Buried in greenery
When the GFG went to the London Funeral Exhibition last summer at Epping Woodland Burial Park we met Angie Whitaker, who works at a sister burial ground, Chiltern. Her husband is buried in the woods there. Angie gave a talk to visitors about her experience of natural burial. I asked her to write it up […]
How much are you?
A very big up to Saint and Forster Funeral Services, who have just gone public and transparent with their prices. From us, a big ask to all funeral directors to follow suit. Saint and Forster prices here. Saint and Forster here.
Absentee of the day
In death she left her body to science, thereby avoiding a funeral from which she would have wanted, her family knew from experience, to exclude so many enemies. From Janey Buchan’s obituary, here.
Hold up, hold on, stop crying your heart out
In a comment stream following a provocative post by someone or another, probably Richard, our religious correspondent, I suggested that because death generates chaotic feelings, many of which seek to vent themselves in disorderly behaviour, funerals ought to accommodate this. Our brilliant and erudite new commenter, Jenny Uzzell, reckons there’s no call for it. Well, […]
The hotrod hearse has arrived!
He’s one of life’s good guys, is David Hicks, whose brainchild the hotrod hearse is. Here’s his story: The Final Cruise Company was created when the life of a friend was cruelly taken on 29th May 2010. I had known Martin for a number of years, through my occupation working on Hotrods and he will be dearly […]
If only they knew
Funeral flowers skipped for landfill at Coychurch crematorium. Why don’t they compost them? Because they’re full of wire and oasis; it would take too long to deconstruct them. Which is why natural burial guru Ken West calls this ‘grieving waste’.
Quote of the day
“Britain, the only country in the world where at funerals the bereaved are congratulated on the degree to which they have so far supressed their emotions.” Source
Memory tables
We’ve talked recently here about shrines and memorials and remembrancing. Here’s a very nice idea from Shirley, over at the Modern Mourner, in a blog post titled Why can’t memorials be more like weddings? It’s a memory table. You put choice things, invested with meaning, on it — arranged beautifully, of course. What would you […]
In shivering memory
This day, one hundred years ago, Captain Scott and his team of plucky amateurs arrived at the South Pole – and saw that “the worst had happened”. Yes, the dashed pros, the cads, had beaten them to it by over a month. Amundsen got there on 14 December. The memory lingers, and with it a […]
Being dead gets you thinking
Hellraiser Charlie Sheen, no stranger to drug, alcohol and domestic abuse, claims to have turned his life around under the influence of having played lead corpse in two fictional funerals in 2011. He says, “It was a little bizarre to watch your own funeral and it certainly gets you thinking.” Could become a useful therapeutic […]
