Something to celebrate
A while back I blogged about celebrants. The essence of my argument was that people do not get to choose their celebrant from the range available locally because funeral directors, who like to hold all service providers in their thrall, do not offer them a selection. Very soon they’ll have no choice. There’s now an […]
Cybertwaddle
There are very few funeral directors in the UK with a web presence. Many of those who do fail to understand that the job of a website is twofold: first, to offer a relationship of warmth and trust; second, to proclaim capability and professionalism. A good many undertakerly websites simply advertise ineptitude. Clumsy prose, wonky […]
Sex and death
Today’s papers have enjoyed this story—the ones you’d expect, the funloving Sun and the _____________ (supply your own adjective) Daily Mail. It’s a story which emanates, so it seems, from the Wales News Service, whose website offers this enticement: “Have you been betrayed by your man? Or did you get revenge on your love rat? […]
Space oddity
In November I blogged about EternalSpace, a “meaningful online destination that creates a personal connection with a loved one.” Back then it was at an early stage of development. It’s up and running. You can now see examples of virtual monuments in what its developers call an “immersive, multidimensional landscape where well-wishers may sign the […]
Bad taste is better than no taste at all
Funerals are looking for a new aesthetic. People are looking for new ways of memorialising their dead. Brooding Victorian monumental gloom is out. So too is the regimented eezi-mow municipal cemetery with its ranks of polished anonymous headstones. In rejection of these, people are presently opting for one of two diametrically different alternatives. Either they […]
The Grim Reaper requests the pleasure…
This blog is going for a few days’ holiday by the sea on its island home somewhere in the English Channel. For the duration its thoughts will, unwontedly, be with the living (ie, those who have not yet died). But it undertakes to return in dead earnest. Mortified? Then while away some of the time […]
It’s time to get rid of this professional fee
I’m off to buy a telly. I’ve done my comparison shopping on the internet (it’s what we do, isn’t it?) and (since you ask) tracked the cheapest to Makro. Good deals on just now. Get down there. Would that I could do the same if I were shopping for a funeral—with some honourable exceptions. AW […]
Laptops Direct: a statement
The Good Funeral Guide has an ethical way with would-be advertisers. They besiege our central London penthouse office suite daily, you know. No, we say, gently but menacingly, we will not take your money and promote your product. Yes, yes, we fully understand that you find it almost impossible to persuade undertakers to offer your […]
Making some sort of sense of it all
Your life experience is unique to you. What you’ve done in your life, what’s happened to you and the sense you’ve made of it all amount to a precious and extraordinary story. Even if you don’t feel the need to write a whole book about it, you almost certainly have a strong desire to pass […]
