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Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Phyllis Bowman, founder of pro-life political lobbying organisation Right to Life died recently, aged 85. For half a century, right up to her final illness and last days, she fought tirelessly to save unborn babies from abortion and, more recently, against efforts to legalise euthanasia in Britain. Like other women who have given their lives to causes — Florence Nightingale, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mother Teresea, Sue Ryder — she was feisty and shrewd (see her blog http://phyllisbowman.blogspot.co.uk/ for evidence of this).

Some here might not agree with her beliefs but is it not true that death is a great equaliser, a time when we admire someone’s convictions despite holding conflicting views? It’s also true that when an inspirational figure dies, admirers are motivated to continue the work. It’s as if death shows us how to appreciate people in a way we failed to do when they were alive.

The GFG website will be down for a period this evening for essential repairs. A man with a spanner, a hammer and a cold chisel needs to do some work on it. 

It will descend to the realm of the dead and rise in glory. 

The Joy of Death Festival 2012 will pilot the first Good Funeral Guide Awards Ceremony to recognise outstanding service to the bereaved.

The awards will be made in the following categories:

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

Anyone can nominate a person for the award.The awards ceremony will be on the evening of Friday 7 September 2012 at a prestigious hotel in Bournemouth. It will be hosted by Charles Cowling, founder of theGood Funeral Guide. The winners will receive a small trophy and a certificate in recognition of their achievement.

Said, organiser, Brian Jenner: “The funeral industry has many characters and styles, we want to recognise the diversity of the industry and allow the public to have some say in what they think is good. We thought we’d trial this format in 2012 to see if it’s an effective way to acknowledge outstanding service to the bereaved.

“We’ve already had some nominations. Barry Albin-Dyer and Ken West (father of natural burial) have been mentioned for their lifetime contributions. In the alternative hearse category, we’ve had a mention for Paul Sinclair, the motorcycle hearse rider, and Clare Brooks and Michelle Orton, who run the Volkswagen campervan hearse service.”

Anyone wishing to nominate should send an email with a written recommendation (no more than 100 words) to say why they 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.

ED’S NOTE: Do it, good people, please. We need your nominations. These awards will be the best possible antidote to all the colonoscopic stuff about Funeralworld coming out of the media these days – stuff like the Which? survey (here) and Channel 4’s Dispatches recent exposé of Co-operative Funeralcare. 

 Bournemouth will host the first ever trade awards ceremony for the funeral industry on Friday 7 September. The competition is an initiative run by the Good Funeral Guide and the Bournemouth Joy of Death Festival. 

The Good Funeral Guide is an independent, not-for-profit consumer advice and advocacy service for people who need to arrange a funeral for someone or who want to make future arrangements for their own funeral. 

The awards will be made on the basis of nominations from the public. The judges will make the awards on the basis of quality of service to the bereaved. 

There will be trophies for coffin supplier of the year, funeral celebrant of the year, embalmer of the year, most promising new funeral director and many other categories. The ceremony will be on Friday 7 September at the Green House Hotel. It will be part of the Bournemouth Joy of Death Festival, which runs from 7-9 September 2012. 

The annual festival invites expert speakers to inform the public about their options when it comes to funerals. It also includes an exhibition of unusual hearses and a walk around a local cemetery. 

Speakers will include David Twiston-Davies, former Chief Obituary Writer for the Daily Telegraph, a lady who collected her mother from the mortuary and buried her herself and Rupert Callender, editor of the new Natural Death Handbook. 

“The hush-hush world of the dismal trade is shrouded in mystery. We are going to reveal its best kept secret. We are going to blow the cover of its finest practitioners and expose them for what they are: some of the finest, most dedicated people you could ever meet.” said Charles Cowling, editor of the Good Funeral Guide. 

For more details go to http://www.joyofdeath.co.uk

or contact Brian Jenner 01202 551257

From Wikipedia:

Franz Reichelt, also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt (1879 – February 4, 1912), was an Austrian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for his accidental death by jumping from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design. Reichelt had become fixated on developing a suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft. Initial experiments conducted with dummies dropped from the fifth floor of his apartment building had been successful, but he was unable to replicate those early successes with any of his subsequent designs.

Believing that the lack of a suitably high test platform was partially to blame for his failures, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He was finally granted permission in early 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on February 4 he made it clear that he intended to jump himself rather than conduct an experiment with dummies. Despite attempts by his friends and spectators to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. The parachute failed to deploy and he crashed into the icy ground at the foot of the tower. Although it was clear that the fall had killed him, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he was officially pronounced dead. 

From Gary Connery’s website here: 

Gary Connery became the first man to ever land a wingsuit without deploying a parachute on Wed 23rd May. 

Gary’s flight from the helicopter at 2,400ft to the box rig on the ground took just 40 seconds. During his dive he reached a combined speed of 102 mph ( 84 mph horizontally and 59 mph vertically ) whilst having to deal with the air turbulence and continuously adjusting his steep approach angle to stay on target.

Unofficial reports over the last few days had suggested that the professional stuntman landed anywhere from 15 mph to 80 mph. During training Gary had been able to consistently fly his wingsuit at 55 mph. However data has now been retrieved from the Flysight GPS unit that was on his neckbrace, which confirmed that he impacted the boxes at a combined speed of 69.7 mph.

At a height of 250ft, Gary levelled out but was still approaching too fast at 85mph. Once he flew over the front of the box rig, Gary was then able to ‘flare’ his wingsuit, maximising his airresistance, which brought his speed down to a ‘safer’ 70 mph when he ‘landed’.

After the landing, Gary and his wingsuit were inspected and no damage on either was found, much to the relief of his wife, Vivienne!

Extracts from the speech delivered by Ru Callender at the launch of the 5th edition of the Natural Death Handbook at the Horse Hospital, London, 4 July. 

In the west, the idea of celebrating our ancestors has weakened along with our religious beliefs. We are less sure of our place in the natural order, less sure of an order at all. Our graveyards are untended and shunned, and our sense of self becomes just as neglected. I believe that we donʼt become ancestors when we die, we become them when we are born, and it is our duty to all that came before and all that will come after to realise this. Ancestors remind us that the baton is often passed to us from out of the darkness, from out of the past, and that we need faith to grasp it, and faith to hand it on, gifting our beliefs out into nothing, trusting that other hands not yet born will pick it up. Weʼre all absent friends in waiting. We die, yet our ideas and values can be immortal.

The Natural Death Centre has always operated in a difficult area. Most people quite understandably give death and the issues around it a wide berth. What we have to say makes us unpopular with those who would rather diminish the experience for their own benefit, but as events like the Levenson inquiry, or the Dispatches exposé, or the Archbishop of Canterbury expressing his disgust at society’s imbalance show us, speaking truth to power is our moral duty, as sure as it is in the nature of power to resist our attempts to break through. We believe that no authority, religious, medical, cultural or worst of all, commercial, should be allowed to define and package and limit our experience of dying and what may come after. These rituals are for us all to re-imagine, this mysterious frontier is for every individual to cross in their own way.

 Read the whole speech here. 

The Rev Paul Sinclair takes Luke Leary for a last spin at Brands Hatch, at speed, before Luke’s funeral. 

Luke, 24, was killed in an accident. According to KentOnline:

Around 50 machines and at least the same number of cars lined up at the entrance to Brands Hatch as 24-year-old Luke Leary’s coffin was brought in on a special motorcycle hearse. 

All the bikers sported coloured gear.

Blue and white predominated: it was the colours of his bike, and the bright colours were the wish of his family.

The hearse stopped briefly for photographs after going out on to the track.

The Darenth biker, who had lived life to the full, then did three laps of the Indy Circuit before making his final journey to Bobbing crematorium
Luke was killed when he hit a lamp post in High Halstow as he rode on the Hoo peninsula.

Full story here. Paul and Luke arrive 4 mins 30 secs in. 

The Olympics are going to create a headache for funeral directors and the bereaved in a country where getting to the crem on time is crucial to the smooth running of a crematorium. Some funeral directors are already in despair. According to the Daily Star: 

Moona Taslim of Muslim funeral home Haji Taslim, which sits parallel to the ­Olympic route, said: “We’re completely buggered.”

Source. 

Extracted from ThisIsLeicestershire: 

Teaching assistant Pam Goodwin, 44, who worked at Highcliffe Primary, in Birstall, died at home in the village on June 6, of cancer. Head teacher Pauline Aveling said: “Pam was a wonderful character and a pillar of the community. She worked very hard to help the children in her care. She was loved by all the staff.

Staff were buy generic cialis in australia granted compassionate leave by governors to attend the funeral and an initial decision was made to close the primary for the day.

However, County Hall refused permission on the grounds it was not a standard request and not enough notice was given to parents.

Full article here

Posted by Lyra Mollington

After even just a few funerals, remaining focused as a mystery mourner is proving quite a challenge.  No wonder some of the vicars sound lacklustre.  They must be thinking, ‘Here we go again: everyone looking glum; pretending to listen; miming to the words of the hymn; wishing they were already at the pub.’

After a couple of dull funerals that were not worth writing about, I thought about giving up.  However, I seem to have become addicted.  And, like a gambler, I live in hope.  Add to that the dreadful weather we’ve been having lately and, before I knew what was happening, I was wearing my black suit and driving through the gates of my local crematorium.  Keeping my fingers crossed for a winner.  But were the odds against me?

We all followed the coffin in.  I sat three rows from the front just behind the family, leaving everyone else skirmishing over the seats at the back.  It’s as though they are back at school – if they sit too near the front the vicar might ask them to come up to the lectern and read something. 

‘I have a poem here that the family have chosen.  It’s rather sentimental and theologically unsound so would someone like to read it for me?  You madam!  Yes you, sitting on the second row back with the ill-fitting jacket and the red cheeks…’

I was daydreaming and I completely missed our vicar’s real opening words.  I then noticed that the floral displays were new.  Artificial of course but quite tasteful, standing out nicely against the curtains.

I was suddenly aware that we were standing up.   I quickly checked the order of service.  Unbelievable!  All Things Bright & Beautiful.  Again.  What are the chances?   

As we sat down, I resolved to concentrate.  I berated myself… this was someone’s funeral.  Someone who may (or may not) have been dearly loved.  It wasn’t yet clear.  I focused on the photograph on the front of the order of service.  It was of a smiling woman with dark wavy hair.  Dyed?  Shirley Ann. My age. 

As I tuned in once more to the Reverend Susan, I was disappointed that there was still no sign of Shirley: her life; her legacy, her hopes and dreams…

Absent-mindedly, I picked up a book from the shelf in front of me: ‘Funeral Services of the Christian Churches in England – New Edition’.

We were standing again – The King of Love my Shepherd Is.  As we sang, I wondered whether the line ‘Perverse and foolish oft I strayed’ applied to Shirley.  And what on earth is ‘unction grace’?

I felt sad as I left the mourners standing around in the drizzle staring at their flowers.  Perhaps Shirley was a private person and this had been the perfect send-off for her: godly words of comfort for her family and friends chosen by the Reverend Susan.  To my shame, I had hardly listened to a single word.

I rummaged in my handbag to find my car keys and I felt something that shouldn’t have been there.  A book.   

I put the heating on when I got home (heavens above, is it really June?).  I read the book of Christian funeral services from cover to cover.  Well, almost: I skimmed some of the prayers and the selection of 44 hymns at the back.  I looked in vain for two of my favourites, ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’ and ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. 

Although I continued to feel despondent that no-one had wanted (or been able) to share a little about Shirley’s life, I concluded that there are some lovely readings in the book of funeral services. 

I wondered whether these were amongst the words chosen by Reverend Susan: ‘Eternal God…We thank you for Shirley, for the years you gave her and the years we shared with her…’  I hoped they were.  I am determined to listen properly next time.  And there has to be a next time fairly soon – this perverse and foolish woman has stolen goods to return.

© Lyra Mollington 2012