Intro outro
I cannot, in all conscience, leave Louise at Sentiment Farewells lying around as a footnote in a yesterday’s blog. The four playlists she has put together, music for the soul, she calls them, constitute a brilliant resource for the bereaved and also for funeral celebrants. Do go over to her blog and see what she’s […]
One for the music buffs
This was played at the end of the funeral of Carl ‘Fat Boy’ Williams last Friday. I’ve not heard it used at a funeral before, but isn’t it rather good? Celebrants out there, you might like to add this to the songs you recommend to your clients. Just don’t necessarily tell em about Carl — […]
Yes, we can
A few weeks back I lazily asked whether a private entrepreneur could open a crematorium in this country. I say lazily because I hoped someone would know the answer and spare me research time. I supposed that only local authorities can get permission from the Secretary of State to build a crem. I was wrong, […]
The sun that bids us rest is waking
It’s going to be interesting to track the development of, both, the right to die and its concomitant, the responsibility to die. Old age doesn’t just become physically unendurable, it gets to be economically unaffordable, too. The darkness is increasingly going to fall at our behest. Choosing the moment will be straightforward enough. Humans live […]
Fatboy grim
Another gangster funeral story. Why another? Because gangster funerals are the other side of the coin of state or royal funerals. They offer spectacle. Freshly interred in Australia is Carl ‘Fat Boy’ Williams. The convicted drug smuggler and murderer was just six years into a minimum 35-year sentence when he was beaten to death with […]
Glarin’ or hollerin’?
Since most progressive developments in funerals are reinventions of or reversions to past practice, it’s always a good idea, now and then, to peer into the mists of history and see if there’s anything that can be plucked out, dusted down and dressed up for the 21st century. The funeral mute, for example. Men dressed […]
Fast track to eternity
Clever guy, that Shakespeare. He foresaw the viral capability of the internet long before the invention of the penny post. Here’s Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “I’ll put a girdle around the Earth in 40 minutes!” Which is as long as it took young gunshot victim David Morales Colón to travel around the world […]
Blessed are the wicked
We all acknowledge the link between sex and death – but what is it that links crime with death? A really good gangster funeral is a sight to see. These guys do not go incognito into that good night. Having shunned any sort of limelight all their lives, this is when they step out from […]
Tidying up our dead
Very nice piece in the Washington Post by Tracy Grant: Closets are odd creatures … In starter homes, newlywed husbands tease their brides that all their clothes will never fit in that closet. When the homebuyers are upscale, the closets can boast more square footage than some Manhattan apartments. But talk to any adult child […]
Resurrection!
Thanks to the supernatural genius of Ian ‘Harry’ Harris (no, he’s not a gangster, he’s a web wizard) at Carron Media, this blog has, by dint of main force, gentle coaxing and the application of recondite algorithms, been migrated from Blogger, which is pulling the plug on it, to WordPress, which has pronounced itself humbled, […]
