Good to go
DEAD GOOD GUIDES Autumn School 22-25 October in Frome Gilly Adams & Sue Gill The intensive 4 day course will examine the Hows and Whys of ceremony and celebration in a practical and experiential way. We will investigate how both positive and negative life events can be distilled into myth and poetry and create meaningful […]
Let’s hear it for extravagant funerals
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Since the Dispatches exposé, we’re all sounding like Jessica Mitford, the ‘red sheep’ of an aristocratic British clan who naively embraced wretched communism while settling in comfortably capitalist California, and wrote The American Way of Death (1963), which accuses the US funeral trade of exploiting vulnerable grievers. First, let me say I’m […]
Brahn Boots – Stanley Holloway
Our Aunt Hanna’s passed away, We ‘ad her funeral today, And it was a posh affair, Had to have two p’licemen there! The ‘earse was luv’ly, all plate glass, And wot a corfin!… oak and brass! We’d fah-sands weepin’, flahers galore, But Jim, our cousin… what d’yer fink ‘e wore? Why, brahn boots! I ask […]
Not cricket
Upset by the sale of Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to PSG, a group of AC Milan supporters expressed the widely held disappointment of their fellow football fans by leaving a small funeral arrangement outside the club’s via Turati offices. A funeral card, candles and flowers were set up near the building’s front door in the […]
London’s Pyramid of Death
Posted by Belinda Forbes In the second of BBC Radio 4’s series Unbuilt Britain, Jonathan Glancey describes one of the most audacious buildings ever planned for London – it would have been the largest pyramid ever built. Church yards were so crowded at the beginning of the 19th century that corpses were literally bursting out […]
The view below the radar
An article in the Times dated 15 July, based on an interview with Mike McCollum, ceo of Dignity plc, offers one or two (no more) features of interest. His definition of an undertaker? “We’re event organisers,” says McCollum. “We arrange a family event for you on very short notice, which you wish you didn’t have […]
First impressions
By Richard Rawlinson You want celebrants to say good things well, but how do you want them to dress? If you’re opting for a civil funeral, do you want them business-like in a dark suit or to join in any sartorial theme requested by the departed? If you’re opting for a religious funeral, do you prefer […]
Ash astray
A man suffered humiliation and distress at the hands of an airport security agent when she insisted on opening a jar containing his grandfather’s remains and then dropped them on the floor. John Gross, of Indianapolis, was trying to bring Mario Mark Marcaletti’s ashes home from Florida and had them in his bag in a […]
New life for dead house
For sale, a beach hut fit for an undertaker, Goth or melancholic. It’s the old mortuary at Saltburn-by-the-sea, it comes with its original slab, it’s Grade 2 listed and it’s on the market, guide price unknown. For further details, contact Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council. Hat tip Tony Piper
Deathbed marijuana
From NorthJersey.com: As a funeral director, Joseph Stevens regularly heard mourners talk about how they had purchased marijuana on the street to ease their dying loved ones’ suffering. They would mention how the drug improved their ailing relatives’ quality of life during the last weeks of their lives. Marijuana provides relief to people on their […]
