From yesterday’s Telegraph, one of those faithful-beyond-death dogs you like so much:
Ciccio, a 12-year-old German shepherd, waits in vain in front of the altar of the Santa Maria Assunta church in the village of San Donaci in the southern region of Puglia.
He heads to the church as soon as the bells begin to ring each afternoon, just as he did for years when his owner was alive.
What’s in a name?
Before I start this piece I should just say (and I think it’s completely appropriate given the subject of this particular post) that this post was very, very close to being titled “The experiences of a confiner”. Not because I thought this was a particularly good title or the fact that I like the idea of being the ultimate confiner, so to speak, but solely due to the power of the Blogger spell-check / auto-correct function.
Yes, the bloggers’ tool had decided in its wisdom that “Confiner” was a better word than “Coffineer” and had tried to outwit me by sneaking in the change. It was only at the last second, as my cursor hovered perilously close to the “Publish” button, that I spotted its dastardly plan and changed it back. You see, the word “Coffineer” for some unknown reason does not actually appear in the OED the Collins or any other dictionary for that matter and so in a way the computer blog thing was right…or was it?
Anyway, back to the stor,y which takes place over a pint or two of Shepherd Neame’s finest ale at the Vine Inn in Tenterden. I was enjoying a drink in the warmth of the bar with my partner, Holl,y and our two friends Barry and Izzy, who had been minding our collection of Curve coffins whilst we packed up the “stall” after the aforementioned late night shopping evening.
As previously mentioned, I had been frozen to the core with nothing but a Woodchurch Scouts’ alcohol free mulled wine – if there can be such a thing – and a last-minute, lifesaving portion of Bob’s chips (bought to me by the delightful Holly) after 4 hours in the freezing cold and so was in desperate need of a pint or two of the amber nectar in the warmth of this fine hostelry.
It was a particularly busy night but we managed to secure a few inches of carpet close to the bar. We are pretty good friends with one of the managers at this particular drinking hole, what with him being a fully paid up member of Equity and what with three of us also treading the boards on occasion, the conversation soon turned to the events of the night and how we were getting on with this ‘ere coffin making malarky.
After explaining that we had had a good night despite some “raised eyebrows” – see later post to come courtesy of Kentish Express – Fraser, for that is the bar manager’s name, asked what the formal address should be for a coffin maker of distinction. Was it a Coffinista, a simple box maker, a death chippie, a screwer and banger or what?
So I, in my finest anglo-saxon, and at the top of my voice, proudly declared “I am a Coffineer – All for one and one for all!”
A feature of family undertakers’ websites is the inordinate amount of space given to dynastic history replete with sepia photos of bowlegged ancestors swathed in fog walking fierce-eyed so far as you can see in front of a Humber Bumble (or whatever).
Good breeding isn’t something we necessarily defer to any more, neither, in a meritocratic society, is hereditary an impressive attribute. We’d all rather be fixed by a dentist who had chosen to be a dentist and worked hard to become a dentist, than by a sixth-generation dentist who’d had the drill passed to her by her parent.
Of course, the point of all this genealogy is to exude stability, rootedness and an accumulation of arcane knowledge. It seems to confer majesty and offer a guarantee of excellence.
And it would — if vocational zeal were embedded in DNA. But of course it’s not. Which is why a number of family funeral businesses are actually very poorly and complacently run, the foundational values having evaporated.
All that matters to funeral shoppers is whether a funeral director is any good. Now.
So it is a matter of both relief and some appreciative amusement to see the fifth generation business AB Walker & Son of Reading summarise its family history as follows:
Established as coach masters in 1826 and obtained outright by the Marlow based Walker family who moved to Reading in the 1870’s, the definitive history of the company would take up most of this website. Suffice to say there has been the full spectrum of conflicts, accidents, unexpected deaths, unexplained births, intrigue and captivating loyalty that would explain why the firm exists as it does today.
As with all families, each generation brings something new and now it is the turn of the fifth generation to act as custodians of the business. As the saying goes – the rest is history…