Somewhere between all and nothing
An email arrives – an enquiry. Can we transport the body ourselves? Do we have to use an undertaker? The enquirer is not limbering up for a home-arranged funeral some time in the imminent future. No, the death has already happened. The undertaker’s men came to take the body away. Their spooky lugubriousness horrified my […]
It takes two taboos
The connection between sex and death is well known. If you want to muse on it further, there’s a pretty good article in the Encyclopaedia of Death and Dying. If you don’t, please don’t read the rest of this post. It’s dirty, you’ll think. Offensive. Come back tomorrow. Which brings us, with a single bound, […]
Pot, kettle…
Here is a hubristic report from the Co-operative College in Manchester on a fact-finding mission from South Africa. The mission came hard on the heels of helpful research by our own, dear Co-op into the ‘exorbitant’ cost of funerals in South African townships. A much needed reduction in expensive funeral costs could be on the cards […]
Quakers get down to earth
A couple of months ago I was contacted by Quaker Social Action and invited to a planning group whose remit was the support of people in London on low incomes needing to arrange a funeral. I wasn’t able to go, to my ire. Sue Gill and John Fox* were speaking. I’ve never met them. The […]
Materialism gone mad and the what’s-it-all-about question
Here’s an interesting piece by Peter Popham in the Independent, first published in May. I’ve only just found it. He begins by talking about Christopher Hitchens, who has oesophageal cancer, and how impending death has reconfigured his identity: “…when the bitter laughter dies away, there is Hitch, locked away from healthy us, in a land […]
She’s on 29
Have you been following Gail Rubin’s 30 funerals in 30 days? I hope so. If you haven’t, you can easily catch up. Go over to her site as soon as you’ve read this and take up where you left off. The cultural differences are intriguing. The preaching at religious funerals in the US is hotter. […]
It’s rum up north
A couple of months ago I was tipped off that the oft-disgraced Richard Sage was alive, well and practising in Burnley, Lancashire in the guise of J Kendal at this address: 40 Briercliffe Road, Burnley BB10 1XB I followed this up and discovered it to be so. Don’t know who Richard Sage is? Google him. […]
Farewell, Tana
I have just learned from Tony Piper, a man of much heart and inellect, the news that Tana Wollen is stepping down from head of ceremonies at the British Humanist Association. Tana, too, is a person of much heart and intellect and she’s been a good friend of the GFG. We’re going to miss her. […]
Parta Quies
Oldie readers of this blog will know who I mean by Katharine Whitehorn. Journalist (Observer, mostly). Irreverent, no-nonsense, funny, nice. She’s now Saga magazine’s agony aunt. I’ve just stumbled on the poem she wants to be read at her funeral. It’s by AE Housman and it’s called Parta Quies. I’d not come across it before. […]
The sacred and the propane
It was a deepseated thing, this duty we felt we owed our dead. A sacred duty – literally. It goes back to the beginning of time. Throughout human history the dead body has always been treated in accordance with sacred diktat, its valedictory hullabaloos performed by shaman or sorcerer, soothsayer or priest. For the full […]
