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In our thoughts today, the family and friends of sports fan and chartered accountant Conrad Readman, 49, who booked two weeks off work to watch the Olympics, bought tickets to all manner of events, and died yesterday of a heart attack while watching the bicycling in the velodrome.

Full story here and here.

Fred Phelps Jr offers his interpretation of the shootings at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Tweeted on August 5th at 6.40 pm.

From the Times of India:

A bull bided its time and gored an old man to death when an opportunity came a day after the latter had thrown hot water on it. The bull followed the man when he was being taken to a hospital and later reached the crematorium during his funeral in little-known Deori Township in Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh.

The bull apparently kept a watch on the frail Bhoop Narayan Prajapati (65) and attacked him four days ago when he was having his morning tea—a day after the old man threw hot water on it for sitting in front of his hut at the main road of Deori Township. Prajapati ran inside his thatched hut to escape, but the bull followed him, pushed him to the ground twice and gored him.

Bhura Khan and Nikhil Soni, who were around, came to the rescue of Prajapati. They hit the bull with sticks of solid wood to scare it away. When the bull was off their sight, they rushed the old man to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced brought dead.

Much to people’s surprise, the bull reached the hospital following Prajapati. Deepak Chourasia, a town-dweller, said that when the mortal remains of the old man were being consigned to flames the bull again sprang a surprise by arriving at the crematorium.

Prajapati’s house is very close to the hospital and the crematorium too is less than half-a-kilometer, Chourasia added. The old man died due to internal injuries to his stomach and chest, police said.

There is a minor history between Prajapati and the bull. Six month ago, the bull had attacked the old man after he hit the animal with a stick. Prajapati was at that time admitted to a hospital where he stayed for more than a month due to leg injury, Deori police station inspector R P Sharma told TOI.

“I have also come to know during investigations in the case that the bull followed Prajapati to the hospital and the crematorium. It’s something strange and surprising,” Sharma said. “We are going to write a letter to the civic body to put this bull in a government shelter,” the inspector added.

The team at the GFG-Batesville Tower has decamped to the seaside, where it is presently sitting on a deckchair in a vest, eating whelks and supping strong lager, and keeping a fatherly eye on the pallid little interns as they hoot and caper in the surf.

We are very grateful to the wider (still, and wider) GFG community for keeping the blog hot and lively while we are away.

Did you see the Olympics opening ceremony? That amazing memorial wall? Hats off to Danny Boyle!

Enjoy the summer. To our funeral director followers we say, go clear out that store room.

DEAD GOOD GUIDES

Autumn School 22-25 October in Frome

Gilly Adams & Sue Gill

The intensive 4 day course will examine the Hows and Whys of ceremony and celebration in a practical and experiential way. We will investigate how both positive and negative life events can be distilled into myth and poetry and create meaningful rituals to contain them. In particular, we explore how ceremony and celebration has and does play out in our own lives in order to feel empowered to facilitate these processes in the lives of others in an imaginative and creative way.

This is not a nuts and bolts course; instead the week will be shaped to fulfill the needs and aspirations of participants so there will be plenty of opportunities to learn and practise many aspects of the craft of creating ceremony – both public and private – in a safe environment. Gilly Adams and Sue Gill have been working together for many years; they will offer insights into the cognitively rich world of the secular celebrant, sharing their experience, offering theory, information, and – they hope – inspiration.

Food is always a key element in ceremony and celebration, and since we will be eating lunch and supper together, feasting will be a special theme. The working day will be 10am – 9pm, finishing at 2pm on the last day. The venue is East Woodlands Village Hall, near Frome BA11 5LQ, on the edge of the Longleat Estate and has a very particular rural character.

There are 12 places on each course at a range of fees. 4 places left at £375. Fees include tuition, all materials, and lunch and supper throughout. To secure a place, the full fee needs to be paid to SUE GILL by cheque or BACS.

To express interest and/or for further information please contact Gilly or Sue:

Sue Gill foxandgill@btinternet.com 01229 869769

Gilly Adams gillyadams@tiscali.co.uk 02920 552389

……… hoping to gain greater depth, clarity and complexity of knowledge …. by learning from pre-eminent pioneers and leaders in this field. The experience fulfilled and surpassed my hopes: you were welcoming and wise, the venue was magnificent; the food was delectable. Content blended the practical, personal, professional and theoretical and the form shifted from discussion and presentation to hands-on creativity ….. I carry away with me a bounty of thoughts, questions and ideas that will enrich my own arts practice.

Ruth Howard, Canada – participant Spring School, June 2012 Cumbria

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Since the Dispatches exposé, we’re all sounding like Jessica Mitford, the ‘red sheep’ of an aristocratic British clan who naively embraced wretched communism while settling in comfortably capitalist California, and wrote The American Way of Death (1963), which accuses the US funeral trade of exploiting vulnerable grievers.

First, let me say I’m certainly not about to defend undertakers who hoodwink financially-challenged bereaved folk into paying embalming fees for ‘hygienic reasons’, or who falsely imply DIY funerals are ‘illegal’. Undertakers should not be viewed like doctors bound by professional ethics, but as salesmen of the death business, to be approached with the caution extended to double glazing peddlers. Those who withhold price lists should indeed be exposed to public humiliation, especially if this helps educate those who, due to ignorance, sentiment and taboo, are conned into spending beyond their means.

It’s also noone else’s business if an affluent person, like Mitford, chooses a cheap, no-frills funeral because their aesthetic of simplicity turns them away from ‘pomposity, complication and expense’.

By the same token, there’s nothing unethical about choosing to splash out on an opulent send-off either. Buying the best coffins, flowers, tombstones and mourning attire, and hiring limousines, printers, choirs, musicians, caterers and wine waiters help the economy and society by making employers profitable. It’s churlish to admonish spenders for not giving those thousands spent on a funeral to their favoured charity, or leaving it in their will for the benefit of living family and friends.

Those who say funereal showiness is vulgar are often demonstrating their middle class snobbery toward the nouveau-riche, or their socialist philosophy of envy. There are plenty of people who, in life, have given time and money to good causes, and recycled their waste and conserved energy out of concern for the environment of future generations, and then want a no-expenses-spared funeral. It sounds like a Bond film but ‘We Only Die Once’.

For sale, a beach hut fit for an undertaker, Goth or melancholic. It’s the old mortuary at Saltburn-by-the-sea, it comes with its original  slab, it’s Grade 2 listed and it’s on the market, guide price unknown. For further details, contact Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.

Hat tip Tony Piper

No sooner had we berated George Tinning, the beleaguered Nick Buckles figure who totters atop Co-op Funeralcare, for his use of the word ‘deceased’ accompanied by the indefinite article, than a commenter, commenting on this post, asked Jonathan, a human cat among pigeons of the very liveliest sort, “How many Deceaseds have you handled?”

Perhaps this is, in Nick Gandon’s immortal words, qwerty stuff for the qwerty-minded. But I don’t know. If ‘carcass’ is no substitute for ‘deceased’, then there are wrong words. The GFG team thinks ‘deceased’ is a bad word.  It doesn’t work in the plural. We think there are better words.

Once upon a time, the c-word (and not in a John Terry sense) was perfectly acceptable. It derives from the Latin. There is no surviving Old English word for corpse, which was lic — though we do see it survive in lych-gate, http://www.health-canada-pharmacy.com/symbicort.html literally, corpse gate. So corpse is the oldest word still in use, and it was perfectly acceptable in 1662, when the Book of Common Prayer prescribed:

When they come to the Grave, while the Corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth, the Priest shall say, or the Priest and Clerks shall sing:

Corpse was softened in 1928:

When they come to the Grave, while the Body is made ready to be laid into the earth, shall be sung or said:

Well, what’s wrong with body, eh?

This, perhaps. It fails to take into account that that’s not a body, that’s Granddad, still a person til we’ve got our heads around his disembodiment.

So what’s the best word for the modern age?

Excitement is building around the GFG Funeral Industry Awards – the first ever held for the Dismal Trade. There’s been a lot of press interest and, so far, stories in Metro and the BBC website. Sky are interested in featuring the event as part of a feelgood series about nice things happening to nice people.

Even though there’s a lot of fun built into the event, the underlying purpose is bloodymindedly serious: to celebrate the unsung heroes of Funeralworld. Given the amount of dissing the industry has endured this year, it’s time to yank out the colonoscope, hold up the mirror and reach for the garlands.

Have you nominated anyone yet? If not, why not?

Are you allowed to nominate yourself? Yes. But get back-up.

The one category – the only category – in which we’re struggling is Embalmer of the Year. If you know of a brilliant reconstructionist with a heart of gold, please speak up for them.

To remind you, those categories again:

Most Promising New Funeral Director

Embalmer of the Year

The Eternal Slumber Award for Coffin Supplier of the Year

Most Significant Contribution to the Understanding of Death in the Media
(TV, Film, Newspaper, Magazine or Online)

Crematorium Attendant of the Year

Best Internet Bereavement Resource

The Blossom d’Amour Award For Funeral Floristry

Funeral Celebrant of the Year

Cemetery of the Year Award

Gravedigger of the Year

Funeral Director of the Year

Best Alternative to a Hearse

Book of the Year
(published after 1 May 2011)

Lifetime Achievement Award

If you wish to nominate someone, send an email with a written recommendation (no more than 100 words) to say why you think the company or individual is worthy of the award.

Please include an address and telephone number. Your citation may be quoted at the award’s ceremony on Friday 7 September 2012.

Email your entry to: goodfuneralawards@joyofdeath.co.uk by Monday 6 August 2012.