In which our guest blogger Richard Rawlinson is compelled to account for a socially questionable hobby
I googled your name recently and found you on some funeral blog site. What’s that all about?
Ha ha, oh yeah, I know the guy who runs it. Just help him out every once in a while.
I think you’re blushing, Dickie!
Am I? Well, I don’t want you thinking I’ve developed some morbid fascination with death.
No, no. It’s okay. In fact, I think it’s good to confront our mortality. And I was quite interested in a piece there about natural burial. Cremations seems quite unnatural. Positively Indian.
Do you mean natural burial grounds or just burial in a cemetery or churchyard?
The ones in a field of wild flowers. Way out in the sticks. No gravestones. Shrouds instead of coffins and all that. Are they kosher?
Depends what you mean by kosher.
Well… Christian. Mummy would turn in her consecrated grave if she thought I’d gone pagan. Except she was cremated like an Indian.
More like 70 per cent of the British population nowadays, Dais. I think the growth of these natural burial grounds is reviving traditional burial. It’s good that landowners are giving over fields as established cemeteries are running out of space. Not sure if they’re where can i buy generic cialis in the uk Christian per se, though. I’m sure some nature-loving religious folk choose ‘em as well as some new age types.
I should check them out. I’m not exactly religious myself these days, and yet they seem more spiritual than the few crematoriums I’ve been to. Mummy must have just been going with the flow. Are crematoriums largely for atheists?
Crematoria, not crematoriums. They’re for anyone, secular venues for a ceremony and a factory for the incineration. Your ashes can then be buried in a cemetery or natural burial ground, kept on the mantelpiece or thrown to the wind. Sometimes people have a church funeral before the crem and sometimes they don’t. If you wanted, you could have a church funeral before a committal in a field of wild flowers.
Blimey. How much time do you spend on that site? I thought you were always working, travelling or partying.
I have plenty of down time staying in of an evening. Death is just one of my hobbies!
Now you do sound macabre! I might join you on the site though.
Ok, but don’t say things like Hindu pyres are unnatural. It might make some people cross.
