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The private ambulance is on its way, porters are bringing up the mortuary trolley and the nurses in the ICU are disconnecting tracheostomy tubes, dialysis lines, catheter and ventilator. Soon the Old Year will be flatlining. Farewell 2014 ur a legend RIP. 

Here in the GFG-Batesville Tower, where our annual Christmas party is presently in full wrecking-ball swing, the entire, massed team wishes you a very happy Christmas and an immense New Year. 

Thank you for reading. Thank you for blogging — if you did. If you didn’t, well, there’s a new year resolution for you. We’d love to hear from you. The GFG is for everybody.

Our tongue is stilled. But we’ll be back on 1 Jan 2015* with… David Hall’s latest lorry hearse adventure, of course. 

* Terms and conditions apply

TERMS AND CONDITIONS – In accordance with the terms of the Mortality (Sudden and Arbitrary) Act the Directors of the Good Funeral Guide CIC offer no assurance or guarantee conditional or otherwise, implicit or explicit, that either they or you will be extant in 2015 wherefore the statement “We’ll be back” may be construed as amounting to no more than an expression of conventional seasonal courtesy signifying no other than an aspiration or desideratum and not a binding undertaking. 

Sorry if you missed us. Something to do with hostile action by corporate enemies of the GFG the server. A huge thank you to Ian ‘Harry’ Harris at Carronmedia for his delicate touch with a big spanner and cold chisel. There was an uncomfortable period when we thought there might be no way back. 

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Neville Chamberlain (above) died from cancer on 9 November 1940, just six months after he resigned as Prime Minister.

Winston Churchill, his successor, paid tribute to him on 12 November despite the two men having disagreed over the ‘appeasement’ of Hitler: 

‘Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged’. 

This was no funeral eulogy but a speech at the House of Commons, the funeral not taking place until 14 November at Westminster Abbey.

But what stands out in this sequence of events is that Chamberlain was cremated at Golders Green on 13 November, the day before the funeral, and with no ceremony and just two members of his household present. See the newspaper announcement here. 

This break with convention is confirmed in a British Pathe newsreel showing guests arriving at the Abbey ‘to pay homage to the ashes’ of a man of peace — here. 

It’s easy to assume this order had something to do with London being under constant threat of German bombing raids. The distinguished funeral gathering was deliberately not publicised in advance. Perhaps fuel rations were a consideration: why waste time and money driving from Westminster to Golders Green and then back again for the interment of the ashes?

However, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey had some form in being an unlikely champion of cremation due to limited space in a building much in demand for the interment of notable figures. In 1905, the ashes of actor Sir Henry Irving became the first to be interred at the Abbey. By 1911, the dean was insisting the body of botanist Sir Joseph Hooker be cremated if he was to secure a grave in the nave by Sir Charles Darwin. Hooker’s widow declined and buried him in a churchyard at Kew instead.

The practical approach to Chamberlain’s funeral is not the only reason it compares to the modern trend for simplicity. When Churchill awarded him the Order of the Garter, he declined, stating he would ‘prefer to die plain ‘Mr. Chamberlain’ like my father before me, unadorned by any title’. His grave is marked by a modest stone..

Love and Loss: Poetry at funerals and in bereavement

Sunday 2nd Nov, 8pm

North London Tavern, Kilburn High Road

Tickets £8 through kilburnliteraryfestival.co.uk and on the door

 Bereavement can lead people to seek solace in poetry for the first time, or indeed, to express themselves by writing their own poetry for the first time. Discussing and reciting poems written in anger, confusion, sadness or celebration are:

Jack Rooke – stand-up poet and comedian from Watford. Jack is an associate artist of The Roundhouse and a part of Soho Theatre’s Comedy Lab 2014.
Jack hosts the award-winning stand-up poetry night Bang Said The Gun, the poetry/comedy Amphitheatre at Bestival and has created work for The Independent, Cosmopolitan, BBC Radio 1, The Guardian and Channel 4. He is also an ambassador for male suicide prevention charity CALM and curates the ‘Save The Male’ showcases to raise awareness that suicide is the biggest killer of young men in the UK.

Tim Wells – poet
‘London poetry landmark’ – TLS
‘suedehead bard of N16’ – the Guardian
‘bizarre character from the East End’ – The Times
‘a neatly twisted line in rhetoric’ – NME

Catherine Fried – sculptor, writer and authority on the work of her late husband Erich, a best-selling poet in Germany and his native Austria. As a boy of 17, Erich Fried fled the Holocaust for England and settled in Kilburn where he lived and worked for 30 years. Much of his poetry was political.  Later he was celebrated for his love poems.  He also wrote about death.

Richard Putt – a director of Leverton & Sons.  With 42 years’ experience as a dedicated funeral director, he is the ideal barometer of changing funeral traditions and the increasing importance of poetry in the lives of the bereaved.

 Audience members will also be invited to recite short poems of their own.

Guest post by Wendy Coulton

Lynda Bellingham’s refreshing openness and honesty about living and dying with cancer has touched many lives but the enduring legacy will be if people take responsibility for their end of life matters.

There have been calls for the Oxo advert to be broadcast this Christmas by way of a tribute to Lynda. Surely a better tribute to this remarkable woman would be to follow her example – discuss and prepare for the inevitable.

Despite pretty much everything else being talked about on social media and reality television, death is still a taboo topic. Lynda was inspirational in the way she spoke, laughed and cried about dying and her decisions regarding the end of her life.

I regularly see families in distress and turmoil because there was no discussion with the person who has died about their wishes and no practical arrangements made regarding funding the funeral related costs. In some instances siblings have fallen out over conflicting views about what their parent would have wanted on fundamental issues like whether it is to be burial or cremation.

And if people feel uncomfortable discussing end of life matters with their nearest and dearest – they can always write it down and let their family know where their instructions or wishes can be found when the time comes.

The organ donation and transplant service has been encouraging registered donors to tell their next of kin whilst they are alive about their wishes because ultimately families can withhold consent and stop donation proceeding. 

Personally I think the last act of love I can give to my daughter is peace of mind knowing my wishes because we have talked about it, having a will in place and having finance allocated and easily accessible to pay for funeral costs.

Preparations are well underway for a two day event I am organising in Plymouth called ‘The Elephant in the Room’ in March 2015 with 12 talks and an advice hub all under one roof on a wide range of end of life matters.

In a host of different venues in Oxford and Oxfordshire over a span of four weeks we offer you a smorgasbord of original, enjoyable and challenging experiences. Over 40 events and nearly 100 participants

http://www.kickingthebucket.co.uk/

http://www.changingchelmsford.org/

http://www.livinganddying.co.uk/

It takes all sorts to make a GFG mailbag — it’s not all lawyer’s letters from the FBCA, you know. Here’s one:

Hello Charles and Good Funeral Guide team,

I’m an avid reader of The Good Funeral Guide blog and and would be honoured to contribute by submitting an article.

I would love to read a post on ‘How to Incorporate a Limousine in a Funeral on a Budget’, and I think your other readers would too. It would definitely be a valuable inclusion because it will give your readers some tips on saving money on using a limo in a funeral.

I know you are probably too busy to get that content out immediately so how about you have my friend Mircea Stanescu write it for you? Mircea is the owner of Echo Limousine, which is a Chicago based limousine rental and service company. I assure you that the content will be of excellent quality.

Look forward to hearing from you,

Shivani

Our reply:

Dear Shivani

As an avid reader of the GFG blog you may have sometimes suspected that it is based in the UK. I can confirm that it is. This being so, I fear Mircea’s words will fall on deaf ears. I greatly regret this.  

With all best wishes 

Charles 

We get an awful lot of these emails from guest blogggers, most of them equally bonkers. Why? Because blogging wins tons of Brownie points with meritocratic search engine web crawlerthingies. It catapults you up the rankings and increases your visibility a millionfold – perhaps more. As Shivani knows very well, a mighty vehicle like the GFG has serious rocket power. Here at the Batesville-GFG Shard we have never bothered with SEO, not only because we think it unsporting but also because we don’t need to. We blog a lot and therefore sit at the right hand of the Lord Google Almighty Himself. 

From time to time we invite our readers to submit an article. Lots of you have promised to write something but have failed to come up with the goods, leaving the blog looking like the ravings of pub bore – me.  

How good it would be to widen the debate, embrace all sorts of points of view and have a blog that is representative of everyone who works in Funeralworld.  

Let off some steam. Send it in. Nom de plume allowed. It’ll be read all over the world and it’ll put your website on page one of Google. 

Come one, come all. Just do it. 

Quaker Social Action is looking for two exceptional people to join our team.

Down to Earth development worker

Full time, £26,522pa, Bethnal Green, London.

Down to Earth is a unique project which works with those on a low income in east London who are face planning and paying for a funeral. We step in where end of life services step back and bereavement services have not yet engaged to help people with the practicalities and processes of planning an affordable and meaningful funeral.

As a development worker you will engage with people to help them understand their options and  work through what is sometimes a maze of family expectation, form-filling and financial decisions at a time when their ability to cope can be clouded by grief.

The need is very real. The price of a funeral has risen 80% since 2004 and the cost takes many by surprise, especially as the issue crosses two taboos, money and death. Those whose finances are already finely balanced (maybe through having spent time caring for an unwell relative, or living on a fixed income such as a pension) can be tipped financial difficulty and unmanageable debt by the cost of a funeral.

Joining a small team you will be able to make a real difference to people from day one, as you work with compassion and a level head alongside people at a vulnerable time in their lives. You will also have the scope to stretch yourself and grow with the project within a supportive organisation.

To apply download our job pack,and application form and return to us at info@qsa.org.uk no later than 10am on Monday 6th October.

In the light of the Report of the Infant Cremation Commission by Lord Bonomy, 17 June 2014, I invited Ken West, a former manager of Emstrey crematorium, to give his interpretation of the training and practices which had led to the events which the Report investigated. At the same time (28 June 2014) I sent identical emails to Tim Morris of the ICCM and Rick Powell of the FBCA inviting their response. Here is what I wrote to Mr Powell:

The GFG is on holiday. Posts will be intermittent for the next fortnight.