Two new websites I like a lot
Two interesting new websites for you today. Both are labours of love, and both are run by nice, intelligent people. The first is homegrown ScatteringAshes.co.uk. It’s a resource for people who, once they’ve got the ashes back from the funeral director in one of those plastic cartons, wonder what on earth to do with them. […]
Tahara
In his excellent book Curtains, Tom Jokinen quotes US undertaker BT Hathaway on the subject of home funerals. Hathaway reckons a home funeral suits “the 5 per cent who have money, time, resources, education and political and emotional will.” With preconditions like these, how come it ever got as high as 5 per cent? Hathaway […]
How to plan a good memorial service
It’s time to introduce you to my friend CrabbyOldFart. He’s a silver blogger in the US whose beef is with young people (he loathes them). He posts weekly, on Mondays, and brings much merriment to a day which can so often have the feel of an ordeal about it. This week, he brings his no-nonsense […]
Eulogy magazine
Have you read Eulogy magazine? A number of you have asked me, and you have probably been expecting me to cough up a pov. But at more than £3 a throw it is way beyond my stayin’alive budget. Yet we ought to know about it, need to know about it. Would you like to review […]
St Raoul
You’ve been following the Raoul Moat aftermath? The parody-of-Diana shrine, the mawkish and the up-yours tributes, the incredulous condemnations by a clearly baffled political class? Revulsion? Dark merriment? Take your pick. This is a very British, brutish affair. If you’ve a moment, the St Raoul site on Facebook is worth a gander and a ponder.
When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease
Here’s a seasonal number (with apologies to US and Scotch readers, to whom cricket probably makes no sort of sense at all). This is the song that DJ John Peel agreed with his producer, John Walters, would be played on the radio when he died. It didn’t happen. Walters died three years before (Peel played […]
The Lazarus touch
Thank you, all those of you who expressed solicitude during my little illness. I am very touched. I can see now why it is that women outlive men. It is because they sensibly enlist medical science to deal with symptoms as they occur, they don’t impatiently wait for them to go away. And when they do see the […]
Down with the dead men
The perpetrator of this blog is unwell. The vast outpouring will recommence on his recovery (DV).
What’s in a coffin?
At Musgrove Willow you can go and watch the coffin being made — and even lend a hand. There’s a big coffin show on at Chiltern Woodland Burial Park this weekend. I can’t make it, sad to say. If you can, it looks good. And Chiltern is a lovely place. Coffins are what visitors to […]
Embalming: a matter not of if but when
Nobody I can think of would dispute the assertion that it’s good for the bereaved to spend time with their dead, contemplating their absence – what I like to call their very present absence. There is a debate about how dead a person should look. Some people want to spend time with an embalmed, cosmetised […]
