The GFG Blog
2008Dec
Stinker
Charles
Dec
09
No Comments
I’ve blogged about Direct Funeral Services in the past, and it’s worth doing again. He’s still at it, that nice Mr Sage. He’s a blagger, the sort who ought to be horsewhipped. See the recent BBC Watchdog report here. I’ve had a number of emails from his victims. Be warned.
Helluva guy
Charles
Dec
09
No Comments
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below…” Thus wicked King Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He was speaking of his own spiritual quandary, but in many burial grounds the memorials possibly feel he speaks for them, too. I’m not thinking of those blameless, plain stones whose simple inscriptions testify to
2008Nov
In defence of Thomas Lynch
Charles
Nov
27
No Comments
If you follow trends in US funerary practice you’ll know about the work of the Funeral Consumers Alliance. Its aims are laudable: to inform and empower consumers, a cause dear to the heart of the Good Funeral Guide. Its means, sad to say, often demean and discredit it, especially the
Victory V
Charles
Nov
21
No Comments
A little while ago I posted a blog about online memorial websites. I didn’t post all I wrote. I decided that the second half was grossly offensive and I deleted it. Here’s what I wrote: Do the online memorial sites that are up there presently give visitors enough to do?
All hail to the Green Street Mortuary band!
Charles
Nov
20
No Comments
The best things in life have a signature tune, a tune forever associated with, and evocative of, a time, a place, a person — a soap. Funerals have signature tunes, too. As a celebrant, every time I hear Oasis’s Stop Crying Your Heart Out I think of the lad who
A celebration of life ceremony
Charles
Nov
19
No Comments
I’ve just enjoyed this blog post. It speaks for itself and it doesn’t want me climbing all over it. Read it here.
Absence from whom we love is worse than death
Charles
Nov
17
1 comment
Ask a hardline atheist if they want to be buried or cremated. Their response ought to be a predictable “I don’t care, my dead body won’t be me any more, I’ll have gone from being a me to an it.” But I’ve never met an atheist who didn’t express a
You couldn’t make it up
Charles
Nov
12
No Comments
You couldn’t make it up. The Express could, perhaps, given its record for libelling people. Here is the essence of their story in today’s paper. First, the headline: Three Orphans Sell Pets To Pay For Mum’s Funeral. Got yer pulse racing? It’s right up there on a par
People like people like us
Charles
Nov
10
No Comments
Saturday was National Bereavement Awareness Day. Miss it? Whoops. Let me fill you in. A brainchild of the independent funeral directors’ trade body, SAIF, the day was a marketing tool designed to raise the profile of independents. My local funeral directors, James Giles and Sons of Bromsgrove, held an open
Ghastly good taste
Charles
Nov
07
1 comment
One mistake this blog will never make: it will never engage in debates about taste. Each to their own, I say, all the while keeping my personal views encased in concrete behind a suave and serene demeanour. “We’re one but we’re not the same”, as my good friend Bono so
