Exclusive! Dover undertaker achieves UK first.
I was going to blog today about the public meeting at Redditch town hall to debate the contentious matter of whether or not the crem should be used to heat a nearby swimming pool. I wanted to give you a blow-by-blow account. But in the event it was a non-event. There were perhaps thirty people […]
In the midst of death let there be life
There’s been a lot of interest in the US this week in what their media reckons to be a startling new trend. Owners of funeral homes, which over there are much roomier than ours, are reacting to shrinking profits – the impact of the rise in cremation and the slump in the economy – by […]
Bringing death to life
Like you, I haven’t a clue what this ‘ere Big Society is all about. They say, I think, that it’s all about empowerment. It sounds more like the government walking off the job. It certainly means less of everything and of course it’s entirely like politicians to try and kid us that less = more. […]
Zombie journalism
Here’s some nasty journalistic furystirring from the Daily Mail under the headline Councils to stockpile bodies to cut the costs of cremation Bodies will be stockpiled for cremation under new rules to cut costs and carbon emissions. Rather than being cremated straight after a funeral, corpses will be stored for days in coffins or body bags […]
The great unsung
I’ll never make a funeral director. Yesterday’s experience reinforced that. No presence of mind. No eye for detail. In any case, I like things to hang loose, come a little unravelled if they will. But the mourning public likes to be held in a reassuring grip, I was reminded. They like someone to look to; […]
They think it’s all over…
It’s interesting to note that two of the most important drivers for change in modern funerals have come, not from pro-active consumers or wild-eyed visionaries, but from urgent if mundane economic and environmental needs. They are, famously, natural burial and’ less famously, the held-over cremation. Ken West, for all that he is a visionary, made […]
There’s nowt so crap as a crem
Over in Lufkin, Texas, a new funeral home has opened. What’s different about it? It offers one of those familiar back-to-the-past initiatives which mark progress in funeral service: it’s owner is making his clients aware that they can have the funeral at home – if they want. “It used to be that before there were […]
Yes, we can
A few weeks back I lazily asked whether a private entrepreneur could open a crematorium in this country. I say lazily because I hoped someone would know the answer and spare me research time. I supposed that only local authorities can get permission from the Secretary of State to build a crem. I was wrong, […]
Time to privatise cremation?
Over in Apple Valley, Ca, Stephen Atmore, 11 years retired from the local phone company, has gone back to work. He’s opening a crematorium in a strip mall and trying to get his head around it: “I still wake up every morning asking myself why I am doing this.” Like a lot of people in […]
