A time to die
Every week in the Spectator magazine Peter Jones takes an occurrence or development in contemporary society and politics and considers it in the light of what the ancients did when faced with the same circumstances. This week he considers the art of dying. I’d now bung you a link but I can’t: the Speccie does not […]
Caw blimey
Here’s a roundup of my week’s tweets — and not a weak link in any of them. Before you look through them, make sure you haven’t missed this week’s most important discussion. It was about shrines and it features two of this blog’s brightest and most questing minds, those of Rupert Callender and Kathryn. Find […]
Decompiculture and the Mushroom Project
“Decompiculture is the growing or culturing of decomposer organisms by humans. The term is intended to establish a contrast with the term agriculture. Agriculture encompasses the production systems based on the culture of herbaceous plants and herbivore animals. In effect, agriculture is human symbiosis with select organisms of the herb-herbivore-carnivore food chains comprising the live […]
Exclusive! Dover undertaker achieves UK first.
I was going to blog today about the public meeting at Redditch town hall to debate the contentious matter of whether or not the crem should be used to heat a nearby swimming pool. I wanted to give you a blow-by-blow account. But in the event it was a non-event. There were perhaps thirty people […]
A Good Goodbye
“Sometimes the best way to move recalcitrant parents or spouses along on preplanning [for death and its aftermath] is to make your own arrangements first. That’s what my husband and I did, telling his parents we were going cemetery plot shopping and asking if they wanted to come along. They came, they saw, they bought, […]
Gilded poo
It’s been a dispiriting couple of days. Once again the damned Co-op Funeralcare has re-announced the obvious in yet another self-serving survey and, incredibly, reaped a rich harvest of column inches in the UK’s newspapers. You’ve almost certainly encountered some of it. I wasn’t going to rise to it. At this time of the year […]
Upper class tweets
GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Satan’s skull found in New Mexico! http://bit.ly/fcDVTO GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Why do the clergy prefer funerals to weddings? Good account here from a C of E priest: http://bit.ly/ieIhzc GoodFunerals Charles Cowling What is a bhusa yong? Lovely photographic account here of a Thai funeral and open air cremation http://bit.ly/fcbNLH GoodFunerals Charles Cowling Good looking books […]
In the midst of death let there be life
There’s been a lot of interest in the US this week in what their media reckons to be a startling new trend. Owners of funeral homes, which over there are much roomier than ours, are reacting to shrinking profits – the impact of the rise in cremation and the slump in the economy – by […]
Aghori
The ascetic’s refusal to accept worldly comforts is venerated by Hindus, but the awesome, horrifying renunciation of the AGHORI sadhu seems to defy the norms of civilized life. He will live only in the cremation ground, cook his food on the fires of the funeral pyre, eat and drink from a hollow skull that he […]
Bad gets worse
Once in a while you read something which doesn’t just confirm your instinct, it informs it. That happened to me bigtime today. Blogger Viridis Lumen has a post on this very sad story. The undertaker at the heart of this heartless event was our old friend Dignity plc, the company spawned by the vile, scandal-ridden […]
