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Disturbing reports about China reach me from a contact in the US Pentagon who, for reasons which will become apparent, I cannot identify.

The victory of the Communist Party in China marked a clean break with the past, a reinvention of the nation. But some traditions just wouldn’t lie down and die. One of these was ancestor worship, the veneration of the dead, based in the Confucian belief that the living owe a lasting duty of care to deceased family members. The most visible manifestation of this is the annual Quingming Festival when families gather to sweep graves and leave offerings. Quingming falls this year on 5 April.

In a country with a huge population and sparse land resources, burial space is now exhausted. A recent government initiative to encourage the living to maintain virtual graves on the internet instead was greeted with, ominously, the threat of civil unrest. It seems that only physical resting places will satisfy the Chinese people.

That being so, the astounding news is that the Chinese leadership is now looking to outer space. And its gaze has come to rest on the moon. Can the moon provide a satisfactory final resting place for this numerous and increasingly affluent people? Initial feasibility studies have included focus groups of ordinary Chinese citizens. Results show that they would be entirely content with lunar burial. It seems that the brilliant whiteness of the moon makes it particularly acceptable. White is the Chinese colour of mourning.

The Chinese government is now actively seeking to bring this about. My Pentagon contact reports that pressure is being placed on a reluctant US government and, in particular, on its capability, through NASA, to convey China’s dead to the moon until such time as China’s space industry can take over. This is just one last-ditch, hopeless struggle being fought by a dying superpower against a rising star. As my contact expresses it, “These guys have bailed out our economy and stuffed the pockets of ordinary Americans with dollars so that they can buy Chinese-made goods. We are already economically enslaved, dammit. Now they want to annexe our space exploration capability, and there’s not a thing we can do to stop them.”

Even though, under international agreements, the moon belongs to no one, this cuts no ice with the Chinese. Said my contact: “These treaties are as much use as tits on a boar hog. I mean, who’s gonna go after them and stop them?”

I decided to check out these allegations with the Chinese embassy in London. After the usual interminable delays I was finally put on the line to someone willing to speak to me, a Mr Lim Yu Zin. He asked me to describe exactly what I had heard. Then, with immense politeness, he responded, “Sir, I regret to inform you that I cannot possibly comment.” As he spoke I could hear in the background both suppressed laughter and open-mouthed guffaws.

I hope to bring you further updates to this story on the same day next year.

I know this blog has around 3,000 readers (and rising). I have no idea who any but a tiny fraction actually are. Google Analytics tells me that most of them are in the UK, and around 500 live in the US. The rest are scattered around the globe, and it’s these who, when I check my stats, most intrigue to me. Who, I wonder idly, is my one reader in Ethiopia? My one reader in Saudi Arabia? My one reader in Iran? That’s their business; I’m not calling on them to tell me.

One thing I have become aware of in the last week is just how many UK readers are funeral directors. The comments on posts about the Saif’s research into funeral prices are some evidence of this; the number of personal emails yet more. If there are two topics that get funeral directors reaching for their keyboards, they are funeral prices and Co-operative Funeralcare. Not, perhaps, surprisingly, the Co-op has many adversaries who email me and, in recent times, just one persistent defender. I am always interested in defences of Funeralcare. Once upon a time I used to send a link to all pejorative blog posts to a Co-op press officer called Phil Edwards, begging him to give me the good news about Funeralcare. He never replied.

Why did Phil not reply? Bad manners? Overwork? Disdain? I don’t know. He never replied, remember. But I guess it may have something to do with the trust Funeralcare places in the power of marketing. Because brand image is all. And it doesn’t have to be earned. Not if you can throw enough money at the right agency to create the right ‘perception’ and enough of it. We all saw the telly ad, right? Cost a few bob. It’ll probably pay for itself lots of times over. So who cares about some little pipsqueak consumer advocate with a PC and a Blogger account? In anticipation of an injunction or some other form of legal intimidation I long ago made over all my worldly possessions to other people for safekeeping. It looks as if I was flattering myself.

I say that, but I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that an independent consumer guide published by a respected, mainstream publisher, complemented by a lively website, cannot do an honest and effective job of creating perceptions which are closer to the truth.

Because this isn’t just about me, some little pipsqueak, etc. Self-appointed experts are not the ones we necessarily admire, but when they research carefully and think hard and test their opinions and listen properly and sideline their egos and speak with and for those who are decent and honest, they are valuable servants of a good cause. So to all those who have written to me, I say thank you. And to those who haven’t, please do, because this is about all of us. The address: charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk

Jessica Mitford took the easy route with the US funeral industry. She held it up to ridicule. Great fun, but not much use to anyone looking for a good funeral director or wanting to create a good funeral ceremony. The emphasis of the Good Funeral Guide will remain the celebration of all that is best in the UK funeral industry. So do, please, send in your good news stories. So that we can accentuate the positive and show people the best it gets.

My Dead Girlfriend is a Canadian blog written by a man with a to-die-for name, Abra Cadaver. How we all wish we’d thought of that. He’s more of an occasional blogger, these days. But when he reaches for his keyboard he’s really worth reading.

If you haven’t wandered through his archive, do. But start with his two most recent posts first. The video sketch Funeral Sex is psychologically acute. And I love Abra’s (now revised) wish for his own funeral: “if I am to be there in deceased form, they should trot me out on a big silver tray with an apple in my mouth.”

Blogworld is enriched by (almost) every new e-scribbler with opinions to air, especially those with the skill and the intellect to put words to things we’ve often thought about. There aren’t that many bloggers in the death zone. I wish there were more funeral directors (like Pat McNally) with something to say and the urge to say it. Celebrants are slightly more numerous. We recently welcomed the luxuriantly monikered GloriaMundi, and I hope you check in there regularly. Really good stuff.

There’s a new kid on the block. Welcome, Green Energy Globe. Here are some extracts. First, a description of cremation:

Cremation occurs inside of a crematorium finish with an industrial sort furnace. Typically, by fixation a physique in the repartee or cover of the furnace, it is incinerated and roughly utterly used up by fire. The blazing of propane or healthy gas provides temperatures of 1,598-1,796 ° F and the feverishness turn ensures the physique is marked down to bone fragments with all alternative soft hankie vaporized or oxidized as vented gas.

He or she has this take on resomation:

…there is a brand new child on the retard which offers a opposite arrange of immature “cremation” and nonetheless an additional pick resolution to normal funeral practices. You might instruct to cruise a routine called “Alkaline Hydrolysis” or “Bio-chemical Cremation”. Already used in physique ordering of investigate animals, roadkill, or culled, infirm herds of cattle and deer, it is a quick, safe, and spotless routine of violation down proteins, pathogens, and viruses. During this routine of containing alkali hydrolysis, a tellurian physique is placed in to a steel blood vessel or drum-like container, lonesome with H2O which is exhilarated to 350 degrees, along with the further of a clever containing alkali piece called potassium hydroxide (lye). Potassium hydroxide, ordinarily used to have soap and glass, breaks down the body’s tissues and not as big bones.

GEG’s mind wanders over all green issues. Here, for the living, is a description of how you can use recycled materials to create stunning collages:

Onion or Potato BagOnion or potato bags which have been done up of a cosmetic filigree have been a lot of fun for adding hardness to collage crafts. You can have have have have have have have have make make make use of of of of of of of of of of of them similar to a consume and dab them in paint to emanate a singular hardness and pattern when pulpy simply on paper. You can additionally have have have have have have have have make make make use of of of of of of of of of of of this recycled element over or underneath alternative collage equipment for hardness and interest.

There’s a satisfying touch of Sam Beckett, there. And a great new phrase: to cruise a routine.

Read more, if you haven’t gone cross-eyed, here.

Eagle-eyed viewers of EastEnders have been left scratching their heads after spotting Archie Mitchell standing at the back of his own funeral. Archie’s murder on Christmas Day – he was bludgeoned, quaintly, with a bust of Queen Victoria – has been the source of much buy cialis in riyadh excitement but maybe he’s not as dead as we thought. A BBC spokesman explains: “It’s true that he was there. Sadly we can’t claim it was a sophisticated Hitchcockian joke. Larry just happened to be on set that day and joined in as an extra.”

I don’t know if you have ever discovered Norm, humane, genial and wise, over at either of his blogs, Extraordinary Expectations or When Death Breaks in… The latter is suspended, now, or fulfilled. On EE, be sure to click all three tabs at the top.

Here’s a taste of Norm. I hope he won’t mind. These are some beautiful words he spoke at the funeral of a man with Down’s Syndrome:

He helped us understand in new ways.

He gave people a new view of patience.

He helped us feel compassion for others.

He made people rethink their priorities.

He helped us realize God’s love for the overlooked.

He reminded people of their frailties.

He cautioned us of our pride and dependence on material things.

He taught people how to love simply and unconditionally.

And now, he has taught us the truth of “ . . . the last shall be first.”

Far and away the most powerful image of 1979’s Winter of Discontent, when one and a half million public sector workers went on strike, was that of the dead lying unburied. There’s a peculiar horror in that; it blends dishonour with decomposition most potently. Bloated rubbish bags, bloated corpses. Bluebottles. Stench. The unburied dead of ’79 endure in our national mythology – and myth is what it mostly is. But hey, let’s not let the truth get in the way!

Here are some extracts from Nigel Slater’s essay Feeding the Elderly, taken from Eating for England.

It is December 2004, and I am sitting in an old people’s home just outside Birmingham. I am holding my aunt’s hand. My aunt is ninety-nine, my eldest surviving relative on my father’s side of the family, and probably the person I am closest to. The home was chosen not for its convenient location, or even for its price, but simply because it was the only one I could find that didn’t smell of pee.

A woman moves past us pushing a Zimmer frame. As she gets level with us she starts to fart, a sound that goes on for what seems like eternity as she continues to move along in her bumpy, caterpillar fashion. My aunt, who has much the same schoolboy sense of humour as me, starts to giggle.

‘What is it about Zimmer frames that makes people trump?’ I ask, having heard her parp her way round the communal lounge on several occasions.

‘It’s all the pushing,’ she says. ‘Those things take a lot of pushing.’ Her giggle becomes a helpless, stuttering cough. ‘They just come out. You can’t stop them. You’ll be like that one day. And sooner than you think. Anyway, they give us too much cabbage in here. We had it three times last week.’

…

Many of the residents have their food put through the mincer, so the only difference between meals is the smell. It’s like baby food without the bright colours … It must be interminably dispiriting to cook in an old people’s home, to watch your careful cooking, a neatly peeled vegetable or a delicately filleted piece of fish, being pushed through the mincer, but that is the long and short of it. The advert in the Caterer and Hotelkeeper will insist that applicants must have passed their catering exams, should have the requisite experience and a love of cooking for other people, but it is unlikely to point out that everything the successful interviewee cooks will end up as a puree. One can only imagine they know that easily-swallowed food goes with the territory. Like having no hair or teeth and filling your pants, eating purees is what you do when you come into this world, and again when you go out of it.