Perfect boutique undertaker’s for sale
In the same week that LM Funerals (“More than just a funeral service” — or less, depending on your point of view) decided to cash in their chips and put their chain of familyalike funeral homes on the market (yours for £100 million or so – go on, don’t be so tight), the GFG can […]
The Big Hug Appeal
The good people at Cruse have asked me to tell you all about their new appeal, which will enable them to support bereaved children. Of course, I am delighted to do so. What is the Big Hug Appeal? For those struggling to cope with the loss of a loved one, the cold, dark days of […]
Happy Christmas!
The entire team at the Good Funeral Guide thanks you, at this year’s end, for reading and responding — whether in exhilaration or exasperation — for your support, tip-offs, advice and good counsel. Together we form, I hope, a loose-limbed alliance of more or less fellow spirits with the shared aim of bringing death to […]
Sleigh to go
If ever I am surprised by genius and give birth to a great idea I always offer it up for adoption at the mewling and puking stage. This is because I am a 99 per cent inspiration 1 per cent perspiration person. The last great idea I brought into the world was Viking funerals for […]
Chirpy chirpy tweet tweet
I’ve taken to twittering. Not like a duck to water, you understand; you either get it or you don’t and I’m not sure that I do, so I’m not waving but bobbing. You follow someone doing something funereal and potentially interesting and chances are you get a torrent of repetitious, self-serving chimp-jabber. So having bobbed […]
Gail’s marathon
I wonder if you’re following Gail Rubin’s thirty funerals in thirty days? I’m hooked. She’s on no. 3. For me, this is a social document and a celebration of the lives of ordinary people. For you? Find her blog here.
Sweet story
Very sweet story from New Zealand: An elderly Levin couple together for more than 60 years died within hours of each other in circumstances that Shakespeare could not have written better, their daughter says. With only hours to live, Marion Bray-Gunn, 84, was being taken from Palmerston North hospital on Tuesday so she could die […]
A real funeral
When Fiona Hughes died of cancer in September ’10, her sister Dina, her family, and Melanie, Fiona’s daughter, followed their hearts and gave her a colourful, creative, fear-free and happily sad funeral which embodied the customs, culture and language of her family (if not those of their funeral director). She wrote the following uplifting account […]
The undertaker’s understrapper
When my friend PoshUndertaker first opened to the public, business was slow. When he went on holiday he’d ask me to mind the shop for him. I’d say yes like a shot, confident that nothing more would come in than a lot of importunate calls from people flogging stuff. There was always the possibility, of […]
The female of the species is more deathy than the male?
I’ve been doing my bit to promote the Good Funeral Guide (all the while thinking that, really, if it’s any good, it’ll do that for itself). If I send a press release to a local radio station, chances are they’ll interview me. I go and sit in front of a mike and answer predictable questions: […]
