Letters pray
I enjoyed a long chat with Ieuan Rees this morning about a logo I want him to design for me. He’s a lettercutter, a calligrapher and a sculptor. In case you’ve never heard of him, he is a major celeb in his field. I have long admired him and I am not ashamed to admit […]
Pomp your funeral
There’s nothing like a good funeral procession, a walking funeral procession. It’s a much underestimated component of a good funeral. Regrettably, most people do not bother to have one at all, these days. Only the famous and those who stand for something get proper cortege. And Romanies, of course; they still know how to do […]
Co-operative Funeralcare and the GMB: a response
Here is a response from Phil Edwards, Head of Public Relations at The Co-operative, to the stance which The Good Funeral Guide has taken on Co-operative Funeralcare’s derecognition of the GMB union, which I reproduce unmediated. You should read it together with the statement by the GMB. Dear Mr Cowling, Thank you for the opportunity […]
Death is on everyone’s lips
There’s an interesting piece in Monday’s Guardian by Madeliene Bunting examining the current popular appetite for death, and its focus on, inter alia, Jade Goody, Ivan Cameron, Wendy Richard, and Peter and Penny Duff, who killed themselves in Switzerland. For a full fortnight, it seems, every frontpage story in the Sun was about death. Ms […]
Free radicals
A waft of spring gets the blood coursing, makes your toes wiggle. It’s time to peep out of the burrow and see what’s up. I’ll tell you what’s up. Transitus is having a get together at Bowden House just outside Totnes. It’ll take a full three hours to get there, but it’s M5 almost all […]
Brummie rebel
When the present looks awful we seek refuge in the past. We fix on a time when we would have been safe. Is that why, when someone dies, we look for an undertaker who still dresses as he did in 1873? Maybe. There’s a lot of call for it. And Brits have a weakness for […]
A statement to the Good Funeral Guide from the GMB
The co-operative movement has a history to be proud of. Founded by working people for working people, its principles were formulated by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844. Given its origins, it makes you blink and/or howl with disbelief to learn that Co-operative Funeralcare, the People’s Undertaker, has derecognised a trade union, the GMB. This seems […]
Ivan
To whom does grief belong? For whom should we grieve? How should we behave when we grieve and what should grief be allowed to spill over into? When motorists cut up a cortege, sound their horns and curse it for getting in the way we observe the collapse of community values and understand that death […]
Funeralcare screwupdate
At Teesside crematorium a family is waiting for the coffin containing the body of Olwyn Laidlaw to be carried from the hearse. They are fighting back tears. Then someone comes up to them and says, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this but that’s not your mum. I don’t know how it’s happened.’ Devastating. […]
Gnome, sweet gnome
If multiculturalism and meritocracy have undermined or overwhelmed Britishness, I have to confess that I’m all for it. We’re not the country we were twenty years ago, and all the better for it. Now that discrimination is taboo, barriers between us have fallen and we all appreciate, enjoy and indulge each other so much more. […]
