Do animals have souls?
Cat-loving cleric and huge character George Callender, one of the GFG’s favourite and most admired funeral celebrants/ministers, talks here on Channel 4’s 4thought about what happens to our pets when we die. Sorry, we can’t embed it. “I have officiated at many pet funerals over the years, and I believe that animals, like us, when they die, […]
This is for everyone
Posted by Belinda Forbes, celebrant. For some of the participants, when an event as life-changing as the Olympics finishes, it is like a bereavement. So it was appropriate that at the Closing Ceremony on Sunday evening Eric Idle performed Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life. This is a song which I have been asked to […]
Busybody nonsense
Christopher Harris Some time this evening Christopher Harris will deliver the following speech to Woodstock Town Council, calling upon it to strike out its requirement that the interment of his father’s ashes be superintended by a funeral director. Here’s another example of someone tenaciously pursuing the rights of the bereaved with an important test case. […]
Switched off but still sparking
Today’s theme is ashes, by the way. In her brilliant book Making an Exit, which not nearly enough of you have read, the author, Sarah Murray, plans her own dispersal. First, she wants to be resomated and reduced to the pure white ‘ash’ characteristic of the process. What next? Scattering, of course, for cremation is, and […]
As you get older your friends start to die.
Posted by Sue Gill We’ve been to some truly awful funerals and I’m sure we’re not alone in that. Sometimes the ceremonies were healing, but more often they were formulaic and irrelevant, and we left feeling sometimes angry, sometimes guilty, frequently in despair. That’s what compelled us to write the Dead Good Funerals Book, to offer […]
Council warns undertaker about soliciting
Back in July we posted a report about an unsatisfactory Co-op Funeralcare-arranged funeral: “Beverley Webb and Michelle Blakesley said the way Co-op Funeralcare handled Gloria Roper’s service was ‘shambolic’ after one worker said: ‘We’ve brought out our 4.15pm instead.’” Read it here. The matter we publicise today is Beverley and Michelle’s allegation that the Weymouth […]
FD Darren goes the extra mile
Darren Barker is the manager of Anglia Co-operative*, St Neots. When the family of a little girl who died last year found out how much it would cost to have the Gruffalo painted on her coffin, Darren offered to do it for them. He gave up his days off to do it. Says local celebrant […]
Open letter to George Tinning, Managing Director, Co-operative Funeralcare #4
Dear Mr Tinning, Woo, sorry! Caught you unawares? Thought we’d lost interest? No, we’re not going away. And not just us. There’s the GMB union, too. As you know, they’re disappointed in you for derecognising them in 2007. You can read their own campaign page here. How on earth can a co-operative banish a trade […]
Funeral director sponsors Olympian
From the Daily Mail: Chris Mears had a five per cent chance. Of living, that is. Nothing to do with diving. A five per cent chance of surviving an emergency operation on a ruptured spleen in a training hospital in Sydney. Impressive then that on Tuesday night, three years on, the 19-year-old was competing in […]
Ain’t Going Yet
Billy Jenkins is a guitarist, composer, bandleader, performer & humanist funeral officiant in London. These are his funeral wishes: Simple cremation for me From Poppy’s. No funeral. No music – for when a musician dies, there is nothing but Silence….. If anyone wishes to: Choose just one of my pieces of music. Play loud. Really listen […]
