I first heard this song, fresh from the recording studio, when I was doing the newsletter for my local hospice. Billy Bragg had been working with some of the patients, and he’d just put one of the patients’ words to music. The song was called We Laughed. I blubbed.

        “In numberless instances the interment of the dead is in the hands of miscreants, whom it is almost flattery to compare to the vulture, or the foulest carrion bird.”   Writer in Leisure Hour, 1862            

  Announcement by the Press Association: The UK’s largest provider of funeral-related services has reported higher profits after its strongest year for the number of families planning ahead for a death. Dignity, which has 600 funeral locations including 35 crematoria, said the number of pre-arranged funeral plans on its books

  The infantile superficiality of the media’s treatment of issues around death and funerals is something we’ve deplored frequently on this blog — and today’s news is that things haven’t got any better. Instead of giving serious consideration to what a crematorium might do with the heat it is compelled

    Posted by Lyra Mollington   We were both in sombre mood as we travelled back along the M4 in Myra’s bright yellow Honda Jazz.  We’d had a slight tiff as we viewed the flowers after Trevor’s funeral.  Whilst I was keen to go back to the house for