“America,” said Oscar Wilde, “has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.”
I don’t want to give offence to any of my many US readers. But for people in the UK who sometimes get frustrated with the way we do funerals over here, it’s worth reflecting that one of the reasons, perhaps the principal reason, why the pace of change over here in the UK is so glacial is that, compared with our US brothers and sisters, we have so little to react against. Here, scandals are few and small-scale, usually the result of the pitiful incompetence of little people, not the systematic malevolence of big bastards. Here in the UK, many of our funeral directors may be characterised as comically self-important, but they come nowhere near the Olympian paternalism of so many US funeral directors with their degrees in mortuary science (tcha!). UK prices are not half so high as US prices. So we don’t duck under the radar of our funeral directors by opting for direct cremation, a practice we still find somewhat breathtaking. It’ll be some time before we pluck our newly-dead from their deathbeds and run them straight to the incinerator. It may just be the case that, living as we do under communism over here (hat-tip to Fox News), we treat each other, on the whole, better.
I don’t cover US scandals in this blog because they are uninstructive to UK readers to whom, for the most part, this blog is offered. I don’t normally stroll into political minefields, either. But heck, you don’t come here for comfort.
The video clip above helps make my point.
