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What’s bad news for undertakers is good news for the rest of us. And the good news for the rest of us is that, in the words of the Guardian, 

Less of us are dying than at any time since mortality data was collected.

Good news for the rest of us, but rotten news for grammarians, whose binoculars are trained on this blog. ‘Less’ should read ‘fewer’.

Or more optimistically still:

More of us are not dying than at any time since records began. 

That aside, last year’s mortality figures, now out, reveal that  a mere 484,367 deaths were registered in England and Wales, 1.8% down on 2010. In a nation with an oversupply of undertakers, that spells hard times for the Dismal Trade, which is likely to experience a climbing mortality rate as the weakest go to the wall. 

More to the point, it shows that a lot of people are getting clean away with it, and I hope that puts a hopeful spring in your step. 

So, what are other people dying of? 

Apart from the usual suspects, 5 died from falling off a cliff and no one died from rat bite. 51 men and just 1 woman died from falling off a ladder. 

Get the full stats here.

And remember: it needn’t be you!

I don’t know about you, but I’m missing Richard Rawlinson, our genially provocative once and future (I hope) blogger on religious affairs, fashion, art, you name it. 

What brought my nostalgia home was reading about a cause close to his heart, the tug of war for the skeleton of Richard III (if it’s really him), dug up in a Leicester car park and now, under the terms of the exhumation order under a section 25 licence,  in the ‘custody and possession’ of the University of Leicester, which is trying to find out if the bones really are royal and not just plebeian lookalikes by extracting mitochondrial DNA from them and comparing what they find with the DNA of Michael Ibsen, 55, a Canadian born London furniture-maker, the best living descendant they could find. 

The tug of war is intensifying. 

Leicester Cathedral wants dem bones if they’re any good and is working with the Royal Household and the Richard III Society ‘to ensure that his remains are treated with dignity and respect and are reburied with the appropriate rites and ceremonies of the church’. 

Are you interested?

Yorkshire wants them on the grounds that Richard loved Yorkshire best. York Minster is the preferred destination of this faction.

The battle has spread to the floor of the House of Commons, where a claim has been lodged, amidst incredulous and disrespectful laughter, in favour of Worksop. John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, said: “The great priory of Worksop is half-way between the two. It’s the end of the road of the forest [Sherwood] and centre of the kingdom of Richard III. It is the most appropriate final resting place for the king.” Actually, it’s a bit of a dump. I know, I lived there once by mistake. 

It would be quite in order for Westminster Abbey to put in a claim, but it hasn’t. As a once and once only monarch of the realm, Richard has title to it. 

Lastly, left-of-field and, as it happens, left-footed to boot, come the Catholics. They want Richard in Westminster Cathedral on the grounds that, as a Catholic, his bones should be interred in a Catholic church to the strains of a full Requiem Mass. 

Which would please Richard Rawlinson, for that is where he worships. 

The economic crisis in Greece has got so bad that football clubs are having to scour surviving businesses for sponsorship. Reuters reports that: 

Palaiopyrgos – many of whose players still attend school – have signed a deal with a funeral home.

“For us it was a matter of survival,” manager Lefteris Vassiliou told Greek radio.

Despite the macabre attire – black jerseys with the undertaker’s logo and a large white cross down the middle – Vassiliou said the players had taken it well, and it had even given them an advantage over their opponents.

Recounting a recent match, he said: “The goalkeeper kept crossing himself, our competitors lost every play. It seems they were too scared to come near us.”

Voukefalas is now sponsored by a brothel and the players now flaunt pink shorts and T-shirts emblazoned with her brothels’ logos, including “Villa Erotica”.

Reuters do not make it clear why readers should suppose there is equivalence between the two sponsors. 

Special communiqué from the Guvnor of the GFG, Sir Basil Batesville-Casket KBE, CDM, RLSS (Bronze)

Blog Ed has up and hopped it to the coast for what he tells us is a well-deserved break. We’ll be the judge of that. There won’t be a job for him when he gets back. We need a better class of tone on this blog, less of the nitwit stuff, more gravit-whatever the word is. So we’re going to have a re-think, a clear-out, get rid of that tedious old Mollington woman while we’re at it. 

While we’re looking for a new broom things may be a little quiet.

We’re sorry for your loss. 

Hastings District Council has closed the chapel at the crematorium due to concerns over its earthquake strength. More here

In Germany, a van carrying 12 coffins to a crematorium was stolen while the drivers enjoyed a comfort break. Here. 

Alexandra Frean is The Times’ bureau chief in Washington. She is British.

When her husband died suddenly, one of my first thoughts was: “We’re all alone in a strange place.” But I was wrong. We were not alone.

News of our plight spread around our neighbourhood within hours because the woman next door, unaware of our tragedy, had come round to apologise for smashing her car into mine soon after we got back, shellshocked, from the hospital. She came back the next day with two big bags containing three roast chickens and some salads. “Here take this. I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said as she thrust the bags towards my startled son at the front door.

There followed in the next days a steady stream of groceries and prepared meals from the houses immediately surrounding ours. One woman, knowing we were from England, managed to procure some Cadbury’s chocolate fingers, a small gesture of kindness that moved me to tears.

Food parcels also arrived from friends in New York and California. One evening, returning hungry and tired from a school athletics meet with my sons, knowing there was no food in the house, I found a steaming hot dish of macaroni cheese on the doorstep. Friends in New York had called a local restaurant and asked them to drop it round with a note: “There’s a reason it’s called comfort food.”

It wasn’t just food. I came home one day to find the son of an elderly woman on our street elbow-deep in grease on our driveway with all his tools out repairing my sons’ bikes. After our garage door got stuck for days, Bob, who lives across the street came over. “Right, let’s fix that garage door now,” was all he said.

This community spirit is still to be found, I believe, in remote rural areas the world over, where, deprived of the community services (libraries, drop-in centres, post offices, GP surgeries, tradesmen) that many of us take for granted, people learn to be self-sufficient and to trade favours. They become unpaid taxi drivers, meals-on-wheels providers, care-givers and even self-taught mechanics, roofers or plumbers, simply because there is no alternative.

But I am not in the back of beyond. I live in one of the most sophisticated urban areas anywhere. What drove my neighbours — lawyers, writers, teachers, administrators — to make a place for me in their busy lives?

I put the question to Brook, an American and the wife of a colleague. Shortly after Jeff’s death, she arrived at my home with bulging shopping bags, walked into my kitchen and started cooking. How is it, I asked, that in this country that prizes self-reliance so highly, where “welfare” is a dirty word and citizens campaign against a social safety nets and universal healthcare, that people I have never even met should show me such generosity?

Of course people are bringing you food, Brook said. It’s what Americans do. This is your safety net. It’s the pioneer spirit — the idea that if the people in the next wagon don’t rally round to help, nobody will. It doesn’t matter what they do or where they live, they know that when the time comes, you will do the same for them.

There’s another explanation, I think. Brought up in a “we can fix this” culture, it’s natural for Americans, seeing trouble, tragedy or disaster, to rush towards it, rather than away. It’s not that there is no safety net; more that there is no safety net mentality.

As the branches round my front door prepare to shed their leaves, I have removed the big blue cooler box from my front step. I have finally met and thanked most of the women who cooked for us. I have no doubt that, if we had been living in England when Jeff died, our friends and neighbours there would have rallied round. I wonder, however, how many of them — my former self included — would have been so generous over so many months to a complete stranger.

Full article here (£)

We have relaunched our ‘Recommended By’ scheme for funeral directors with a radically remodelled accreditation framework designed to make it sustainable and authoritative nationwide. 

As you know, we already have a limited listing of recommended funeral directors – a listing to which we have not added for some months. Why? Because of the very great difficulty of growing it sustainably. Lack of resources has restricted our ability to visit new or revisit existing recommended funeral directors. Some on the list have not been revisited for up to three years. Not good enough. That is why we have been on the verge of scrapping it altogether.

But rapidly increasing demand from both consumers and funeral directors has caused us to think again.

As we know, extremely negative perceptions of the funeral industry are widespread and intensifying. The fallout from this year’s television documentaries about Co-operative Funeralcare, Funeral Partners Limited and Dignity plc has resulted in grave reputational damage to the industry as a whole.

As a consequence, rising numbers of consumers ring and email, telling us they no longer know whom they can trust, and here at the GFG we now spend an increasing amount of time counselling and guiding them – a service we offer free of charge.

At the same time, rising numbers of funeral directors have approached us, as an independent, consumer-focussed body with an expert knowledge of the industry, asking for accreditation, anxiously (and understandably) seeking to distance themselves from inferior competitors in an increasingly crowded market.

How is the listing going to pay for itself?

Good question. Either bereaved people pay — which we are not happy about — or funeral directors pay. We’re going to charge funeral directors the rate for the job on the grounds that being listed is more than merely likely to benefit them commercially.

It’s something we have thought very hard about. Last year we appealed for voluntary donations from our listed FDs. We are very grateful to those who responded, but it wasn’t nearly enough to fund the project. The lesson we learned is that most people only really value something they pay for.

Won’t this affect the independence of the GFG?

Other independent guides, when they started to make information available online, lost their revenue from hard-copy editions of their guides, which ceased to sell, and they had to change their business model as a consequence. The Good Pub Guide is an example. From 2012 it has had to charge for inclusion, drawing accusations that it is no longer independent because it has simply become a guide to those pubs willing to pay. You may be interested in a response to this from a landlord. Do read the comments, too — here.

In the case of funeral service, FDs unwilling to pay will be those so well-known in their local areas (especially rural areas) that they won’t feel the need to. Funeral consumers in such areas do not need the Good Funeral Guide. However, in areas where consumers seek guidance and reassurance, it is perfectly proper that we serve them by enabling ourselves to accredit superb funeral directors.

The GFG will go on demonstrating its independence because its credibility depends on it. We look forward to exposing the first person to offer us any inducement. We’re not in it to make money, we’re in it to break even. Our independence is reliant on an income stream. We become dependent only when we let that corrupt our core values. Our record shows that this is the least likely thing to happen.

From time to time a funeral director will say to us, ‘But you hate all funeral directors, don’t you?’ It’s an odd thing to say to the people who delivered the first-ever industry Oscars, the Good Funeral Awards, celebrating the best people in funeral service. Of course we don’t hate all funeral directors. We talk about things as they seem to us to be, and we invite unmediated access to anyone who wants to comment. The focus of our work has always been hunting down the heroes of the funeral industry and putting them in touch with the bereaved. 

That’s a win-win.

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you are a funeral director interested in being Recommended By The Good Funeral Guide, please click here. If you are already listed, you will need to be re-visited. Please click here. 

Dismalistas held rapt by the nativity of the first new-generation Crawley in the we’re-all-in-it-together tellydrama Downton Abbey, but who were then dumped into deepest grief by the death of Lady Sybil, will have felt their ears prick up at the announcement of the arrival of “Grassby’s men” to remove her body. 

Yes, Julian Fellowes, the writer, who lives at West Stafford, on the eastern fringes of Dorchester, generously name-checked his respected, local undertakers. 

Grassby’s have bought up a few local businesses over the years, including the Rose Funeral Service in Weymouth, run by the excellent Sam Wilding, as splendid a figure with crepe tied round a top hat as you will ever see, and to whom the editor of this blog has entrusted his remains when Reaper G gets off his butt. 

Ever heard of the peak-end rule? In the words of Wikipedia:

According to the peak–end rule, we judge our experiences almost entirely on how they were at their peak and how they ended, regardless of valency [duration] (whether pleasant or unpleasant). Other information is not lost, but it is not used. This includes net pleasantness or unpleasantness and how long the experience lasted. 

In one experiment, a subjects were exposed to loud, painful noises. In a second group, subjects were exposed to the same loud, painful noises as the first group, after which were appended somewhat less painful noises. This second group rated the experience of listening to the noises as much less unpleasant than the first group, despite having been subjected to more discomfort than the first group, as they experienced the same initial duration, and then an extended duration of reduced unpleasantness.

It works the same with pleasurable experiences, too. The Artful Blogger supplies a good example: 

This fact of perception seems to be already in the bones of the most well-regarded artists. For example, I once heard a jazz pianist tell a group of students how to craft a solo improvisation. The cheat-sheet? Build to a strong middle, and make a solid ending…the audience won’t remember anything else. I’ve also seen many orchestral conductors add an especially dramatic flourish to their final cut-off, leading the crowd to go wild, regardless of what came before.

It’s one of those things that seems obvious once you’ve got your head around it. But for those who plan funerals and write funeral ceremonies, it’s clearly important to be understand how your the experience of your work will be evaluated in retrospect. 

This blog tends as a rule towards seemly and proper self-deprecation, but we hope you’ll forgive us if we sound a short, breathy toot on our own trumpet.

There’s a great deal of interest in death these days. Funerals, to be precise. We’ve lost count of the calls we’ve had from TV production companies in particular. Today we even had a call from a well-known field sports magazine. 

We’ve also lost track of what we’ve said to who (okay, whom, Jonathan) and what might have become of it. So it’s been very gratifying to receive thanks from people who have received publicity for what they do following a tip-off from the GFG-Batesville Shard. 

We are aware that our website is becoming fertile research ground, and  our blog is watched by story-hungry newspapers. In the month of September, our website scored 68,850 hits. 

If you are of an opinionated or writerly disposition, our blog is open house to all shades of opinion. Send it in!

If you are a funeral director besieged by calls, we apologise. At least it’s good news stories they’re all after, now.

Latest news on the Good Funeral Awards documentary being made for Sky is that the big cheeses have seen the almost-complete film and like it very, very much. Transmission is scheduled for spring.