A funeral is not a community event. Official
If you didn’t catch Rupert’s delightfully unbuttoned comment on yesterday’s post, have a look. The interesting thing about the death deniers is that they don’t just put their hands over their ears and count noisily to ten until you stop. Whether death is the Old Enemy or just a Disgusting Old Man, it certainly brings […]
The living dead
Ever heard of Jane Jacobs? I hadn’t til this morning. I’m a fan already. I live in Redditch, a new town which must have looked great on paper but turned out a brutal, car-clobbered flop – even before a majority of misguided citizens voted in the felonious Jacqui Smith as our MP. If only the […]
Dead man ruling
Nice crazy story from the US, where the townspeople of Tracy City, TN, have just thrown out their mayor by electing a dead one instead. What an admirably creative protest vote. Read it here.
A very, very good book
Tom Jokinen is a radio journalist and producer in Canada. In 2006 he took time off from his job to train as what we in the UK might call a funeral service operative. Why did he do it? Part curiosity: “There’s a time, from when someone dies to when they magically pop up at the […]
Cremation: an alternative to burial or an alternative to bother?
There’s a fine new essay by Thomas Lynch in the The Christian Century. It’s as wonderfully well written as you’d expect – seductively so. Much of what he says about the modern funeral he has said before: that it “too often replaces theology with therapy, conviction with convenience.” Here are some extracts to whet your […]
Dead reckoning
No UK funeral director ever went far wrong by slapping a more or less stonking margin on the price of a coffin. Coffins are much cheaper to make than almost anyone would realise. An oak foil veneer MDF coffin with a trade price of £50 looks to any uneducated eye as if it’s easily worth […]
Rocky 3
Once the principal place of worship for Portlanders, who trekked here from earliest times from all parts of the island, St Andrew’s church was severely damaged by a landslip in 1675, but only finally abandoned in the mid-eighteenth century. In its ruined graveyard some of the headstones and monuments bear the skull-and-crossbones motif, a customary […]
Rocky 2
Here’s the Royal Naval cemetery on Portland. Is there a burial ground in the UK which commands better views? There are 65 First World War burials and 103 Second World War burials. Of these, 10 are unidentified, one is a Norwegian merchant navy seaman, and one a member of the Imperial Japanese Navy. There […]
Rocky 1
This blog is on holiday in its seaside cottage on the Isle of Portland. This little island, just four miles long and two wide, is where some of the world’s best limestone has been quarried. Find out what it’s built here. Beauty comes at a price. The devastation of the island goes on (above). Here […]
The bureaucracy of bereavement
Good piece by the George Pitcher in the Daily Telegraph: I’m afraid I slipped into a daydream in church on Easter morn yesterday. It started by wondering how different the story might have been if the Jerusalem of 2,000 years ago was like the London Borough of Bromley today. The idea that Joseph of Arimathea […]
