Painted, young and damned and fair
Posted by Vole When I think back to the days after Diana’s death I remember a strange time: hot days and a sense of shared grief lying like a miasma over the whole country. I was working for a council in those days and the queue of people, waiting to sign the book of remembrance […]
It’s your funeral
Posted by Richard Rawlinson In recent decades the emphasis of funerals has gone from forward-looking to backward-looking. The traditional funeral marked the transition from this life to the future life beyond death. Details of the life of the dead person were less significant than the existence of the immortal soul. This eschatological approach has given way […]
You only get one chance to get it wrong
A few years ago I worked with a very nice woman on her second husband’s funeral. Naturally, we talked about all sorts of things. She recalled the day of her first husband’s funeral. The hearse was due to go direct to the crematorium and she left home in good time so as to be sure […]
Familiarity breeds contentment
The so-called traditional or Victorian funeral derives from a time when they did death differently, when people grieved differently. It was characterised by hush and awe, ostentatious gloom and social pretension. It was an invention of the Gothic Revival and claimed, spuriously, descent from the medieval guild funerals devised and superintended by the College of Arms. […]
Bizarre Burials tonight Channel 5 @ 10pm
I’ve been sitting on a nice email which arrived a few days ago from Back2Back, a TV production company: I just wanted to let you know that our documentary is airing on Thursday 10th Jan, at 10pm on Channel 5. Cripes, that’s tonight already, isn’t it? They add: Thank you so much for all your help and contribution […]
Hands on funeral for homeless man
Undertaker Rupert Callender in Totnes is appealing to his fellow townspeople to turn out to help carry the coffin of a homeless man, Michael Gething, through the streets to his funeral — and then on to the burying ground at Follaton, just outside the town. Rupert Callender said: “The act of carrying his coffin all […]
Meaning in metaphor
We are driving to the crematorium for the committal. It’s late afternoon. A shower of rain is clearing as we breast a rise in the road and there in front of us is a rainbow. ‘Look!’ It’s a sign. It’s common at funerals for people to see a sign. Call it superstitious, call it what […]
You, the good news and Channel 5
We are pleased to pass on to you this appeal from a TV production company making a good-news documentary for Channel 5. We’ve spoken to them at length and like them. If you have created a really special funeral, or are a funeral director or a celebrant who has collaborated, or is currently collaborating, with […]
Dig it shallow. They don’t.
Filming the Good Funeral Awards with Sharp Jack Media, the production company making the documentary for Sky, entailed going all over the country to shoot people in action and get their backstories. It was fun. Perhaps the most fun was watching the crew on ‘just another job’ become emotionally enmeshed by the loveliness of the […]
Fictional funeral
From Benjamin Black’s latest novel of suspense, Vengeance. The scene is a funeral: “The vicar droned, his eyes fixed dreamily on a corner of the sky above the trees, a hymn was raggedly sung, someone let fall a sob that sounded like a fox’s bark.”
