The GFG Blog
2009Feb
Funeralcare screwupdate
Charles
Feb
25
No Comments
At Teesside crematorium a family is waiting for the coffin containing the body of Olwyn Laidlaw to be carried from the hearse. They are fighting back tears. Then someone comes up to them and says, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this but that’s not your mum. I don’t
Gnome, sweet gnome
Charles
Feb
24
No Comments
If multiculturalism and meritocracy have undermined or overwhelmed Britishness, I have to confess that I’m all for it. We’re not the country we were twenty years ago, and all the better for it. Now that discrimination is taboo, barriers between us have fallen and we all appreciate, enjoy and indulge
A great and indispensable guide book for home funeralists
Charles
Feb
23
No Comments
Great excitement here at GFG HQ. The latest edition of the Resource Guide – a Manual for Home Funeral Care has just arrived from Beth Knox at Crossings: Caring For Our Own at Death. Is it the very first copy to set foot on UK soil? I rather fancy it
The time has come to give celebrants their due
Charles
Feb
12
2 comments
The business model of most busy undertakers subordinates the needs of consumers to the necessity to get things done—paperwork, prepping bodies (laying them out and dressing them), transport issues. The interests of the business and the interests of you, the consumer, conflict. In balancing, on the one hand, things to
Dad buries dead son in back garden
Charles
Feb
09
No Comments
There’s a tragic story doing the rounds of the papers concerning a lad in Scotland whose father buried him in the garden of his ex-council semi. Robert Milloy, known to all as Boab, (18) was hit by a train as he walked across a level crossing near his home. His
Whose funeral is it anyway?
Charles
Feb
05
1 comment
If you want to open a cattery in the UK you need a licence. Cat care is regulated. If you want to open a funeral home you need nothing of the sort, no exams, no professional qualifications, no previous experience—nothing. Anyone can do it, scoundrels, incompetents, sex-workers, school leavers, sociopaths,
All shades of green in the green shade
Charles
Feb
02
2 comments
http://www.flickr.com/photos/colabguy/231672852/ Progressive movements in the world of funerals mostly march resolutely forwards into the past. The past is that place where they did things properly, the place we need to return to if we are to reclaim the care of our dead and the rituals of their passing; the place
2009Jan
Funeralcare screwupdate
Charles
Jan
29
No Comments
I’ve blogged about Co-op Funeralcare screwups in the past. I have been critical and it has unsettled people. We all screw up sometimes; to err is human. Be a little kinder, people have said (cos remember, you screw up sometimes, too, yes?) Of course. And I hope I come out
The dead belong to their people
Charles
Jan
27
2 comments
In the United States, Thomas Lynch, sage, poet, writer and undertaker, has been denounced by industry watchdogs the Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) and the Funeral Ethics Organization (FEO). Both of these organisations exist to protect consumers, expose malpractice, shame shysters and explore ways in which funerals can be cheaper and
