A custom more honoured in the breach

There are those who make a distinction between traditional and alternative funerals and suppose alternative funeral directors to be, like their clients, boho, treehugger, oddball shroomers who live in La-La Land towns like Totnes or Stroud “where they’re all like that”.

The label doesn’t fit. It’s not one they use. Theirs is not an exclusive way of working. Their client base is not what you think it is. Here’s some text from the website of the ‘alternative’ Green Funeral Company in, you guessed it, Totnes:

That is not to say we are unable to produce a traditional funeral spectacular; we have buried Generals and Lords, but we approach each funeral as unique. What is at the core of our work is honesty, acceptance, and participation, even if that is just helping us to carry the coffin. In doing so, all of us become less of an audience and more of a congregation.

I’ve just received an unsolicited and very beautiful account of a recent funeral. It begins: My 93 year old mother whom we sheltered was a devout Catholic and died peacefully at home of old age. A obvious, classic candidate for a traditional funeral. The works. Maybe a horsedrawn hearse. At least one limousine, maybe three. Four grim-visaged bearers. You’d put your house on it, wouldn’t you?

The account goes on:

Having never thought of the details of her funeral I suddenly realised that I had a profound distaste for the whole strange Victorian hangover of the 'traditional' funeral with the big polished coffin and the 'professional' mourners. Rupert and Claire helped me give my mother the funeral that felt right for our family, combining a full Catholic Requiem mass with the kind of intimacy and lack of 'show' that reflected my mother's personality. They collected her body from our house treating her with extraordinary respect, and took her to their beautiful premises on the Dartington estate which we visited a few days later. We chose a woven bamboo coffin and just a single beautiful spray of spring flowers from a florist Rupert recommended. On the day of the funeral they drove back to our house in Cornwall in a black Volvo Estate rather than a hearse and we and all the others followed through the countryside to the church. My husband and children and I carried the coffin in. This was at the suggestion of Claire and I hadn't realised how utterly right it is that one should do this. The last practical assistance that one can give a parent is to carry them into church for their farewell service as they would have carried you in for your welcoming baptism. The whole congregation seemed to feel this was something deeply right and very moving - and quite revolutionary. When I look back on the day now, a month later, I do so with a feeling of deep satisfaction. She had, as they say, a good send-off - and it was one that we will remember as expressive of who we are and of who she was. Rupert and Claire are leading the new way in dealing with death and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Rupert and Claire are the Green Funeral Company.

There’s a very important lesson here, I believe, for all funeral directors. Especially the one about 'professional mourners', which is how the writer feels about bearers. What may be the emotional impact of the appearance of four utter strangers on the day of the funeral in such intimate contact with the person who has died? Are they really always necessary? Why are they never introduced?

Think on, chaps. And ponder the brilliant text on the Green Funeral Company website.

Window dressing

Photo by Dennypoos

Funeral directors are often criticised for their inertia and, to be sure, many of them, not all, move forward with foot-dragging reluctance. The most evident manifestation of this is their cod-Victorian attire. They are, they seem to be saying, neither of us, nor of our century.

If they seem to inhabit a parallel and altogether uninviting universe, or to exist in a time warp, this is an impression reinforced by the changeless aspect of their premises. But if you were a funeral director, how would you demonstrate vitality, catch the eye, stump up trade?

Difficult, isn’t it? You can’t by any means create demand for your service, nor can you trigger impulse buyers. BUY NOW WHILE OFFER LASTS or INVEST IN THE CHATSWORTH AND GET HANDLES FREE! You can’t move with the seasons: SPRING COFFIN RANGE NOW IN! However good you are at what you do, you can’t stimulate repeat business: BUY NOW GET ONE FREE! You can’t hold sales: 1/3 OFF EVERYTHING. EVERYONE MUST GO!!

If you were a funeral director, how would you dress your front window? Coffins? Urns? Tombstones? Trocars through the ages? Difficult not to look self-parodying, isn’t it? The blessed Paul Sinclair is having a lot of success with his miniature motorcycle hearse. That works well. But you need to be able to ring the changes, go with the seasons, tap into the festivals. And most of those are out. You can't risk looking festive, can you? Halloween is the biggest no-no (I’m having to hold myself back, here) but rack your brain. Which would you choose?

You probably have to go with themes. Memory is a good one. This is why so many undertakers have a Remembrance Day display with many poppies and, at Christmas, a tree hung with many lights and stars. The trick here is not to serve as a grim reminder.

Love is another, and the same caveat applies. Do you like the window at the top? It shows enterprise, doesn’t it? The photographer hated it. Check out his pics on Flickr.

Anyone seen any excellent funeral directors’ windows? Photos welcome. Send me a JPEG: Charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Doing what needs to be done, saying what needs to be said

In his excellent book Accompany Them With Singing (read it before you die or I’ll kill you), Thomas G Long says this:

"When someone dies, Christians, like all other humans, look around at the immediate environment and ask: What do we have to do? What seems fitting to do? What do we believe we are summoned to do? In other words, Christian funeral practices emerge at the intersection of necessity, custom and conviction."

What’s good for Christians is good for everyone, note. But I think I’d be inclined to reduce Long’s three to two: to just necessity and duty. What do we need to do? Get rid of this body, it’s going off. In the manner of doing it, what do we owe this person who has died? How should the funeral ceremony be, and what part ought we to play in it?

Engaging with necessity has to do with caring for the body, then disposing of it. Evaluating duty is much harder. If doing your duty is defined as doing what needs to be done and saying what needs to be said, what might you permit yourself to outsource to others and what ought you to definitely do yourself, however reluctantly, both in caring for your dead person and in farewelling them? And the reason why this question is important is because if, as a bereaved person, you are going to get anything meaningful and therapeutic out of the experience, you need to put something in, the more the better.

This is a matter I have explored, as a secular celebrant, with many families, and I’m not sure it has ever gone down well. By the time I get to them, of course, they’ve seen the funeral director, and the full-outsourcing option has embedded itself and, as a result, the point of the funeral has largely been lost. To have lots of people do everything for you because you can’t be expected to do any of it yourself is perilously attractive. Duty is consequently subsumed in self-absorption. “Would you,” I ask, “like to say a few words about Dad?” “Oh, don’t you do that?” they reply. “Who would Dad prefer?”

Instead of seeking comfort through cosseting, bereaved people need to put themselves out and earn their comfort. Never in the history of funerals have participants been so utterly passive as those at most of today’s vastly improved secular ceremonies. Even unbelievers at a religious ceremony have a more interactive time of it.

Is this how the bereaved see it? Not most of them. They have low or no expectations of a funeral. It’s an event not to be engaged with but endured. And so it is that the opportunity to grieve best at the best time for grieving is lost.

For a celebrant, the creation of a funeral ceremony ought to be an organic process, the product of several meetings. If all goes well, the outcome will be far more participation by the mourners than they ever expected: a good funeral. Do celebrants customarily brief funeral directors about the emotional state and evolving needs of their clients during this process? No. Do funeral directors customarily monitor their clients with a view to providing a better experience for them? No. So far as funeral directors are concerned, everything is set in stone at the arrangement meeting – when their clients are in the first shock of grief. They are not interested in evolving needs. Too much hassle.

This business of doing everything for the bereaved seems like kindness but isn’t. I’d like to see more funeral directors and more celebrants exploring with their clients and with each other not what they can do for their clients but what their clients can and ought to do for themselves.

Period piece

Jessica Mitford

Back in 1995 the funeral industry had been in a state of low level excitement and terror for some fifteen years. Conglomerates were stalking the land, seeking whom they might devour. Their talk of economies of scale made perfectly good sense. The little old family firms looked a bit like polar bears today.

One of the leading figures in the early days of the buying spree was the flash, narcissistic Howard Hodgson. In those get-filthy-rich-quick, Thatcherite days, he got filthy rich quick, sold out, picked up £7m and ever after enjoyed a life of relative unsuccess, poor man (I’m being careful here in case his lawyer’s reading).

The conglomerates are still with us, of course. Dignity. Funeralcare. Laurel. Others. And they’re still at it, borrowing lots of money, buying out whoever they can. But they aren’t the future. For all the efficiencies they can bring they’ve got loans to service. They’ve never managed to sell a cheaper funeral. Far from it, they’re normally more expensive. And they’re not very good at it, either.

The conglomerate which spread most terror was the US group Service Corporation International, an enterprise with global ambitions whose levels of competence continue to dump it in scandal. SCI was compelled to retreat from the UK. Its operation was bought out by Dignity.

With its departure receded fears of the Americanisation of UK funerals. But when the fear was at its height Channel 4 ran a documentary, Over My Dead Body, which, though only fifteen years old, now looks startlingly dated. Of historical interest are appearances by the twerp Hodgson and also Jessica Mitford. She it was who, in her American Way of Death, trashed the US funeral business with a combination of mischievous mockery and British values. For all the good she may have done, it is Ms Mitford whom we must hold to blame for mistaking price for value and perpetrating the notion that, in the matter of funerals, the only good un’s a cheap un.

Want to see the documentary? It’s great, let me tell you. You’ll have to give it some time to download, so find something else to do while it does. Go for it. Click here.

Why do we do it?

David Barrington is an independent funeral director in Liverpool. We swap emails from time to time, and I asked him if he’d like to be my guest on this blog. I’m very pleased that he has accepted the invitation. And I very much hope that we shall hear from him again.

Over to you, David.

Hello, I am a funeral director and the owner of a very small independent funeral business in Liverpool, Charles invited me to contribute to his blog with some insight from our side of funeral service. I haven't done this before so bear with me and here goes.

"I don't know how you do this job?"

That is the one thing that families say to me more than anything else. When I began thinking about writing this piece the thing that I kept thinking about was "So how do I do it?" Well, here are a few of the reasons why anyone in the funeral business does it.

First of all it's incredibly uplifting to help a family to celebrate the life of a loved one in the way they want to that is meaningful to them. Whatever way they want to do it, religious service, humanist celebration or no service at all.

Another reason is the appreciation that I am shown when I do a good job, from a warm handshake to big tearful hugs. It makes me feel humble every time.

The last one is IT'S A PRIVILEGE. Every time a family invites me into their lives to help them, it's only for a short time but it is also one of the most difficult times they have and they have put their trust in me to get it right, that's a big responsibility and one I take very seriously.

Most of the people I know who work in the business feel like me, however sometimes you come across people who for one reason or another have become complacent and it is just a job. If you feel your funeral company isn't that bothered then I strongly urge you not to accept it and to go somewhere else.

I hope I haven't rambled on too much and I'd be interested in any comments you have.

Thanks for reading and take care,

David.

The Undertaking

The Undertaking is a documentary about Lynch and Sons, the funeral home in Milford, Michigan, which is also home to Thomas Lynch, the man whose writings and poetry have greatly influenced the thinking of so many of us in the UK.

It's a marvellous piece of work. Watch it in its entirety, free, here.

Priceless

There’s an interesting letter in this month’s Funeral Service Times from a funeral director, Brian Howard. Actually, it’s more of a suicide note, but we’ll come to that. He’s fed up with people ordering funerals they can’t pay for, or for which their dead people did not make any provision. “In our experience,” he says, “nearly every unpaid funeral is a claim from the social funeral fund DWP [Department for Work and Pensions], but unfortunately because of the data protection act the DWP will not discuss a claim or inform the funeral directors of a problem even though the cheques are made payable to us and we have paid for the funeral on behalf of the claimant.”

When someone who’s skint comes to buy a funeral, the funeral director advises them to apply to the social fund. You’ve got to be completely skint to qualify for a funeral payment from the social fund. You have to fill out a long form. It takes them several weeks to decide if you’re worth it. The sum it pays out is likely to be less than the cost of even a basic funeral. Some funeral directors will not arrange the funeral until they can be sure the funding is in place. Most go ahead and keep their fingers crossed.

Until the last few years, funeral directors displayed low aggression in pursuing bad payers, thinking it would damage their image if they did. They’re now going after them with a vengeance. They have to. There’s a cashflow-threatening amount of money at stake.

Gone are the days of two months’ free credit at the expense of the funeral director. Almost all now demand payment of disbursements upfront. Disbursements are the bills from service and merchandise providers the funeral director pays on your behalf.

Something that really bugs Mr Howard is this: “At present any member of the public can walk into [their local authority] bereavement services and purchase a burial plot, cremation, or cremation plot at the same price as a funeral director. And yet if we are not paid for the funeral we still have to pay the local authority, and the applicant receives the deeds in their name ... It appears that we are actually retailing burial plots and cremation service/plots for the local authority, and if this is the case then we should have a mark-up price – at least this would give us a margin of profit to offset non-payment.”

Here is his radical remedy: “I propose that the local authority invoice the applicant for burial plots, cremation plots and cremations, or alternatively stay with the present system, but if we do not receive payment by the time the fees are due we obtain credit from the local authority. They have the machinery in place for debt recovery.”

We can sympathise with Mr Howard—up to a point. But we reflect that funeral directors have worked very hard to be indispensable: to be the sole gateway to all funereal merchandise and service providers. Their business model and their prestige require them to be a one-stop shop for everything a bereaved person needs. They pride themselves on doing everything for their clients, lifting the weight and worry of arranging the funeral off their shoulders. Their message to clients is that of Bob Marley: Don’t worry about a thing / Cos ev’ry little thing gonna be all right. And while this may seem to be very helpful, it is also very controlling and disempowering, both of their clients and their service providers. The Good Funeral Guide believes that the bereaved need to engage with funeral arrangements in a much more hands-on way; that, to paraphrase Beth Knox, once a person is dead the worst thing possible has happened: everything you can do from then on can only make things better. The more you do the better you’ll grieve at the best time for grieving.

Funeral directors have established a stranglehold over funeral arrangements, and this has come back and bitten them on the bum. Local authorities have become lazily dependent on funeral directors to collect their fees. There is no good reason why they shouldn’t collect their own fees from purchasers of graves and cremations. Why on earth don’t they? Because the funeral directors fall over themselves to do it for them. Mr Howard claims that “It appears that we are actually retailing burial plots and cremation service/plots for the local authority, and if this is the case then we should have a mark-up price – at least this would give us a margin of profit to offset non-payment.” No, Mr Howard. You are not a retailer, you are an agent. You make a charge for this in your professional fee.

Local authorities have also become lazily dependent on indispensable funeral directors to arrange for the disposal of dead bodies. The option which is never presented to people is that of refusing to accept responsibility. Citizens Advice gives wrong advice in this matter: “Some people do not leave enough money to pay for even a simple funeral. If this happens, the person arranging the funeral will have to pay for it.” No! Under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, the responsibility for the disposal of dead bodies lies with the local authority. Anyone is perfectly entitled to walk away from the whole business. It was, therefore, perfectly logical for the government in the 1950s to consider nationalising the funeral industry, and for the same reason it is arguable that it was wrong to abolish the death grant. If more skint people walked away from arranging funerals, or more funeral directors refused to have anything to do with them, the government would very adroitly speed up social fund payments.

Mr Howard concludes by sounding a warning to his fellow funeral directors: “As the wording on the burial purchase forms and application for cremation forms suggests that it is the applicant’s purchase and not the funeral director’s, unless we demand a change in the future the DIY service will be commonplace.” In other words, people will become their own funeral directors. We’re all doomed!

Here Mr Howard betrays a misunderstanding of his role—a misunderstanding possibly brought about by his job title. Were he to revert to the time-honoured title of undertaker he’d be able to see his role more clearly. When people take upon themselves the responsibility for disposing of their dead they make themselves accountable in law to their local authority and they cannot shift that legal responsibility to anyone else. They can, though, depute the care of their dead person to someone who will undertake to do that—someone who will also undertake to make funeral arrangements on their behalf as instructed. The local authority is in charge. The executor or administrator is the possessor of the body, the funeral director. The undertaker is custodian and agent, merely.

If funeral directors have become victims of their own self-inflicted indispensability, that is their fault. There are a great many coffin makers, florists, caterers, printers and secular celebrants who will greet this with a smirk. They’d be very happy to deal with the public direct. Coffin makers in particular would be happy to see their coffins sold at a far less exorbitant markup.

Mr Howard, I think you are going to have to bite the bullet on this one. It is industrious indispensability that maintains your pre-eminence. The price you pay is the odd unpaid bill. It’s worth it. If all providers of services and merchandise start to invoice funeral consumers direct, you unravel; you fall apart. Shh. Your letter exposes the extreme fragility of the funeral director’s business model.

To JH: if you will give me a good email address I want to reply to you.

Bad moon rising?

An interesting thing about undertaking is that you don’t have to come at it from a position of actually being an undertaker. Does that make no sense? Let me explain.

I know how undertakers feel. I am a writer. It is very difficult to come at writing from the position of being a writer. My good friend Christopher is a writer. He wrote a very successful book. Nigel Slater, Monty Don and Anna Pavord raved about it. Result? Penury. Very few writers strike lucky enough to make a living from writing (though their agents and publishers do well enough out of them). They need to do other things. If Christopher wants to finish his next book (it’s about forests and promises to be just as brilliant as Forgotten Fruits) he needs to broaden his earning base, bustle a bit, do some journalism or copywriting, a few shifts pushing trolleys at B&Q, a newspaper round, whatever. A bit on the side. I once did time in prison. As a teacher. It was quite a good little earner—until I was sacked. I am now an occasional funeral celebrant. It keeps my financial scoreboard ticking over. But it keeps me from my writing. There’s no winning combination.

Just about everyone else can make a living by pursuing single-issue careers, lucky people. Surgeons. Electricians. Brazilian waxers. Dog groomers. They don’t need their bit on the side.

Undertakers began as portfolio workers. They were builders or joiners. Undertaking was a sideline. Nowadays, though they are undertakers first and foremost, they still can’t make a living out of it, dammit. No, they need their bit on the side, too. So they have to work hard to make themselves indispensable in all areas of funeral planning—to be a one-stop shop for everything you need. Which is why they collect fees on behalf of crematoriums, priests, celebrants and burial grounds, making themselves responsible for the debts of their clients. Desperate lunacy! It is why they have to hold all service and merchandise providers, people who do things they can’t, in hired dependency. Thrall is all.

It’s a terribly delicate business model and it can so easily fall apart. Why? Because undertaking is so easily relegated to an ancillary service. Because there’s so little to it. Result? Hirer hired. Anyone can set themselves up as a funeral arranger and turn the tables—a monumental mason, a celebrant, an event organiser.

Is it all unravelling for the funeral directors? Not necessarily. But they need to smarten up, definitely. Old school funeral directors have failed to address the disconnect between the care of the body and the creation of the funeral ceremony. For most, these remain separate specialisms—and where clients want a religious ceremony they’ll always be so. But the rise of the secular ceremony gives a funeral director the opportunity to offer exactly what their clients want: a joined up service. Most are intellectually incapable of this.

Down in Devon, green fuse hire mortuary facilities from local funeral directors, where they care for the bodies entrusted to them. Family Tree and the Green Funeral Company, both of whom have their own mortuaries, are also rare, triumphant exceptions, the best it gets—but, like my friend Christopher, I don’t suppose they’ll ever be troubling the financial services industry. They are content in their honourable estate of relative poverty, happy in their own skins, terrifically nice people.

Funeral directors live in ever-present danger of someone better coming along and enslaving them. And the news is that their newest threat has arrived. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for: the funeral consultant!

I have been contacted by two such in the last month, both of them ex-funeral directors who can use their insider knowledge to muscle down prices for their clients. One is Andrew Hickson at Your Choice Funerals. I won’t tell you who the other one is until he has got his website sorted.

Will the news of their advent cause the marmalade to drop from the nerveless fingers of breakfasting funeral directors the length and breadth of the land?

There's always going to be a market for a cheaper funeral . But my feeling is that people are going to be reluctant to accede to the care of their dead person being subordinated in any way. What do you think?

While you consider, go straight to Amazon and order your copy of Forgotten Fruits.

You were the future, once...

Interesting piece in this month’s Funeral Service Journal (FSJ), the undertakers’ trade mag, by Howard Hogson.

Howard Hodgson? He was the young turk who bought his dad’s ailing funeral home in Birmingham for £14,00 in 1975 and embarked on an acquisition spree which had landed him 546 branches by 1991, at which time he pocketed the cash, some £7 million, and retired to dabble in other areas of enterprise, mostly with conspicuous unsuccess. Something of a futurologist, our Mr H. Or not, as we shall see.

In FSJ he bewails the passing of the old-school funeral director. Where is he now, he asks, the “well-respected local man who arrived at the deceased’s home and announced he’d be conducting the funeral? The man who established which were the family flowers to be placed on the coffin. The man who then noted down the names of the mourners for each limousine and proceeded, when all was ready, to nod from the front door so that the hearse could pull forward and the hearse driver return to open the limousine door as the first limousine pulled into place and the conductor returned inside to read out those first six names and repeat the exercise until all the limousines had been loaded outside the front door. The man who thanked the people in the street for having taken the trouble to pay their last respects before walking the cortege down the road, gliding on board without the hearse stopping, and setting the route and speed in order to arrive three minutes before the service time so that the opening sentences were said by the priest bang on time.”

Sorry, it’s a long quote, but it almost amounts to a valuable if, at this remove, slightly risible historical document. And I guess a lot of people who saw this piece chuckled ironically, for this historical figure from the Golden Age of funerals was also the person dumped on his arse by Mr Hodgson’s management methods.

“Old chaps,” he calls them, now. “A dying breed. The conductors of today would do well to learn from them before there are none left and their art is dead.”

Does Hodgson have a point of any potency? Yes, I think he does. If it’s a so-called traditional funeral you want, a funeral conductor occupies a ceremonial role. As such it’s not a role that can be discharged diffidently or scruffily. Everything must be just so. Uniform, bearing and performance must be impeccable. Sense of occasion is all. The conductor must set the tone by lending majesty to the obsequies.

And a great many conductors today are not smartly turned out. Zitty twerps, hulking yobs, cocky shortarses—we get all sorts, these days. It’s worse than just a letdown to see the hearse paged by some unimpressive physical specimen with bad hair, flat feet and an unconvincingly arranged facial rictus. Top hats and morning coats are often of little better than costume-hire quality. Shoes are awful. Scuffed, cheap, squashy, AWFUL!

To what does Mr Hodgson’s near-mythical conductor owe his ceremonial eminence? Why, tradition, of course. Today’s funeral procession is the descendant of the Victorian funeral procession, itself the descendant of the ancient heraldic funeral devised in the mists of the Middle Ages by the College of Arms. There’s a proud history here, a wealth of ‘eritage—and, of course, a lingering Victorian aesthetic.

At the same time, we must observe that Victorians would regard today’s funeral procession as a pale and diluted version of the sort of show they were accustomed to put on. Yes, the Victorian funeral procession has evolved, of course it has, thank god it has.

But, crucially, you’ve got to ask yourself whether that evolution has simply brought it to the verge of extinction.

A funeral procession, like any procession, is only any good if it can proceed at a walking pace and incorporate both vehicles and pedestrians. It is welcome only if the populace agrees to give it road room. And while the inhabitants of Wootton Bassett readily give over their high street to corteges bearing the bodies of dead service people, and while the inhabitants of countless towns and villages give over their roads to their festive carnivals, it is a sad fact of modern life that, for most of our citizens, a funeral is a private, not a universal, event. It does not arrest people as they go about their business. It is not accorded reverent attention. On the contrary, a funeral procession to most is a matter of indifference and, to most motorists, a lumbering nuisance to be parped at and cut in on. As a result, a hearse is customarily followed only by a small number of vehicles. The majority of mourners go straight to the venue, park and wait. Why are they not accorded an opportunity to gather at, say, the gates and follow the coffin on foot? Is a hundred metres or so too short a distance for a proper procession? No, it is not. But here another fact of modern life comes into play to harry and deplete a ceremonial procession: at crematoria, in particular, there simply isn’t time for all that.

Is it time to pronounce the funeral procession dead? I think not. Humankind has formed processions of all sorts since the dawn of time. It’s something we’re hardwired to do. The funeral procession will revive, no doubt about it. But will it revive in the Victorian tradition of Mr Hodgson’s “old chaps”? I think not.

Why so? Simply because, for the “old chaps”, every funeral conformed to the same look, the same style, the same level of formality. But we do not live in an age of conformity, Mr Hodgson, not any more, we live in an age of unique, personalised, participative funerals which owe nothing to Victorian values or a Victorian aesthetic and, increasingly, nothing to orthodox religious practice. At events like this the traditional funeral director and bearers look increasingly anachronistic and out of place, if not downright unpleasant.

The Victorian funeral was all about hush and awe. The modern funeral addresses itself to celebrating the life. It is in this context that the clobber favoured by so many funeral directors is not a delightful nod to the past (as are the uniforms of, say, Chelsea Pensioners), but an underworldly, Hammer Horror fancy dress which casts dread over the event.

The funeral of the past, every one the same, belonged to Hodgson’s “old chaps”. Not any more, they don’t. In the words of Thomas Lynch, “the dead belong to their people.” So do their funerals. And if those people want every one different, it is for funeral directors, in their role as event organisers, to cater for this.

That’s why, Mr Hodgson, you see “the smartly turned-out [conductors] of today ... standing by as the eldest son of the deceased seems to be conducting proceedings.” Deplore it all you want, I’m afraid you’re going to see more of it: funeral directors doing what they are bloody well told, tables turned. It is time for your “dying breed”, undeniably wonderful in their day, to be DNR-ed. Let us hope they will not spin in their graves.

Meanwhile, up in Solihull, John Hall at Colour My Funeral has arranged insurance for any mourner over the age of 25 to drive his hearse. That’s a first, yes? Way to go, John! Love it!

The mind is its own place

The Guardian ran a short piece on Saturday about those who work in the death industry. One of the themes was humour as a coping mechanism.

One of the interviewees was Andrew Leverton of Leverton’s, by appointment undertaker to HRH the Queen. Asked if he found aspects of his work darkly funny he replied, “I don’t find it particularly humorous.” He went on to say, “I keep away from the emotional aspect of it ... I try to keep things at arm’s length.” Professional detachment for him means that mishaps are things like flowers being put on the wrong coffin or corteges running late. Nothing about people.

Now, that’s quite a trick, to steer clear of emotion in the funeral business. Amidst the wailing and the trauma, Andrew’s problems are all logistical. “If you can keep you head while all about you / Are losing theirs...” You’ve cracked it, Andrew.

Part of me admires that. Grief is the responsibility of those who grieve. We hire an undertaker to take care of the practicalities, not to take away the pain. Andrew quietly sets about his business.

But most of us in Andrew’s place would find it hard not to make a human connection of some sort and, once you’ve established some sort of rapport with your clients, you’re bound to have a feeling for what’s happened to them. There’s the matter of client expectations, too. There’s got to be more to the contract than corpses and coffins and cars. Consumers expect more than courteous indifference. They need their undertaker to enter into the spirit of the arrangements to some degree.

People who get that close to death need to be able to cope. I doubt whether emotional disengagement is the way. People who reckon catastrophe to be inexplicable will never be able to process human misery and let it pass through them; they melt down. People who feed on grief (there are quite a few grief vultures out there) glut on it and go mad. Those who are more emotionally mature can take it on, then let it go. This, they would say, is the way the world is, and I accept that.

So, Andrew, I’m sure you’re doing a fine job. But, old chap, I think there’s more to it than getting to the crem on time. This is a job for emotional grown-ups. As John Milton had it:

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n

Bring on the empty hearses

 

What effect does the sight of a hearse have on you? Does it make your spirit soar? Does it put a spring in your step and a song on your lips?

 

Or does it throw a Hammer Horror chill around your heart?

 

What would be the effect on you of the spectacle of a procession of 100 hearses? Would you think that the Black Death had broken out?

 

The British Institute of Funeral Directors (BIFD), at its annual conference, is hoping to break the world record for the number of hearses in a parade by doing just that: sending 100 of them through the streets of Croydon. Is there, you splutter, a world record for this sort of thing? Yes, there is a world record for everything – and that includes, of course, anything.

 

But there is more to this enterprise than boldly going and conquering pastures new on virgin summits. The BIFD’s president, Adrian Pink, says: “The BIFD wants to open up the profession and its suppliers to their market, to make the whole process less intimidating.”

 

Less intimidating?

 

He goes on to say, “My motto is MAD - make a difference - and I’m sure with this record attempt we will be able to do so.”

 

No, Adrian, mad means mad.

 

All this puts me in mind of my friend Geoff.

 

“I’m seventy-five,” he said to me a while ago. “It’s time I made arrangements. I’m looking for a good undertaker in my local area.”

 

Geoff knew as little as most people about how funerals work and, when he tried to find a simpatico undertaker by scanning the display ads in his local paper, he found himself no nearer his goal.

 

“Why on earth do they advertise,” he exclaimed testily, “if they’re all going to say nothing about themselves?”

 

Geoff made a good point here. Conventionally, businesses spend good money on marketing in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors and declare a USP. The new breed of green and alternative funeral directors does this. But most of the trad majority stand in line and share the same descriptive vocabulary. They offer a service which is ‘personal’, ‘professional’, ‘caring’, ‘respectful’. Excellent. Just what we all want. But then they throw in ‘dignity’, and that’s where Geoff and many like him take a step back. What is this dignity? It sounds formal and distant. Pompous. It sets up a barrier.

 

Geoff is an adept silver surfer and he persisted in his researches, this time on the internet. What did he reckon? “They can’t use the English language!” he expostulated. “Full of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, misplaced apostrophes.”

 

He’s right. There’s a lot of semi-literate text up there and it disparages the professional competence of those it represents. Geoff might have added that the design of many funeral directors’ websites is crude, cluttered and clunky. Horrible.

 

Geoff’s researches eventually dumped him back on square one. Dismayed, he gave up. “I’ll ask around, see if anyone knows a good one.”

 

Adrian, here’s some helpful advice for you and your fellow funeral directors: the purpose of marketing is to offer a relationship of warmth and trust with potential clients – to draw them to you.

 

They don’t want spiky gothic typography in your ads. It is ecclesiastical and anachronistic. It carries associations of gloom, wretchedness and Dickensian melodrama. Your other favoured graphic design elements similarly mystify or repel – religious symbols, horsedrawn hearses, stained glass windows surrounded by clustering roses. Your trade association logos look impressive – but does anyone actually know what they mean?

 

Most people glance at your ads, shiver, and hope they’ll never have to go anywhere near you.

 

Adrian, they say that death is the last taboo. It’s not. People want information. They want to be able to drop into your funeral home informally and indulge their curiosity, chat, read and find out.

 

You talk about the public service element of your work. The quality of that service would be greatly enhanced were you to offer accessibility and empowerment, warmth and trust.

 

What has choking the streets of Croydon with hearses got to do with that?