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Tory MP Chris Skidmore has tabled an early day motion in the House of Commons. It moves:

‘That this House notes the discovery of a skeleton beneath a car park in Leicester believed to be that of Richard III; praises the work of the archaeologists and historians responsible for the find; hopes that DNA evidence will prove the remains to be those of the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty; and calls upon the government to arrange a full state funeral for the deceased monarch, and for his remains to be interred appropriately.’

Text message sent to the Oldie magazine:

Racism is rightly condemned but comics still feel free to make jokes about dentures.

Another:

Thanks to the good lady on Stockport station who told me my shoelaces were undone. I was quite well aware of that, but appreciate her concern. 

You couldn’t make it up. 

When the remains of the last Tsar of All the Russias, Nicholas II, and some of his family were found down a disused mineshaft outside Yekaterinburg in the 1990s, the government of Boris Yeltsin held a full state funeral in the cathedral of St Peter and St Paul in St Petersburg. I believe we should do something similar for Richard III, if these bones are his.

More here. 

Posted by Vale

Seemed fitting to end a day of animals with a tribute to that intelligent and sensitive creature the pig. RIP Big Ted:

Big Ted’s dead , he was a great old pig
He’d eat most anything, never wore a wig
Now he’s gone like snow on the water, good bye

He was getting old so the farmer said
“Sold him to the butcher just to make a little bread”
Now he’s gone like snow on the water, don’t cry

Ted may be a moo cow next time around
Giving sweet milk to the people in the town
He’ll be whatever he will choose on air or sea or ground

The sows are busy with the piglets fine
I’d put them in the forest now if they were mine
cause I know they like acorns and I don’t like bacon

Boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy
Squidly, squidly, squidly, squidly, squidly, squidly, squidly
Boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy
Sham sham sharoo, oh sham sham sharoo

Big Ted’s sold and gone

He came into the kitchen while we were away
He took all the rice and he forgot to pay
He´s gone like snow on the water, good bye

He never cared to do the boogaloo dance
All he ever thought about was food and romance
And he’s gone like snow on the water, good bye

Ted may be a moo cow next time around
Giving sweet milk to the people in the town
He’ll be whatever he will choose on air or sea or ground

The sows are busy with the piglets fine
I’d put them in the forest now if they were mine
cause I know they like acorns and I don’t like bacon

Boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy
Squidly, squidly, squidly, squidly, squidly, squidly, squidly
Boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy, boochy
Sham sham sharoo, oh sham sham sharoo

Big Ted’s sold and gone

/span

The Good Funeral Awards opening ceremony comprised a cavalcade of alternative hearses, a flower arranging contest, a dove release and a performance by the green fuse choir. It culminated in this address by funeral celebrant Belinda Forbes. You had to be there, of course, to get the full 120% because Belinda’s delivery is very compelling. But the 100% version still says it all.  

Looking around tonight, I think it’s fairly safe to say that we’re a mixed bunch.  But, as well as our funeral work, we do have something else in common…

We worry. And it’s not surprising.  With funerals, there’s only ONE chance to get it right.  No re-takes.

I worry about everything.  As the hollow-eyed man who is my husband will tell you.  However, most things are in our control so, it’s the day of the funeral when I do most of my worrying.  On one occasion I was so worried that the family bearers were going to drop the coffin that I did the only thing a celebrant can do in a situation like this. 

I shut my eyes. 

But whenever I’m worrying, there’s one thing I know I can depend on – all the people around me who care as well, wanting THIS funeral to be best it can be.  And to everyone I work with and the staff at my local crematorium in Bracknell: THANK YOU for looking after me and making me smile.

And so, despite the worry, I can truthfully say…

I love my job. 

But I don’t make a habit of telling people this.  Because they might think I’m saying, ‘I love death.’  Or worse, ‘I love it when people die.’

When we say what we do for a living, some people are fascinated and want to know more.  Others are so desperate to escape, SO determined NOT to know more, that they’ll put their hands up as if trying to protect themselves from what we might reveal!

Part of the shock is our fault of course.  Because we cunningly disguise ourselves to look like normal people. 

But tonight, thanks to a slightly bonkers yet wonderfully brilliant idea by those visionaries, Brian Jenner and Charles Cowling, we can reveal ourselves.  IN ALL OUR GLORY.

Instead of words like dismal, unpleasant, sombre and depressing we can UNASHAMEDLY use words like devoted, enthusiastic, dedicated and inspirational. 

And one day we’ll be able to tell everyone what we do for a living without apologising and saying, ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds…’

Finally, some advice from a lady who writes posts for the Good Funeral Guide Blog: that wise and fearless funeral-goer Lyra Mollington.

‘To the finalists: well done and my very best wishes.  And, if you win one of the awards, try not to look too elated or smug: just a serene acceptance that your brilliance has at last been recognised.’

And I now hand you back to the force of nature that is our host this evening.  The loveliest and most generous man in the land of funerals, Mr Charles Cowling.

ED’S NOTE: It was an inviolable condition of publishing this that the nice bits about me stayed in. Pass over them. Brian is justly garlanded. 

Posted by Charles

Good Funeral Award 2012 Winners

Most Promising New Funeral Director
Bryan and Catherine Powell
Poppy Mardall

Embalmer of the Year
Mark Elliott
Julie-Anne Lowe

The Eternal Slumber Award for Coffin Supplier of the Year
Greenfield Creations
Crazy Coffins
Ecoffins

Most Significant Contribution to the Understanding of Death in the Media (TV, Film, Newspaper, Magazine or Online)
Final Fling
Mindfulness and Mortality

Crematorium Attendant of the Year
Peter Smith – Gloucester Crematorium
Alistair Anderson – City of London

Best Internet Bereavement Resource
Beyond Goodbye
My Last Song

The Blossom d’Amour Award For Funeral Floristry
Fairmile Florist
Fresh Floral Design, Hillview Florist

Funeral Celebrant of the Year
Karen Imms
George Callendar, Rupert Callender

Cemetery of the Year
Bidwell Woodland Burials
Wandsworth

Gravedigger of the Year
Bernard Underdown 
David Yeoman

Funeral Directors of the Year
Simon Smith and Jane Morrell at green fuse
Rupert and Claire Callender at The Green Funeral Company

Best Alternative to a hearse
Paul Sinclair, Motorcycle Funerals
Volkswagen Funerals
Necrobus

Book of the Year (published after 1 May 2011)
Making an Exit
Natural Death Handbook

Lifetime Achievement Award
Barry Albin-Dyer
John Mallatrat

Congratulations to you all!

We were conscious of three things above all when we devised this project. First, that it would celebrate the work of a lot of incredibly nice, deserving people who are wholly overlooked. Second, that it was likely to attract the sort of publicity that would redress some of the reputational damage the industry has suffered in the last year. Third, that it risked dashing hopes and creating unhappiness.

We scored high marks on 1 and 2. In addition to being filmed for an hour-long TV documentary to be screened in November, Mark Elliott, embalmer, spoke on R4’s Saturday Live. If you didn’t hear him, and Edwina Currie’s response, find it here. Oh, and there could be something in the Sun.

Regarding 3, we did not want anyone to travel any distance only to be disappointed, so our plan was to call both winner and runner-up to the stage and invite them both to speak. It would have diminished any perceived gap between them and, because there was so little gap anyway, it seemed appropriate. We were compelled by the TV people to scrap that at the last minute because we had run out of time, and that was distressing and regrettable. I’d like to say how sorry we are to all runners-up, conscious that sorry really isn’t good enough. (For some, there will be consolation that, in the documentary, they will get a lot more air time.)

Perhaps most surprising was the view of, I think, everyone I talked to afterwards that an awards ceremony has to create suspense and whoop-whoop at the expense of the downcast oh-so-close.

Do tell us what you think about concept and execution. Our default position is self-critical, so no praise, please.

My apologies if the above lacks lucidity, but I am very tired!

If you have any photos of the event, it would be a very great kindness if you would send them in. Needless to say, I took none. I’ll mount them as a slideshow in a forthcoming post.

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Doubt: a short, meaning-packed, medieval, Anglo-French word (origin douter) which I doubt many foreigners could pronounce if only seen in written form. Adapted as a verb, noun, adjective and adverb (to doubt, a doubt/doubter, doubtable, doubtably) it, of course, means to be uncertain, consider questionable, hesitate to believe.

None of us being omniscient, we all have doubts about a lot of things from life choices (relationships, jobs, homes) to metaphysical ideas. ‘Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,’ said Soren Kierkegaard.

And if physical reality is unpredictable and error-prone, then existential meaning is unknowable. Faith—another short, meaning-rich word—is belief that doesn’t rest on material evidence. Even Richard Dawkins concedes, as a scientist, that he’s effectively agnostic as he cannot logically prove beyond doubt that atheism is true.

Philosophers have divided us into physicalists and dualists. The former claim we’re just a body, with the brain being the sophisticated organ that makes us a ‘person’ capable of complex thought, emotion and action. If we’re shot in the heart, our brain dies—we continue to be a body but cease to be a person. Just as a smile is created by muscle reflexes moving our lips to reveal our teeth, a mind, which gives us our unique persona, is an abstract term to describe the brain function’s cause and effect.

Dualism is an older school of thought that’s been developed in various forms by philosophers from Plato and Descartes to the Bhuddist teacher Dharmakirti. Putting aside the separate yin-and-yang, good-and-evil deliberations, dualism, in simple terms, separates mind from matter. It gives birth to an immaterial soul which, like a smile, mind, persona or self, is distinct from the body, although somehow interacting with the brain.

Though increasingly unfashionable among secular academics, modern agnostic and religious thinkers continue to argue that the gap between objective and subjective experience cannot be bridged by reductionism because consciousness is autonomous of physical properties. Philosopher Frank Jackson talks of a non-corporeal form of reality, and claims that functions of the mind/soul are so internal they cannot be observed by science. In comparison, we can know about a bat’s echolocation facility but we can’t know how the bat experiences it because it’s not a physical fact but a conscious one.

We can only have unscholarly hunches about whether or not we have souls, and indeed the nature of our souls. A shaman might believe he has a ‘free-soul’ that can undertake spiritual journeys. Others see the difference between soul and mind as mere semantics, and doubt a ‘soul’ has life beyond the body, let alone eternal life with its Creator/Saviour.

‘It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey,’ said Kierkegaard. He also said: ‘If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe’.

Religion as man-made psychological crutch for weak mortals, say the Freudians. And while we’re at it, why does this so-called God not make his loving presence evident in this world full of misery? But if, like God, our souls are not tangible things, surely it’s down to us to recognise we do not live by bread alone in order to develop an attitude capable of providing bread for all.

Apologies from the editorial team here at the GFG-Batesville Tower for the recent blog dribble if you’re one of those who enjoy the customary daily torrent. We have been traversing the country with the TV crew who are making a half-hour documentary about the upcoming funeral Oscars ceremony in Bournemouth this Friday. It’s not too late to book tickets and accommodation for this star-studded event. Go to the Joy of Death website. 

We’re still not allowed to say the name of the TV channel concerned, I think. But we can tell you that it’s a biggie, and the documentary will go out in a prime time slot. It’s going to be a lovely thing. The crew have been knocked out by the brilliance and loveliness of everyone order cialis generic they have met. 

Already, we know that this is going to be a great event, nothing less — huge fun in its own right, a great gathering of the brightest and best, a vast amount of happy nattering and, underlying it all, our mission: to sing the praises of the unsung heroes of Funeralworld. 

There’s been some media interest. Most notably, on Friday BBC R4 are intending to record a ‘package’ for the Saturday morning Today programme. Oh, and the Sun is keen to come and talk to you. 

Yes, but what-do-I-wear-what-do-I-wear, I hear you wail. We have now received guidance from the TV people. The dress code is Dress to Impress. Anything goes so long as it’s eyecatching. 

See you there!

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

I picked up the London Evening Standard today and may as well have logged on to GFG. Of the three cover stories, one was about the health of the nonagenarian Duke of Edinburgh; one about the suspended death sentence of a Chinese woman convicted of murdering a Brit, and another about the suicide of Top Gun director Tony Scott, who threw himself off a Los Angeles bridge.

I’m sure even ardent Republicans here will feel a degree of concern for the Queen’s aged husband, and will recall with affection at least some of his un-PC utterances over the years:

‘You look like you’re ready for bed!’ To the President of Nigeria, who was wearing traditional robes.

‘Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?’ To residents of the Cayman Islands in 1994.

‘I would like to go to Russia very much — although the bastards murdered half my family.’ In 1967, when asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union.

‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?’ To a Scottish driving instructor in 1995.

‘There’s a lot of your family in tonight.’ After noticing business leader Atul Patel’s name badge during a Buckingham Palace reception for 400 influential British Indians in 2009.

As for story two, I’m sure most here oppose the death penalty, even for heinous crimes.

But do any of you have views on the ‘ethics’ of suicide? Having recently blogged about the need sometimes to release anger at funerals (here), suicide cases spring to mind: we love and miss the person, we wish we could have made things different, but why did the selfish bastard do this to us?

Despite this human response, most religious and non-religious folk alike are united in compassion for those troubled souls who take their own life for whatever reason, and whether they’re seemingly fortunate or clearly deprived and abused.

Religions have varying degrees of forgiveness for what is generally held to be a sin across the faith spectrum.

The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church states, ‘We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.’

Meanwhile, Conservative Protestants, especially Evangelicals, have argued self-murder is as sinful as murder. And because these sects don’t believe in prayers for the dead, they say salvation can only be earned prior to death: the unpardonable sin then becomes not the suicide itself, but rather the refusal of the gift of salvation.

In Jewish law, suicide is deemed sinful, but it may be acceptable as an alternative to certain cardinal sins, when it becomes martyrdom for sacred principles. In practice every means is used to excuse suicide—usually by determining either that the suicide itself proves that the perpetrator was not in his or her right mind, or that the suicide must have repented after performing the act but before death took place.

Most Muslim clerics consider suicide forbidden and make a point of including suicide bombing. Prophet Muhammad allegedly said: ‘Whoever is cruel and hard on a non-Muslim minority, or curtails their rights, or burdens them with more than they can bear, or takes anything from them against their free will; I will complain against the person on the Day of Judgment.’

A premier-league TV production company (we’re not allowed to say the name) is presently shooting a documentary about the GFG Awards, complete with behind-the-scenes peeks at some of the nominees at work in their own workplace. They want lots of human interest. Some nominees have already been contacted; the rest are advised to stand by. 

This is great news for The Cause. Brian Jenner (organiser of the Joy of Death Convention) and I have done our due diligence and we are convinced that the motives of the team behind this are the sound and sincere. The half-hour documentary, dedicated exclusively to the GFG Awards, will be one of a series of documentaries about heartwarming competitive events. 

The finished piece of work will reflect the deep seriousness, emotional intelligence and sense of humour which characterise the best people who work in the funeral ‘industry’. It will repair some of the reputational damage wrought by exposés of malpractice which have beset us this year. It will show funeral shoppers that there are people in this business of death whose excellence and beauty of heart they had never dreamed of. 

If you can join us, please buy your ticket at: http://www.joyofdeath.co.uk/tickets/ 

We are more grateful than we can say to Sunset Coffins for donating the funeral Oscars, pictured above.