Brahn Boots – Stanley Holloway

Our Aunt Hanna’s passed away,
We ‘ad her funeral today,
And it was a posh affair,
Had to have two p’licemen there!

The ‘earse was luv’ly, all plate glass,
And wot a corfin!… oak and brass!
We’d fah-sands weepin’, flahers galore,
But Jim, our cousin… what d’yer fink ‘e wore?

Why, brahn boots!
I ask yer… brahn boots!
Fancy coming to a funeral
In brahn boots!

I will admit ‘e ‘ad a nice black tie,
Black fingernails and a nice black eye;
But yer can’t see people orf when they die,
In brahn boots!

And Aunt ‘ad been so very good to ‘im,
Done all that any muvver could for ‘im,
And Jim, her son, to show his clars…
Rolls up to make it all a farce,

In brahn boots…
I ask yer… brahn boots!
While all the rest,
Wore decent black and mourning suits.

I’ll own he didn’t seem so gay,
In fact he cried most part the way,
But straight, he reg’lar spoilt our day,
Wiv ‘is brahn boots.

In the graveyard we left Jim,
None of us said much to him,
Yus, we all gave ‘im the bird,
Then by accident we ‘eard …

‘E’d given ‘is black boots to Jim Small,
A bloke wot ‘ad no boots at all,
So p’raps Aunt Hanna doesn’t mind,
She did like people who was good and kind.

But brahn boots!
I ask yer… brahn boots!
Fancy coming to a funeral,
In brahn boots!

And we could ‘ear the neighbours all remark
“What, ‘im chief mourner? Wot a blooming lark!
“Why ‘e looks more like a Bookmaker’s clerk…
In brahn boots!”

That’s why we ‘ad to be so rude to ‘im,
That’s why we never said “Ow do!” to ‘im,
We didn’t know… he didn’t say,
He’d give ‘is other boots away.

But brahn boots!
I ask yer… brahn boots!
While all the rest,
Wore decent black and mourning suits!

But some day up at Heavens gate,
Poor Jim, all nerves, will stand and wait,
’til an angel whispers… “Come in, Mate,
“Where’s yer brahn boots?”

Not cricket

Upset by the sale of Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to PSG, a group of AC Milan supporters expressed the widely held disappointment of their fellow football fans by leaving a small funeral arrangement outside the club’s via Turati offices. A funeral card, candles and flowers were set up near the building’s front door in the scene made to symbolize the faith some fans have left in the club after selling two of their best players.

London’s Pyramid of Death

Posted by Belinda Forbes

In the second of BBC Radio 4’s series Unbuilt Britain, Jonathan Glancey describes one of the most audacious buildings ever planned for London – it would have been the largest pyramid ever built.

Church yards were so crowded at the beginning of the 19th century that corpses were literally bursting out of the soil.  Some people believed that a necropolis for the dead might be the answer.  In 1829 the architect Thomas Willson came up with a proposal for the storage of millions of dead bodies in a pyramid situated in Primrose Hill, North London, one of the highest places in London.  Constructed from brick with granite facings, it would have been 94 storeys high and the base would have covered 18 acres.  In his prospectus, Willson claimed that the mausoleum would have made about £10,000,000 – an enormous amount in those days.   He hoped that people would enjoy looking up at this splendid monument as they ate their picnics.

The City of London Archive holds Willson’s drawings and ground plans.  Catharine Arnold, author of ‘Necropolis: London and its Dead’ said that the pyramid was to have been ‘compact, hygienic and ornamental’.

At the time of Willson’s plans, there was a fashion for anything Egyptian so his proposal was not as outlandish as it seems.  Thomas de Quincy, in an opium induced trance, dreamed of meeting Isis and Osiris and ‘being buried…in the heart of eternal pyramids.’ However, public opinion stopped this monumental pyramid of the dead from being built.  It was regarded as too over-bearing.  The idea of a garden cemetery was the preferred option of the General Cemetery Company. If the pyramid had been built, it would have cast a great shadow over the park of Primrose Hill.

Jonathan Glancey’s fascinating programme is available on BBC iPlayer here.

The view below the radar

An article in the Times dated 15 July, based on an interview with Mike McCollum, ceo of Dignity plc, offers one or two (no more) features of interest.

His definition of an undertaker?

“We’re event organisers,” says McCollum. “We arrange a family event for you on very short notice, which you wish you didn’t have to arrange.”

He adds:

“And, on the day of the funeral, we’re the master of ceremonies. The funeral director makes sure everything goes exactly to plan, to the second, and hopefully makes sure everybody, in an unfamiliar situation, knows where to sit and where to go.”

He doesn’t say if he regards this model as eternal, nor whether he is aware of trends towards empowered mourners who take a different view of the brief of a funeral event planner.

Concerning the travails of his reassuringly inept rivals, ‘Co-operative’ Funeralcare, he is defensive of the hub model and reckons “it’s time people accepted some home truths”.

“The definition of a mortuary is a place where dead people are kept. When people die and they can be in different conditions. You need specialist refrigeration, specialist conditions. You’d expect them to be clinical, to use stainless steel equipment, to be easy to clean. They’re not necessarily going to be nice places to be.”

Hmn.

By way of assuring Times readers who are also Dignity shareholders, the article points out that Dignity’s market capitalisation has risen from £180m to £446m and the share price from 230p to 810p. The writer does not detect the present injurious effect of underfunded funeral plans. Nor does he point out Dignity’s Achilles heel, its high prices, vulnerable, in an increasingly price-conscious market, to consumer scrutiny. Nor does he question Dignity’s policy of brand omerta, a remarkable stance for an outfit in the event-planning business.

Would you buy shares in Dignity?

Source (paywalled)

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