The GFG Blog
2013Oct
Altered identity
Charles
Oct
07
1 comment
Following on from Tim Clark’s post about grief, I am reminded of a piece by Janice Turner in last week’s Times about the hostile response to Jennifer Saunders’ announcement that she was free of cancer: She was accused of “slating” survivors and her remark that some wore the disease “like
Good grief?
Charles
Oct
07
6 comments
Posted by Tim Clark Jenny Uzzell’s excellent GFG posting about the liminal state between death and burial has got me thinking, specifically about grief. Grief is love that has been made homeless; I don’t know where that came from, I first heard it in “Borgen,” the Danish TV political series.
In the borderlands
Charles
Oct
04
22 comments
Posted by Jenny Uzzell There is a very useful word frequently used by anthropologists and students of religion and mythology to describe something that is neither one thing nor the other; something that is ‘in between’. The word is ‘liminal’. Classic examples of things that are ‘liminal’ are marshes or other
What the…
Charles
Oct
03
17 comments
An undertaker passed on to us the email below. Anybody know anything about Liviana? It’s difficult to believe that any outfit marketing itself in such sub-literate terms could achieve any sort of credibility. The netherworld of pre-pay funeral plans just got murkier. Dear Sirs , Just a quick introduction
Who is mimicking who?
Charles
Oct
03
5 comments
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Two seasonal events coming up: the Nine Lessons and Carols is a traditional Christmas Eve ceremony, the most famous and widely broadcast being the service from King’s College, Cambridge; and Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, is showing for 10 nights in December at London’s Bloomsbury
Funerals for peace?
Charles
Oct
02
7 comments
Posted by Vale Why don’t we want to fight any more? After centuries of sending out the gunboats, the bombers or the troopships, with a wave, a cheery heart and perhaps a chorus of ‘Goodbyee’ suddenly we are not so keen. Britain’s reputation is at stake. Has the British bulldog
2013Sep
Patron saint of FDs, pray for us
Charles
Sep
30
8 comments
Posted by Richard Rawlinson It’s a crying shame St Joseph of Arimathea shares his feast day with St Patrick on 17 March. The patron saint of funeral directors gets ignored in a wash of green and Guinness. But the world’s most famous undertaker is particularly special to Britain, and well worth
You can’t keep a bad man down
Charles
Sep
30
3 comments
Everyone deserves a second chance, and if we believe what we read on the testimonials page of the Mary Mayer Funeral Home in Southend-on-Sea, then Mark Kerby, better known to readers of this blog as former jailbird and serial fraudster Richard Sage (everyone deserves a second name) is a reformed
The presence of the dead is essential
Charles
Sep
28
11 comments
We bear mortality by bearing mortals — the living and the dead — to the brink of a uniquely changed reality: Heaven or Valhalla or Whatever Is Next. We commit and commend them into the nothingness or somethingness, into the presence of God or God’s absence. Whatever afterlife there is
Grim (Reaper) up north
Charles
Sep
27
3 comments
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Manchester’s Southern Cemetery is the inspiration for Cemetery Gates by cheery northern pop combo The Smiths. It’s also the resting place of Man U manager Sir Matt Busby, Salford artist LS Lowry and Tony Wilson, founder of the Hacienda nightclub and Factory Records, which represented 1980s bands