertorial celebrating the first birthday of GM Taylor, Independent Funeral Director. They very much liked its directness and transparency. […]
Book Review: R.I.P. Off! By Ken West
RIP Off! is Ken West’s thinly-fictionalised account of his pioneering introduction of natural burial to Carlisle in 1993. It contrasts the enthusiastic reception his invention received in the media and among the public with the fear and loathing it stirred up in local undertakers. They didn’t understand it. They saw it as a threat to their […]
What would a regulated funeral industry look like?
When people discover that you need a licence to open a cattery in this country, but not a funeral home, they are astounded. You’re kidding; surely they’re all qualified? Er, nope. Actually, some undertakers do sit an exam set by the undertakers’ trade associations, but it’s not compulsory. No, you can do a long sentence […]
When the fog feels like a cage without a key
All so-called caring professions suffer from it. The difference is that they talk about it. If the British stiff upper lip is making its last stand, it’s down among the undertakers where resistance is mutely fiercest. We’re talking about Can’t-Take-It-Anymore Syndrome, aka compassion fatigue, burnout, depression, nervous breakdown. Read all the symptoms here. How could […]
Remembrance Day #3
The window of the Individual Funeral Company, Oxford. Proprietor Lucy Jane tells us: ‘Almost everything in the window was donated by my cousins Lewis & Chay Coulbert and was used by them in Afghanistan. They also gave me lots of pictures. The large one in the front of the window is Lewis while he was […]
Undertakers on parade
Undertakers aren’t noted for versatility when it comes to window-dressing, and they’re not to be blamed for this. If you’re in the death business there’re all sorts of things you simply can’t put on display. Not that this in any way excuses an assortment of dusty headstones and urns dotted by dead flies and […]
Habeas corpse
Bristol undertaker Thomas Davis has been branded a “‘Burke and Hare’ operation” by MP Caroline Noakes after her constituent Peter Williams accused the undertakers of taking his mother-in-law’s body from Bristol Royal Infirmary and keeping it for ten days without asking. She said: “Thomas Davis acted unlawfully, because all that had been requested by the Williams family […]
The scandal waiting to happen — again and again
Some of you will not be surprised that the following story involves Andrew Baker. It doesn’t end with him, guilty or not. When it comes to the mis-selling of pre-need funeral products, we ain’t seen nothing yet. From the Gloucestershire Echo: Andrew Baker, aged 50, who lives in Pebworth near Honeybourne in Worcestershire was arrested […]
Can marriage between a creative and a control freak be a happy one?
The relationship between architects and project managers in the construction industry is always icky. The architect is the creative visionary; the project manager is the person tasked with co-ordinating suppliers and service providers so as to bring the vision in on time, in budget, to the client’s satisfaction. Architects tend to want more than they […]
Kingfisher Funerals get behind home funeralists
Kingfisher Funerals of St Neots have bought a Flexmort body-cooling system for people who want to care for their dead at home. Andrew Hickson, who founded the business in 2010, tells us: “We have seen a marked increase in requests from the family of someone who has died, who do not want the person removed […]
