Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
This website also uses cookies that can’t be disabled through this tab and will need to be disabled manually. The blog itself uses a commenting system by wpDiscuz which uses a cookie to remember some of the information you put in to save you inputting it every time. It also helps prevent comment spam.
The blog may also feature embedded items such as youtube videos which can set cookies to identify your device and approximate location to optimize bandwith and tailor ads as handled by google.
Our Directory also sets some cookies for the Map to function based on your selection and preferences.
Unfortunately the scripts for these features cannot be placed here for you to disallow the cookies manually, therefore the button on this tab will have no affect.
However if you wish to disable these cookie, you will need to disallow them manually in your browser.
For Google Chrome – Please follow this guide and add this website to the cookie block list: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/61416?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences
Safari: https://support.apple.com/kb/ph21411?locale=en_US
If you need any support with this, or use a different browser you can contact us for advice.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
I live this idea, Charles and Shirley, and will mention in My Last Song…yes, I’m that sort of guy.
The do afterwards is called the gathering or the reception…at least it is in My Last Song.
Ooh, highly debatable, Paul. I mean, all right for some. There really ought to be a specific word for it. Wake is obviously completely wrong – it means watching over the corpse before the funeral.
It may be time to neologise old chap. Time to put your word-inventing cap on.We need a funeral-specific word.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Bunfight.
And it IS possible to have a memorial table at a crematorium, Charles. You just need a small collapsible table which you set up and dress in the vestry and then manoevre into place like a veritable greyhound when you’re ‘on’! But it’s even better at the Bunfight – larger table, and people can look at/through the things laid out. It can also provide a good focus at funerals/memorial services where there isn’t a body present, for whatever reason.
Bunfight is good.Like it!
Can you do that and candles, Sweetpea? I’d like to see you.
For the purposes of contemplation/meditation, I guess the bunfight is the place. (Do our American readers have the first idea what a bunfight is? Understand, the buns are not projectiles.)
Thanks Charles for the mention! This made my day.
As an American reader, I have not yet heard of a bunfight. Now I’m curious …
A bunfight, Shirley, is sort of reverse British understatement. It’s ironic, of course. Any sedate gathering of people at which refreshments are present is a bunfight – the more sedate, the more of a bunfight.
Wonderful! I can’t wait to use bunfight in a sentence.
What a fabulous idea. I shall recommend it herewith.
Thanks, as always.
When I think of all the great slang you Americans have given us, Shirley, it’s good to be able to give something back. I hope it will go viral.
Shirley, you are the American ambassador for this admirable word – let us know how you get on!
And yes, Charles, I’ve also crammed candles into the 60 second dash round the just-vacated-by-others room. But I neglected to say that you need a lovely attendant who is willing to go the extra mile in helping lug the table, a well-filled lighter and a devil-may-care attitude to slight singeing of the suit. Oh, and of course a naturally lithe and athletic build to speed you towards the door with but the mereist rose-blush of exertion on your dewy cheek.
I tend to refer to a funeral bunfight as The Ham Sandwiches. Especially if that isn’t the menu.
Love it, Kathryn. Very, inscrutably, British.
Sweetpea, I am in awe, I really am. I find candles quite enough — the hot wax problem at the end a nightmare. To be able to welcome people without fighting for breath, albeit with wisps of smoke arising from your raiment, marks you out as a Superpea.
I recently conducted a couple of Mormon funerals, (Church of Jesus Christ of the Latterday Saints). This seems to be something that they do – a life table and photo display wall. I was impressed.
Surely this is a very therapeutic thing to do at any funeral, even a crematorium service? A ‘double-slot’ can always be booked, if time is needed for those attending to get a proper look. If not, the table could be displayed at the wake?
I like the idea of everyday objects as opposed to “important” items. Books, glasses, coffee mugs, items gathered from the desk, kitchen, etc. A tableau of the intimate and everyday, with a few items doubling as flower vases.
And thanks again for “bunfight”. I challenged some friends to guess what it meant and most of the answers were predictably lurid.
Well, to me the point of the table would be less as an ornament than as a focus for action. You announce to everyone that they can bring something to remind them of the dead person, so the thing evolves as the participants enter, you mill around instead of processing behind the coffin as you enter, and keep going back to it to see what others have contributed and to use it as a spur to chat – ‘oh, you remember that cracked teapot, I wonder who brought that, she would never throw it away but you couldn’t get a… Read more »
It doesn’t have to be whole shebang of a table, though. One of the most moving things I’ve seen was the simple placing of a little piece of good bread and good chocolate on the coffin, for a Frenchman who hadn’t been able to eat those things for a while, but to whose family those simple pleasures said everything about their husband and father.
Lovely ideas here. I’m right with Jonathan on getting funeral ceremonies (as opposed to committals)out of crems, but actually, you could use his brilliant starter idea in a crem if you had to, IF ONLY more FDs would check the sort of funeral people want before they book the crem, and got a double time allowance pencilled in, tbc when you’ve spoken to the celebrant. Is that so effing revolutionary? (And yes you can get some crems to pencil in for a couple of hours before they let go of a slot. Whose bloody crem is it? The Council’s? Then… Read more »