Real E Fun

I Couldn't Even Think Of A Title

2009-01-05T07:34:00.003Z

I sat down yesterday to write this blog post without an idea in my head. I looked at the blank screen for a while, but it didn't help (funny, that). Then I had a trawl back through some old posts to see if anything would inspire me. (Is it really, really sad to read your own writing in hope of inspiration?)

While I was doing that, I noticed that the last time I had a blogbreak was in summer 2006. And then I did have an idea.

Yes, dear readers, I'm going to take a break. I'm really low on ideas for this blog, and I need to concentrate on other kinds of writing for a while. Charles is producing good, entertaining posts about funerals. Any of the Novel Racers will offer you posts about writing. And for quality rants, from the idiotic through the eccentric to the laudable, I commend you to the online Guardian's Comment Is Free section.

I do intend to continue reading and (mostly) commenting on the blogs in my sidebar. I don't know when I'll start writing blog posts again. Maybe next week, next month or next year. Maybe never. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows? Perhaps I'll reinvent myself and appear in a different corner of the web under a whole new identity. If you want me for anything in the meantime, feel free to email. And look on the bright side - that's one less blog you need to check on for a while!

Post Of The Week

2008-12-29T07:16:00.003Z

New Year Resolutions. What are they good for? Evidently not taking up exercise, stopping smoking or losing weight. I decided, some years ago, that I would only make New Year Resolutions that would enhance my life, not the kind that involve me beating myself with a big stick that may be metaphorical but nevertheless hurts. Since then I've made two. The first was to stop buying black clothes (my predilection for black was nothing to do with funerals and everything to do with having no fashion sense) and the second was to take proper holidays. Both improved my life no end.

I'm making another one this year: to be more consistently supportive of Post Of The Week. In case you haven't come across POTW, it's a small informal competition, run by bloggers for bloggers, with the aim of bringing good new writing to a wider audience. The rules are simple: anyone can nominate a post for inclusion; the editorial team produce a shortlist each weekend from that week's nominations; a handful of bloggers read the shortlisted posts and rank their top five in order; those scores are then used by the editorial team to identify that week's winner.

Some people are put off by the competitive aspect of POTW. However, for me, the competitive part isn't the point. You could say that's easy for me to say as I'm a Hall Of Famer, i.e. I've been shortlisted at least five times and won at least once. But I've always enjoyed contributing to POTW because it broadens my blog horizons in a very easy way. Some terrific blogs have come to light through this, and don't we all write to be read? Isn't that the point?

For me, anything that separates the cyberdiamonds from the cyberdross is worth promoting. If you haven't met POTW before, and would like to get some idea of the standard of posts it includes, let me commend to you the winners and the shortlists. I return to this page regularly when I'm in search of a good read. If you already do the same, then you might like to consider getting a little more involved. This could simply mean nominating a post from time to time, or if you want to do more than that, you could help with the judging, either as a one-off 'guest judge' or as a regular judge or team member. But there's no obligation, and if you do nothing else, I would recommend that you bookmark the page and keep an eye on it for guaranteed high quality blogging.

So are you making any New Year Resolutions this year? If so, feel free to share in the comments box. That's another reason I like POTW, and blogging, and doing funerals - I'm insatiably nosy!

Memorial Scammers?

2008-12-22T07:00:00.001Z

I read a very interesting article in yesterday's Observer by Victoria Coren, daughter of the well-known writer, humorist and broadcaster Alan Coren who died in October 2007. The article evoked a combination of amusement and horror.

In brief: Victoria was planning a memorial service for her father when she was alerted to the existence of one Terence Jolley. This man seems to make a habit of attending memorial services for famous people, particularly those with arts connections.

I've never been to a memorial service for anyone famous, but it seems that entrance is by ticket. Numbered tickets are distributed by the family, partly to ensure that relatives and friends are seated near the front, with fans and well-wishers further back. It may be that for some memorial services, entrance is restricted to those who knew the deceased in person, but as far as Victoria was concerned, "Those who had written honestly to say that they didn't know my father personally, but were life-long admirers, were very welcome."

An email from 'Terence and Caroline Jolley' claimed that they had worked with Alan Coren at the BBC. Googling Terence Jolley reveals that he is an ex-magistrate; has been involved with a transport fraud; may at some time have run a printing company in Barnsley; does voluntary work; has a particular interest in mental health issues; has himself suffered a nervous breakdown and been diagnosed as suffering from a personality disorder; and has never been married (although of course Caroline could be his sister, aunt, granny or whatever).

Victoria did some detective work and discovered that the postal address given by Terence and Caroline Jolley was a guesthouse in Ilford. She had also been asked to send tickets to this address by a Keith Davidson. Terence Jolley's home address is in Barnsley, and she had been asked to send tickets to that address by a Lady Noreen Wray and a Mr Gary Holmes. There were emails from other people whose names she didn't recognise and whose postal addresses, when she checked, didn't appear in any official records. She contacted one man she'd never heard of, Marc Cain, and discovered that his name had been 'borrowed' for a ticket application - and so had his dog Tessa's.

So Victoria, being both clever and cross, decided to lay a trap for the Jolley gang. She invented a fictional arts patron, killed him off, and advertised a non-existent memorial service all over the Internet, giving the email address of the fictional arts patron's fictional grief-stricken boyfriend. Within hours she had had a request for tickets from 'The Hon Terence Jolley and Terence Jolley (Snr)', and from Lady Noreen Wray, Gary Holmes and several others who had previously applied to attend Alan Coren's memorial service. They all claimed to have known, or known of, the fictional arts patron, and - most sickeningly - to have admired his work.

Gotcha! But due to a combination of complicated circumstances, Victoria decided not to prevent the whole gang from attending her father's memorial service. She ensured that Terence Jolley himself was unable to attend, and let the others come to the service and tuck into the food at the reception while she "avoided them, got drunk and toasted my father".

Terence Jolley seems to style himself 'The Hon' fairly regularly. This would mean he was, or was related to, a peer of the realm, or that he was a Privy Councillor. There is no evidence on the Internet to support this, and in fact a Wikipedia entry from 2008 for 'The Honourable Terence Jolley' was swiftly deleted for 'not indicating a real person'. But he's been doing this for a while: for example, The Times reported him attending a memorial service as The Hon Terence Jolley in 2005. They have him down at another one in early 2008, this time as Mr Terence Jolley, whose name is next to Ms Noreen Wray - whose title also seems to be astonishingly flexible. She appears in The Times at a royalty-studded memorial service in 2007, this time as Mrs Noreen Wray and without Mr/The Hon Jolley. UK Google has four entries for Noreen Wray, three connected with memorial services and one from October 2007 when she petitioned the Government to give Terence Jolley an OBE or MBE. The petition received six signatures, including those of 'Darren and Becky Fisher' - which is interesting as Victoria had an application for tickets to her father's memorial service from 'Darren and Heidi Fisher'. I wonder who these people are.

The Observer, quite rightly, gave Terence Jolley a chance to answer Victoria's allegations. Here is what he said:

I applied at the time [to attend Alan Coren's memorial service] when the announcement went in the Telegraph or one of the papers. Myself and several of my colleagues applied - it was easier to apply on their behalf than do it individually.
I'd met him in Leeds on a couple of occasions. There was nothing untoward about me applying. It was not done in a way to deride somebody but the complete opposite. I've made similar applications in the past but sometimes I haven't got the time to go to them. They are people I have met or I have connection with from doing research; maybe I will have met them on only one or two occasions. I applied on behalf of Marc Cain and assumed he might have a lady friend he wanted to bring along so it was the easiest thing to do [apply on behalf of Cain's dog]. I couldn't think whether he had a particular lady friend; you never know.
I applied [to attend a memorial for the fictional arts patron] and it's possible I applied on behalf of some friends, too. I couldn't find him in Who's Who but I'd read he had been recently knighted. It was interesting to know what people did and what they have achieved.

But this still leaves me with several questions. Why the shifting titles? And why the outright lies? It may be that some of the people who apply for tickets to memorial services are not fans of the person who has died, but just want a nice day out, a chance to don a posh outfit and scoff some free grub. As Jolley says, it can be interesting to know about people's lives, especially those who are in some way exceptional. And I know, from hanging around crematorium entrances, that people attend all sorts of funerals for all sorts of reasons, and free food is often high on the list. It may seem like a small offence to blag a few butties from some famous people. But famous people love their families just as much, and feel the pain of bereavement every bit as keenly, as any other people. And in my book, blagging anything off the recently bereaved leaves a very nasty smell.

The trouble with uncovering this gang is that they might get better at what they do, change their names and identifying details, and carry on. So it's just as well there's a photo of Mr Jolley on the Internet, then, isn't it?

Three Top Tips For Speaking At Funerals

2008-12-15T11:50:00.003Z

So, due to popular demand, here they are.

1. Sit at the aisle end of a row. This means you can get up to the front without having to squeeze past several people hissing 'excuse me... sorry... excuse me... oops, sorry...' and feeling horribly embarrassed before you even start speaking.

2. Don't look at anyone you know. This is really, really important. Don't stare down at your notes, either, if you can avoid it. Find a group of people you don't know and look at them, or look at the back wall, or a pillar, or the centre of the aisle, or the organ - whatever you can see that is neutral. The reason for this is that if you catch sight of someone you know, and they're having a bad moment, it can be your undoing.

3. Remember that the congregation are mourners just like you, not a massive panel of judges. They are not going to suddenly produce cardboard lollipops with scores on. It doesn't matter if you get a bit choked mid-speech and need a moment to compose yourself. Take a couple of deep breaths; wipe your eyes or blow your nose if you need to. Nobody will be surprised that you're feeling emotional. Everyone will be impressed with your courage and determination, and they will all be willing you on.

So those are my top tips, but there are a few other things that can also help. First, write down what you want to say, appoint someone as back-up to take over if you can't manage it on the day, and give them a copy of your speech. This is useful insurance in case you fall ill, or your car breaks down on the way to the funeral, or there is some other reason why you are unable to speak as planned. Nobody knows quite how they will feel at a funeral, and occasionally people simply can't speak. I usually act as back-up for family members who want to speak at my funerals, and they nearly always don't need me to do anything more than be ready to step in. It seems that just knowing someone is willing and able to take over makes the process easier to manage.

Second, have some tissues in your pocket or up your sleeve. It's grim if you do need to blow your nose and don't have any to hand.

Third, be prepared for lots of attention and compliments after the service. Many people will want to tell you they think you're really brave, did very well, should be proud of yourself, etc etc etc. I find this difficult because I'm rather British and tend to want to brush away compliments and be left alone, but I realise that's not helpful or kind to the compliment-givers, so I try for gracious acceptance and a quick change of subject.

Fourth and last, plan a way to relax after the service or - if there is one - the reception. Speaking at a funeral is a big deal and may take more out of you than you expect. Think of something that will work for you: a quiet evening at home with your family; a long hot bath; a glass of good wine; a massage; it doesn't matter what it is, as long as it will help you unwind. And make sure you take full advantage of the opportunity, because you will have earned it.

Peter #2

2008-12-08T07:53:00.006Z

I spoke to Lynne again the night before her mother's funeral. Sure enough, Peter was still determined to speak. But Lynne sounded much happier about it.

'He's practised it over and over and over,' she told me. 'He's run through it with me about two hundred times, and he's word-perfect, but he keeps asking to practise it again. I don't mind though. I think this is how he's dealing with his nerves.'

'What's he going to say?' I asked. 'Am I likely to duplicate anything?'

'I don't think so,' Lynne said. 'He's really talking about his experience of Dad, and you're going to do the kind of biography thing, aren't you? So I think the two will go together well. And I've timed him; it's around four minutes.'

'Okay. I can work with that.'

I was glad Lynne seemed more confident, but I was still anxious. Call me a control freak, but I don't like anything unpredictable in my funerals; I like them planned, timed, rehearsed, deliberate. So I dealt with my own nerves by arriving even earlier than usual at the crematorium, and then sat in the car for forty minutes, thinking of all the jobs I could have been doing at home and wondering why I'm such an eejit.

Time rolled slowly along and eventually I was standing outside the chapel doors watching the hearse draw up. The funeral director was my dear friend Paul who got out of the hearse, turned his back to the mourners and gave me a surreptitious wink and smile as he shook my hand.

'Let's get the family out,' he said. 'My chaps will see to the coffin.'

We headed for the limousine behind the hearse. Lynne stepped out first and greeted us both with hugs. Peter followed her out and stood still, his hands at his sides, his face expressionless.

'Hello, Peter,' I said. 'How are you doing?'

'I'm OK,' he rumbled. 'I have a job to do. And then I will be upset.'

'When you've finished your job.'

'Yes.'

He seemed monumentally calm. I wanted to tell him I thought his dad would be really proud of him, but I didn't know how secure his control was, and I didn't want to jeopardise his plans. So I decided to stick to the nuts and bolts.

'In a minute you will walk in with Lynne behind the coffin.' I pointed to where the bearers were placing the coffin carefully on the bier. 'I will go in front to lead the way, and Paul will show you where to go. When everyone has sat down, I will say a few things to welcome people and let them get settled. Then I'll call your name, and then you can come to the front and stand by me and say your piece. OK?'

'Lynne, will you help me remember?'

Lynne was trembling, on the verge of tears, but she fought them back and managed a crumpled smile for him. 'Yes, Peter, I'll help you.' She tucked her hand through his arm and leant her head on his shoulder.

'OK,' Paul said, 'let's go.'

The start of the ceremony went smoothly and I was glad to be underway. When I called Peter, he lumbered up to the front, his face expressionless as usual, and stood at the lectern.

'My dad taught me that everybody is different. Lynne is my sister so we are alike in some ways and also different. Lynne can't say anything today because she is too upset. I can say about my dad for both of us. I will be upset after.'

His words came slow and ponderous, like drumbeats.

'My dad loved me and Lynne and my mum best of all. He was good at loving us because he was happy when we were there. Sometimes when we were little and we were naughty he would get cross but that was OK. It's what a dad has to do and it helped us learn not to be naughty.

My dad always helped me all his life, and I always helped him too. Especially when he was old I could help him because I am strong. He liked me to help him and he would always say "thank you, Peter, you are such a help to me."

My dad enjoyed his life and that is a good thing. He was a happy man. Lynne and me would not have liked anybody else to be our dad.'

Peter walked calmly back down to the front pew and took his seat by Lynne. Then he began to cry. He cried like a child, open-mouthed and noisy. He cried through the rest of the service: waves of great gasping sobs, hiccups, elephantine nose-blowing, the works. It was contagious, too; I don't think there was a dry eye in the place apart from mine. I carried on with the service, although I don't think people could hear much of what I was saying, or of the music we played at the committal. But it didn't matter. Peter's weeping felt like an extension of his tribute, a perfect expression of his feelings of sadness at the loss of his beloved dad.

Peter

2008-12-01T08:41:00.002Z

Lynne was a small, neat, softly-spoken woman in her early 50s. She sat on the sofa next to her brother Peter, a lumpy man with thick glasses. Lynne fidgeted like an unsettled cat while Peter was very still, his hands between his knees, as if somebody had switched him off.

Peter had always lived at home. Their mother had died several years earlier, and since her death, Peter and his father had cared for each other. Lynne lived nearby with her teenage son Daniel. She had explained to me on the phone that Peter would be moving to a residential centre, that he'd been prepared for this over the last few years, and that he was happy about the move. It sounded sensible, but I felt sorry for him, losing his familiar home as well as his beloved father.

Lynne was doing all the talking. I tried to address questions to them both, to encourage Peter to speak if he wanted to. I wasn't sure how much he was taking in. I didn't know whether being still and quiet was Peter's usual social style or a grief response.

I'd got most of the information I needed, and it seemed like a good time to ask one of my standard questions. 'Would either of you like to speak at the funeral? Or anyone else, Daniel maybe, or one of your father's friends?'

Lynne shook her head. 'I'd like to, but I couldn't. And I know Daniel would say the same.'

A seismic rumble came from Peter as he cleared his throat. 'I want to speak for Dad.'

'Are you sure?' Lynne turned to him, her face drawn in concern. 'Don't you think you'll get upset?'

'I am upset. Dad's died.' He spoke slowly, as if each word was heavy to lift from his body. 'I want to speak. I knew Dad best. This lady didn't know Dad.'

'Peter, you're right,' I said. 'It is best, at funerals, if someone who knew the person who has died can say something. Will you be able to write down what you want to say, so I can put it in the script?'

He shook his head. 'I can't do writing very well. I will think about what to say, and practise with Lynne.'

Lynne was worried. 'Peter, it's a hard thing to do,' she said.

'It will be like a job. I will do this for Dad. Like at work.'

'Peter works in the Scope shop three mornings a week,' Lynne told me.

'With Madge and Carol,' Peter said. 'Madge says I mustn't get angry with a customer, even if the customer is rude to me. Madge says I can wait to be angry until the customers have all left the shop. Then I can shout, or swear if I want to.'

'So do you think you can do it like that at the funeral?' I asked. 'Can you wait to be upset until after you have spoken to everyone?'

'Yes. I can wait. And I can speak.'

Lynne didn't look entirely convinced, and I was nervous too. Time is limited at the crematorium, so it's always nerve-racking when family members want to speak, as I'm never sure they will stick to the length of time available. I always ask people to write down what they want to say, for several reasons but partly so I can time it, but this clearly wasn't going to work with Peter. Also I didn't know whether to give him my Three Top Tips for speaking at funerals. I wasn't sure he'd need them, and I didn't want to overload him with information. In the end, I settled for suggesting that he sit on the end of a row to make it easy to come up to the front. I told him I would arrange for his speech to be near the beginning of the funeral, and left it at that.

Lynne telephoned me that evening.

'Zinnia, I've had another chat with Peter about this idea of his that he wants to speak at the funeral. To be honest, I was hoping to talk him out of it, but he really seems to want to speak. And when he gets an idea, it can be kind of hard to dislodge.'

'I think if he wants to speak he should speak,' I said. 'I'm a bit worried about the timing, though. He said he was going to work out what to say and practise with you. Can you time him, and let me know how long it's likely to be?'

'Of course. And then you can tell me if it's too long.'

'Five minutes should be fine, but if he goes much longer than that, we'll need to think about cutting down some of the music or leaving out one of the poems.'

'So we've got some flexibility if we need it.'

'Definitely. We don't need to make final decisions until the night before.'

I heard her whoosh an out-breath of relief. 'Okay,' she said. 'And he might still change his mind.'

But I didn't think he would.

To be continued...

These Things Happen

2008-11-24T06:26:00.004Z

I was a poorly sick Zinnia last week. Nothing life-threatening, but enough to make a flowerhead droop. You know when you're shivering and sweating, aching all over, can't face food, head thumping like a drum? When all you can do is whinge about how terrible you feel? Yes, dear readers: I had man flu.

So I wasn't working. But it was still an odd week. I've mentioned before how funerals seem to come in bunches of the same type: earlier this year it was all bikers, one year there was a run on suicides, and quite often of course it's several elderly people in a row who have died of more-or-less natural causes.

My first call came from Gill at Pemberton's.

'Hi Zin, how are you?'

'Bit poorly, I'm afraid, Gill. I'm not working this week.'

'Oh, I am sorry. Nothing serious, I hope?'

'No, just this flu-type bug that's going around. What am I missing?'

'We've got a baby in.'

That is one sentence I hate to hear. Funeral directors don't like it either. Baby or child funerals are the worst we ever have to do. In some ways this is an indication of how lucky we are as a society, because infant mortality is so rare that it's a huge shock and trauma when it happens. I notice the difference with my older clients. When there is a surviving spouse, I will ask of their elderly husband or wife: 'was he/she an only child, or were there brothers and sisters?'. The reply will often come, very matter-of-factly: 'oh no, he was one of nine, and six lived.' I am sure people grieved hard for their children then, as they do now, but it must have felt different (not better - just different) when it was part of the natural order of things; when there was no clear expectation that a baby should live, grow up, become an adult, as of right. Which is what we have now here in the UK.

So Gill's statement would have given me chills if I didn't have them already. She told me it was a cot death of a three-month-old baby from a family with three other children who live on one of the worst estates around here.

'There's no money,' she said.

'I wouldn't have charged anyway. I don't, for babies.'

'We don't either. At least, only to cover our costs.'

Gill and I discussed other local celebrants and decided we thought Janet would be best, so Gill went off to give her a call. I put my head back on the pillow and thought about the family. I've visited several houses on that estate over the years, so I could almost picture them. I wished I could help them, but it was no use wishing.

A couple of hours later, Paul rang from Newell's. I was dozing, so my voice croaked as I answered the phone.

'Hi, Zin, you don't sound too good,' he said. 'Got the lurgy?'

'I have. I'm sorry. Did you want me for something?'

'You won't be sorry when I tell you.'

'Go on.'

'Do you remember Briony Payton?'

The name rang a bell, but I couldn't place her at first, and then it clicked.

'It was her daughter I met with, wasn't it? Donna.'

I remembered her because all through our meeting she was breastfeeding her four-month-old son. She was trying not to upset him by crying, although at several points tears slid silently down her face, and she wiped them away before they could fall on him. Most of the time he fed quietly, but at one point he lost his hold on her nipple and snuffled and snorted so that both she and I collapsed into giggles. That made him flail his arms crossly, which made us laugh even more. Tears and laughter; the usual thing. I'd liked her very much.

'Paul, is she OK? Her son - '

'She's well, and her son is fine. But she's just lost twins. They only lived for a few hours after birth.'

My stomach felt cold as stone. 'That's terrible.'

'Nothing good about it, is there? Donna said the nurses at the hospital were wonderful. But they had no idea there were problems. Multiple disabilities, apparently.'

'Poor, poor Donna. I wish I could help her.'

'She asked for you, but it doesn't sound like you're much use to anyone right now. Don't worry, I'll ring round the others.'

'Maybe not Janet, though, Paul.'

'Oh, really? I was thinking of her.'

'She's got a baby one already today, from Gill at Pemberton's.'

'Oh. OK. I see what you mean. Two in one week, that might be a bit heavy. Perhaps I'll try Dave then.'

'I'm really sorry, Paul.'

'Don't be. You can't help it. And anyway, it's not exactly an experience to cherish.'

'Give my love to Donna, won't you? And do explain for me.'

'I thought I'd tell her you couldn't be bothered because you've got a hot date.' He chuckled at my gasp of horror. 'You are feeling low if I've got you with that one. Of course I'll explain. And she'll understand. These things happen. Look after yourself, Zin.'

'You too.'

I tucked myself back under the duvet, shivering from more than just my illness. I could definitely picture Donna. Again, I so wished I could help her. I wanted to be out there, doing what I'm good at, making life just a tiny bit easier for families going through a particularly difficult kind of bereavement, accompanying them for a few steps of that long, long journey. I had wanted to say 'yes' to Gill, and to Paul, as I usually do, not make their lives more complicated when they've already got difficult baby deaths to deal with. I felt bad for adding pressure to the lives of my celebrant colleagues who would need to take those funerals on. Then again, they might do a better job than me, as they're both parents themselves. Then again again, maybe it would have been better if I could have done those funerals, because I'm not a parent.

So I lay in bed riding the mental/emotional Waltzer and feeling thoroughly sick. I'm sure that was partly because I was feeling under the weather, but partly also because my work can be enormously demanding at times, even when I'm not actually doing the damn job.

Anniversary Suggestions

2008-11-17T07:10:00.002Z

The anniversary reaction is powerful and not fully understood. I have an experience of my own that is testament to this. A few years ago I was with my parents, visiting my mother's family in the city where I lived briefly as a child. My father and I went out in the car to pick up a relative. We drove down a wide boulevard-style road lined with a host of golden daffodils. A grassy central reservation held trees in springtime green, and I became filled with terror and an unbearable sadness. I couldn't think of anything that might be triggering such a response. I told my father how I was feeling. He was quiet for a moment, then he said

'We're on the road to the hospital. And it was this time of year.'

He didn't need to say more. When I was six years old, my mother had an emergency appendectomy, then developed a blood clot on the lung and very nearly died. My younger sister and I were taken to the hospital to say goodbye to her. I have no conscious memory of the event, yet evidently, somewhere inside me, there is a clear associative memory, which is still active although my mother is alive and well.

This type of memory is known as the 'anniversary reaction'. On the first anniversary of a traumatic event or someone's death, lots of people remember. After that, fewer and fewer do, and we may even forget ourselves. So any of us may feel very down at a particular time of year without realising it's associated with a long-ago bereavement. And if we do realise, it can be difficult to deal with. Those horrible critical inner voices say things like 'your father died 17 years ago, you should be over it by now' or 'So-and-so only lost her husband last year and she was having a good time at the party last week, so what right have you to feel miserable about your friend who died in 2002?'

The trouble is, grief is unpredictable and it doesn't have a cut-off date. The worst part of the grieving - the bit where it dominates all waking thought and much sleeping thought too - that will end, and we reach a time where we can function normally without the person we have lost. But we'll never fully understand that loss, so in some ways we can never completely accept it. And there will be times where it hits us unexpectedly. This can be due to an anniversary or it can be triggered by other sensory stimuli such as a piece of music, the taste of a particular food or drink, sunlight on skin - anything, in fact.

So when that happens, what can we do? The first and most useful thing is to recognise a grief response. This feels different to different people. For me it's a void behind my solar plexus that makes me crave carb-heavy food. For others it may be nausea, frequent sighing or yawning, dry mouth, inability to concentrate, craving solitude, muscular weakness, loss of appetite, tightness in the chest, and so on. There are many possible physical symptoms, too many to catalogue; the important thing is to work out what grief feels like to you.

Then, when you realise that you're grieving, the second step is to accept it. As last week's post shows, I haven't quite got the hang of this yet! And please note I'm focusing on unexpected reactions here. In the early stages of grief, it's obvious that anniversaries will be difficult, and it's often possible to plan a coping strategy. I think part of what feels difficult for me about unexpected grief is that there's no telling how long it will last. My fear is that I'll be sucked back into a morass of misery that will prevail for weeks or months. But after several years that's very unlikely to happen. In fact, last time around, it took just one day. So I'm working on being ready, next time, to say to myself 'I'm grieving again; that's OK; it'll take as long as it takes.'

The third step is to work out what you want and need to do while you're grieving. This may be difficult to manage if you have to look after children, or go to work, or care for an elderly relative - although for some people, such imperatives may make life easier. Even if you don't have other commitments, it can be hard to decide what is best for you. One of my own classic grief responses is that I crave company when I'm alone and solitude when I'm with others. I'm not sure I'll ever find the answer to that. And up to now I haven't been sure what other options are available to me.

So I've done some research, and I'd like to share these for things you can do when an anniversary or other grief reaction hits out of the blue. But, please, only do what feels right for you. Nobody else can dictate your grieving process.

Cancel all appointments and stay at home.
Contact a friend and ask for their company.
Contact friends and organise a night out.
Write a letter to the person who has died.
Write a letter to you, from the person who has died.
Do something creative: write a poem, draw a picture, make a collage.
Look through photos of the person who has died.
Cry.
Light a candle.
Find a bereavement chatroom on the Internet and share your feelings with others.
Ring the Samaritans.
Do something you wouldn't usually do that links you to the person who has died, e.g. watch their favourite TV programme or film, eat their favourite food, drink their favourite drink.
Contact someone else who loved the person who has died, and talk to them about the person and about how you feel.
Stick to a familiar routine.
Do something unusual.
Stay in bed.
Have a touch-based treatment such as massage, reflexology or manicure.
Watch an escapist film, or read an escapist book. (Or one that will make you cry, if that would be helpful.)
Allow yourself to lose hours in a computer game.
Write down all the ways in which the person who has died influenced your life for the better.
Visit a significant place: the person's grave; where their ashes were scattered; where they died; somewhere that was special for them. Take flowers if you like.
Make a donation in their name to their favourite charity, or yours, or one that seems appropriate (e.g. if they had a much-loved cat, to the Cat's Protection League).
Let yourself feel sad and bereft.
Meditate or pray.
Go for a walk and observe the natural world.

I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive list of possible options, so if you've found other things that work for you, please do share them in the comments box.

Simon and Me

2008-11-10T07:45:00.002Z

Back in 2002 Simon, a very dear friend and ex-partner of mine, was set upon and killed in the street near his home in London. It was apparently a random, motiveless attack, and nobody has ever been charged with his murder. If I find myself in that part of London, I still look at men's faces and think, 'Was it you? Were you involved? Did you do it?'

Simon had been going through a difficult patch, but his life had begun to improve. He'd managed to stay with his very nice girlfriend; he'd got back in touch with a couple of friends he'd previously fallen out with; and, on the day he was killed, he had received a promotion and a pay rise at work. It comforted Simon's friends and family to know that he died fast and died happy. But dealing with the aftermath of his sudden, violent death was hard for all of us. It was many weeks before the police would release his body for cremation, which made it worse.

The friends I had in common with Simon speak of him sometimes. He wasn't always an easy man to be around. He was an avant-garde poet, and much of his writing was incomprehensible. He liked to challenge people's perceptions, and his own. He loved to listen to music everywhere he went - he would have adored the iPod - but he preferred obscure, difficult music to nice songs with tunes. He was also a very caring man. He did voluntary work with homeless teenagers, and his paid work was with teenagers, too, in the careers service. It was almost a vocation for him to help youngsters who were struggling to find their way in the world, and to treat them with respect. Simon would also put himself out to help a friend. I remember his friend Rick sadly became a drug addict. Most of Rick's friends gave up on him, but not Simon - even after Rick began to steal things from our home. Simon talked it over with me, and decided to refuse Rick entry to our house, but offer to meet him anywhere else - pub, cafe, library, Rick's own flat. And when Rick phoned, in despair, Simon would talk to him for hours. I remember a night when Rick was suicidal, and was challenging Simon to give him one good reason why he shouldn't end his life.

'Because I love you,' Simon said.

Which, it seems to me, is quite a big deal for a man to say to his male friend. But if ever a man was going to say that, it would have been Simon.

Simon was excited by technological advances and always wanted the latest gadget. If he was alive now, I have no doubt that he'd own a huge plasma screen TV and DVD player with HD and Blu Ray, and a state-of-the-art laptop, and of course an iPod, and a Wii, and all those things. Whenever something new comes out I feel sad that he missed it.

But the really tough times are the anniversaries. Not the public ones like Christmas; people remember him then, and speak of him. It's the anniversaries of his death, and his funeral, that I find hard.

Having said that, it does get easier each year. Last year, the fifth year, went well, and I thought I'd cracked it. This year, the run-up to Simon's deathday passed almost without notice. I was preoccupied with other things, and although I remembered the anniversary was coming up, and checked in with myself a couple of times - like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurts - I felt fine. I congratulated myself.

Then on the day itself - wallop. I was tearful, felt empty, wanted to curl up under the duvet with a very large pizza, didn't want company, didn't want to be alone, missed Simon terribly. I didn't know what to do, so I settled on beating myself up for still being upset six years after his death (I know, I know). I had visitors who I chose not to discuss it with. They had known and liked Simon, but they were having problems of their own, and if they weren't remembering his deathday, I didn't want to remind them and so add extra stress to their already stressful lives. But I did want them to remember, or someone to, and email me or text or something, anything, to let me know I wasn't remembering all by myself. I thought about emailing others, and tried, but I couldn't find the words I needed to express what I wanted to say. Probably because I wasn't sure what I did want to say. So in the end I just muddled through the day, claimed to have a headache when anyone asked if I was OK, and eventually, after everyone else had gone to bed, had a big cry and then went to bed myself.

I realise this wasn't a great strategy, but it was all I could come up with at the time. I've had a look around on the web, and there are some useful articles about dealing with bereavement anniversaries. I'll post some advice next week, which may be helpful for others, but mostly it's for me, for next year.

Jaw Jaw

2008-11-03T08:53:00.002Z

Red poppies are widely sold in Commonwealth countries at this time of year (or in April in the Antipodes) for people to wear in remembrance of their war dead. This custom began after World War 1, as poppies grew in the killing fields of France. That was 'the war to end all wars'. But it didn't, did it?

There can be a lot of pressure to wear a red poppy: from churches, schools, the British Legion, other institutions, and individuals. BBC broadcaster Jon Snow described this as 'poppy fascism'. The red poppy is a symbol from a time when forces personnel who didn't come back from war were 'our glorious dead', to be remembered for their heroic role in saving the world from violence and conflict. But death is not glorious, and violence and conflict prevail.

People began to realise this soon after the end of the first World War. In 1926 the British Legion was asked to imprint 'No More War' in the centre of the red poppy. They didn't, so in 1933 the Co-operative Women's Guild produced white poppies to be worn as an alternative by those who believe there are better ways of resolving conflicts than killing people. This was regarded as an insult to those who died in the first World War - conveniently ignoring the fact that many members of the Co-operative Women's Guild lost husbands, sons, brothers and lovers - and some women lost their jobs for wearing a white poppy.

In 1936, with another huge war brewing in Europe, the white poppy was taken up by the Peace Pledge Union as a symbol of people's determination that war should not happen again. In 1937, an ex-serviceman broke the Remembrance Day Silence at the Cenotaph, crying out against the hypocrisy of praying for peace while preparing for war. In 1938 'alternative remembrance' events began, including the laying of a wreath of white poppies at the Cenotaph.

Did any of this make any difference? On the face of it, not a lot. My taxes are still paying for British service personnel to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. War still rages in dozens of countries around the world. And although some religious groups now support the white poppy, it does seem to have caused much conflict on an individual level, with recent problems for its supporters in churches and Scout groups and other arenas.

Given that one of my grandfathers fought in the trenches of the first World War and survived (minus a foot), while the other landed at Dieppe in the second World War and also survived (minus most of his compassion after three years in a German POW camp), you'd think I'd be an avid red poppy supporter. But I'm not, because both of my grandfathers came home convinced of the utter futility of war, and they passed that on to me. I'm not anti-red poppy either; I'm pro-choice. Some people wear both. That's great. But for me, for ever, it's the white poppy.

All Aboard

2008-10-29T10:27:00.002Z

trying again - I hope the formatting behaves this time...

The atheist bus campaign had me glued to the interweb last week. In case anyone has missed this, here's a quick recap. Comedienne Ariane Sherine started it back in June. She wrote a piece for the Guardian's Comment is Free blog expressing her annoyance at religious advertisements on London buses which, while innocuous in themselves, had a URL linking to a website which said that all unbelievers would be condemned to an eternity of torment in hell. She thought this could be a dangerous message for those of fragile mental health. In a light-hearted end to her post, she suggested that atheists should contribute funds to pay for adverts to counteract this, saying - in a nod to the famous litigation-ducking Carlsberg advert - 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life.'

That post received 286 comments, many of them in support of Ariane's suggestion. Things moved slowly from there, but by the beginning of last week there was a firm proposal to fund-raise £11,000 to pay for 4 weeks of advertising on 30 London buses. Richard Dawkins promised to stump up £5,500 if the UK's atheists could raise the other half, and the British Humanist Association (BHA) offered to administer the funds. A fundraising webpage was set up on the JustGiving site and launched, with a new CiF blog post from Ariane, on Tuesday of last week.

In less than 24 hours, the £5,500 had been raised and donations were pouring in. Ariane's post received over 2,000 comments (is that a record for CiF does anyone know?). By lunchtime on Thursday the campaign had raised over £80,000 (not including the Gift Aid) and Ariane posted an update asking for suggestions on what to do with the money. Also, detractors were appearing in the media, such as Stephen Green from the pressure group Christian Voice who, according to the BBC, said atheists were 'a danger to the public at large', and Mary Kenny in the Guardian CiF who said atheists were 'gloomy blighters with a depressing and nihilistic message' with 'their dreary humanist funerals' (grrrr! and just how much fun was the last Christian funeral you went to?).

It also prompted an Internet phenomenon. The minimum donation at JustGiving is £2 and you can leave your name and a 150-character message. The donations page became a chat room where people were paying £2, £5 or £10 to leave a message. By about 4.30 pm on Friday, the total was £98,000; Steve in Oz was refusing to go to bed until the £100,000 mark had been reached; I was refreshing the page every five minutes to see what would happen next. Then a single donor banged in the necessary £2k with a message saying 'bye bye savings, sleep well Steve'. And, to my joy, that donor's name was Simon Bishop.

But it didn't stop there: at the time of writing, 7 am on Monday 27th Oct, the total stands at £109,149.83 (and that's without the Gift Aid). I find the messages on the JustGiving page very touching, particularly those from people in places like Ireland and middle America saying 'please bring your campaign here, we really need you'.

Some religious people are supporting this campaign. The BBC reports that Methodists have thanked Richard Dawkins for encouraging a 'continued interest in God' (they're cool, the Methodists - they do good funerals, too, although no doubt Mary Kenny would disagree). Equally, comments on the JustGiving page and the CiF posts show that some atheists are not happy, particularly because of the inclusion in the message of the word 'probably'.

I am particularly happy because of the inclusion of the word 'probably'. I don't agree with Richard Dawkins on everything, but I do agree that 'there is no God' is every bit as much of a belief statement as 'there is a God'. The existence of God cannot be proven; nor can his or her or its non-existence. There are fundamentalist atheists; I am not one of them. I don't want to trash other people's beliefs which may bring great happiness and stability to their lives. I am also happy to see the BHA supporting this stance. A few years ago I used to take part in debates with religious people on local radio about all sorts of vaguely topical issues: should we wear red poppies or white in November; has Christmas become too commercial; is it right for us to take such a prurient interest in the sex life of politicians. In one of these debates I was asked about my own beliefs, and I said I thought belief was inconsistent; that I had seen this in the families I work with, and reflected on it, and concluded that my own position was the same. Although it feels easier for me to think at any one moment that my own beliefs are utterly consistent over time, in fact they seem to waver along a line between two points on the atheist/agnostic end of the spectrum. The powers-that-be at the BHA at the time were not happy with me, and I have never done another radio debate since (although as a conscientious mostly-atheist I should acknowledge that this could be a complete coincidence).

For many years, for many reasons, I felt rather uncomfortable within the BHA. I have to be a member to do funerals under their auspices, and that is why I joined, but after the first few years there was much about the organisation that troubled me. It felt dangerous to speak up, to try to change things, so I paid my subscription, kept my head down and got on with my work. Alternative organisations and groups have arisen in the last two or three years, some of which are listed on my sidebar. I thought seriously about jumping ship at one point, but I like to give the families I work with the security of a complaints procedure and a management structure that they can resort to should the need arise, and at that time the other organisations were embryonic. So I stayed put. And now I'm very glad I did - again, for many reasons, but feeling that my own stance is finally being supported by the organisation is the icing on the cake.

Stop Press

2008-10-28T12:40:00.001Z

This blog is misbehaving in Internet Explorer. I have no idea why. But it's fine in Firefox - which is worth using anyway because it's more secure from nasty malware virus-type things, and it's so easy to switch that even I could do it.

Shallow As A Puddle

2008-10-23T12:31:00.004Z

Yes, I know I only post on Mondays. But, you see, I've done something so exciting that I can't wait any longer to tell you about it.

I've commented on various people's blogs as usual over the last couple of days, dutifully reading their posts and saying something relevant rather than going LOOK LOOK AREN'T I CLEVER which is what I really wanted to do. It's just possible that some of you may have noticed, but I can't tell because nobody's said anything. Honestly, it's as bad as getting your hair done and nobody remarking on how wonderful you look.

Do you know what I've done? I've got a picture for my profile!!! No longer will I appear in people's comments boxes as an anonymous grey Blogger shadow. No, I'm a proper Zinnia now, thanks to Carol who kindly gave me permission to use her beautiful photograph of a lovely pink zinnia from this post. AND I managed to upload it to the right bit of Blogger, AND it works, AND it's in my sidebar too. It's only taken me four and a bit years. *sigh*

Now, from flowers to followers. I've managed to 'follow' some blogs from my sidebar, but so far I fail to see the point. I thought it would make it easier for me to see who has posted recently, but it doesn't seem to. So I'm not all that clever, am I? All suggestions gratefully received... oh and while you're at it, if anyone can tell me how to make my blog header go back to the centre, that would be really helpful too... *deep sigh*

Maps

2008-10-20T09:11:00.002Z

A dear friend came to visit last week. She drove to my house and, like most people who try to get here using a satellite navigation system, took much longer to arrive than either of us expected. She's been here before, driven by her partner, who took the longer-but-quicker route via the motorway. I thought she'd remember, but no (perhaps not surprising; she has had a baby since then). The sat nav sent her via the shorter-but-very-much-slower route through lots of pretty countryside.

I don't have a sat nav. There's only room for one bossy voice in MY car. And anyway, in contravention of international gender laws, I'm an excellent map-reader and navigator. Unlike Top Bloke (tee hee) who has been known to refer to me as his 'demon navigatrix'. (Which sounds like one of Rachel's characters!)

I love maps. I'd hate to be without them. Sometimes, e.g. when Top Bloke is driving, I'll have a read of the map for pure entertainment. My father taught me to map-read when I was eight or nine, and I soon became the family navigator; a skill worth acquiring as it meant I could sit in the front of the car. By my mid-teens, I had navigated us on driving holidays all over Europe.

That was just road maps. Being introduced to Ordnance Survey maps, in my geography class at secondary school, almost blew my mind. So much detail! I could almost see the countryside as my finger moved up wriggly blue streams, down contour-lined hillsides, across clearly bounded fields, along dotted green footpaths – one dot per footstep, as I fondly imagined at the time.

Captain Cook was brilliant at mapmaking, or 'cartography' as it is formally known. He made maps of huge chunks of the world's coastlines, from Newfoundland to New Zealand, in the second half of the 18^th century. These maps were so accurate and precise that some were still in use over 200 years later. I can draw maps, too. Not fabulous ones like his, obviously, but the kind that will enable visitors to get from my house to somewhere else and back.

But I think navigation with maps is going out of fashion. I feel a bit sad about this. And yet I can hear echoes of my grandfather who, as a talented mathematician, was horrified to discover that I was given an electronic calculator to use in maths lessons at school. He tried to teach me mental arithmetic, but I wasn't interested. Electronic calculation was progress; I thought maths was boring anyway, and I was up for anything that made life easier. I guess, if you substitute 'maps' for 'maths', this is how a lot of people feel about their sat navs. And me superciliously referring to them as 'prat navs' probably isn't going to change that.

So now I'm an anachronism. Great. But I shall stubbornly continue to use maps for as long as I can. And anyway, nobody ever broke into someone's car to steal their battered, dog-eared old road map. So there.

The Bad and The Good

2008-10-13T07:28:00.007Z

This is a public service post covering two things you and/or your friends and family need to know about. The first is a funeral service warning, the second a writing service recommendation.

The warning is about a conman called Richard Sage. I first heard about this apparently odious specimen of humanity when Charles blogged about him a couple of months ago. Then last week I had a warning from the British Humanist Association saying:

A reliable source has informed two of our celebrants in the London area of a fraudulent person, currently working as Richard Sage, operating a company currently known as Direct Funeral Services. This company acts as an agent, putting bereaved people looking for FDs via the web, in touch with FDs on the high street. It would appear that the company is run from a call centre in Croydon and might have premises in the Midlands.
This man and his company owe money to people in the funeral trade across London. One of our celebrants has had direct dealings with the company and has asked me to pass on strong words of caution to you all. According to press cuttings and to an item on a Radio 4 programme, this man has served several prison sentences for fraud and attracted numerous complaints about his business practices.

I strongly advise you to decline funerals if you are offered them via this company. We can of course do little to protect the families who are dealing with him, other than to explain our own reasons for declining.

This article suggests that England is not the only place where Richard Sage operates, so readers everywhere, be aware and beware. I know you can't believe everything you read on the Internet, but it does seem fairly clear that this man chooses to make dishonest money from newly bereaved people, and that seems to me to be entirely despicable.

To restore your faith in humanity, let me introduce Caroline Smailes and her new venture, BubbleCow. Caroline is a novelist with a passion for helping other writers. I know this from personal experience. At one point I was really struggling, and whinged about it on here, and out of the blue she emailed me and said 'please can I help?' and I said 'hell yeah' and she did help. A lot. And now she's reaching out to writers all over the world by starting an online editorial and mentoring service. She's done loads of editoring and mentoring for publishers in the past, and she's recruiting others who have similar experience to work with her. And here's the good bit for writers: it's cheaper than other editorial/mentoring services, and they guarantee a seven-day turnaround for any editing work. Other agencies take weeks, even months, or charge a hefty supplement if you want it done more quickly. Plus BubbleCow only accept online submissions, which make it cheaper and faster still - and, of course, this means the service is readily available to writers from outside the UK.

So hurrah for Caroline: a full-time novelist and parent of three, who also supports legions of other writers and still finds time to raise money for charity and start her own business. She's a great antidote to the Richard Sages of this world, not to mention being an inspiration.

Zinnia, Why Don't You Write About Funerals Any More?

2008-10-06T09:17:00.004Z

I have two answers to this question. One is that I do still write about funerals, but not as often as I used to. So why is that? Well, when I started this blog over four years ago, I'd already been doing funerals for a number of years, and I had a lot of stories stacked up in my head that needed an outlet. I've written most of them now. Most of the funerals I do are very similar: person dies of old age or age-related illness, family grieve, ceremony is personal, and that's about it. Also, I have to be very careful to preserve the anonymity of the families I work with, so I can only write about funerals where I'm confident that I can change enough details to protect the family while preserving the essence of the story for my readers. And some stories, wonderful though they are, will have to stay in my head because they are too specific to tell in public. For example, if a strawberry farmer committed suicide by eating strawberries until he died of a strawberry overdose, it would be so unusual that even if I turned him into a female gooseberry farmer, it wouldn't be enough.

But you know what? There are other people in blogland writing about funerals. Charles, for example, is currently producing some very good posts about funerals and related matters. And if you want to find new blogs, you could always use Caroline's Black Boxes widget that I have FINALLY managed to put on my sidebar (round of applause please). I think it's very appropriate for this blog because it looks so much like a coffin, American casket style, even down to the ruched silk lining. Mmmm, tactile. Procrastinators beware!

Paranormal #3

2008-09-29T06:16:00.004Z

So, to return to Crystal's question in the context of my experiences, what are my thoughts on the paranormal?

I think many people have paranormal experiences, and they're not just about spirits or ghosts or whatever you want to call them. Take my friend Annie. She was a dinner lady at my school when I was a teenager, and I liked her a lot. She'd had a load of health problems and had various internal organs removed, she was overweight, and she had an endless reserve of care for the stroppy hormonal youngsters who came through her canteen, as well as a ready laugh. She always had a ladle in her hand, and would brandish it at cheeky kids, mock-threatening them: 'and it'll have custard in it next time, my laddie.' But we all knew a hug was the most likely outcome of any encounter with Annie.

Then she got sick again, and had to stop work. I knew where she lived and went to see her. I met her son Robert, a gentle bearded hippie who I thought was a bit boring for wearing sandals and still living with his mum when he was a grown-up. The only thing that seemed to interest Robert was his Buddhist shrine in the corner of the small living room. He showed it to me, and I thought it was quite pretty but couldn't really see the point. Annie told me Robert used to chant for hours - nam myoho renge kyo - over and over again. I concluded that he was definitely boring, but of course I didn't say so to Annie. She said he wanted her to chant, too, but she couldn't see the point.

Her health got worse and she was taken into hospital. A few weeks later I was walking past her house and saw her through the window, sitting in her armchair. My heart lifted and I ran down the path to knock on the door. She took ages to answer, and when she did she was gaunt and yellow. 'They've given me four weeks,' she said. 'They wanted me to stay in hospital, but I said if I've only got four weeks to live I'm not spending it in here thank you very much. Robert fetched me in a taxi. Cost the earth. Do you want a cup of tea?'

I went in and we chatted. She told me that Robert had persuaded her to try chanting, and she thought she'd give it a go because she had nothing to lose. She couldn't believe it would make any difference in the end, but she was surprised to find that it was soothing and seemed to reduce her pain. 'So I'll carry on. And, anyway, it makes him happy.'

That was Annie. Always looking for ways to make others happy. We had a lovely chat, a goodbye hug, I walked away and burst into tears, sure I would never see her again.

But a few months later I bumped into her in town. Her cheeks were pink again and she'd regained some weight, although she was walking slowly, with a stick. I gasped in disbelief and she grinned. 'The doctors didn't believe it, either. They took new X-rays last month and that cancer's all gone. They thought they'd made a mix-up with the old X-rays, but I've got so many other bits missing they had to accept that both were mine and I was cured.'

'But how? What happened?'

We went for a coffee and she explained that the chanting had cured her. She had found it so soothing that she had done more and more of it, and slowly, day by day, she'd begun to feel better; been able to do a little more; eat a little more; slowly climb back towards health. When the doctors' four-week deadline passed, she felt triumphant, and chanted even more, often chanting for eight hours a day. 'I'm not doing so much now, just four hours most days,' she told me. 'I think I'll stick to that for the rest of my life, however long or short that is.'

'Will you be coming back to work?' I asked, hopefully.

'No, chick. It's too much time on my feet.'

'So what will you do?'

Annie looked down at the tablecloth and fiddled with a teaspoon. 'I've written little children's stories for years. I used to write them for Robert. I sent some off to a publisher when I first got sick, and they've taken four for a series of picture books.'

'Annie, that's great!'

She looked up and grinned again. 'A new lease of life.'

I don't know how long Annie lived, because we moved away a few years later and lost contact soon afterwards. But she was still alive and healthy when we moved, and doing very well with her stories - many had been published and she was also broadcasting them in a children's slot on local radio.

Annie's experience was definitely paranormal, i.e. beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation. (Although maybe science would be able to explain it now; I don't know, I'm not a scientist.) And what I think is that all sorts of people have all sorts of experiences that science can't explain. These range from a woman I've met a couple of times who is convinced she is regularly abducted by aliens, to a friend who has strange sensations in his legs that have no apparent medical cause.

That people have many and varied experiences which cannot be explained seems to me self-evident, obvious, a fact. Maybe I'm odd here, but I don't feel the need to look for an overarching explanation. I don't need a religious or scientific framework to answer everything for me. Not that such a framework could answer everything, but with both religion and science there seems to be a kind of underlying assumption that we could understand everything if we had enough divinity, resources, power or time. I'm happy just to say that I, and people I know, have experiences we can't explain. Such experiences do interest me - but I don't feel the need to link them to belief, and then convert that through an alchemical cerebral/emotional process into knowledge. In fact I think that way danger lies. It's not logical, Captain. I know there is X because I believe in Y based on my experience of Z? Hmmm.

So why am I even interested? Because paranormal experiences make damn good stories, that's why!

Paranormal #2

2008-09-22T15:24:00.004Z

So here's my second experience, and it's very different from the first. Years ago my sister and I moved into a fairly modern house with her young son who I will call Sean, he was about two years old at the time. We had found the house through friends of friends, who told us that the previous resident was an elderly woman called Dilys. She had brought up her daughter there, nursed her husband through his last illness, and eventually died there herself.

The house was perfect for us: three bedrooms, nice kitchen, bathroom and living room, small paved garden area, and very affordable (mainly because Dilys's daughter, who inherited it, wanted to rent it to someone she knew for a year or two while she decided what to do with it). It couldn't have been better. We moved in full of happiness and optimism.

Then the trouble started. Lights went on and off by themselves. Internal doors opened and closed when there was no wind to help them. My sister and I were puzzled by this, until Sean told us, very matter-of-factly, that it was 'the lady'. He didn't seem bothered by her, or particularly interested. He also found it hard to believe that we couldn't see her. She seemed, to him, like part of the furniture.

We took our cue from Sean and it became part of the family chatter. We'd all be in the kitchen, and the hallway light would go off.

'Is that the lady, Sean?' one of us would ask.

'Yep,' he'd say.

We even began to greet her. We'd be sitting in the living room and the door would open. 'Hello, Dilys,' my sister would say. 'Come on in. Take a seat.'

(It's a funny thing. I know this happened, because it happened to me. But, even as I'm typing, I still don't believe in it!)

Anyway, everything settled down into a peaceful routine, until one weekend. My sister and I were up late on the Friday night, gossiping over a glass of wine. Sean was fast asleep upstairs - until he squealed like a pig being slaughtered. She shot upstairs and found that he'd had a nightmare. He was terrified and refused to let her go, so she brought him back down with her, figuring that a change of scene might help. And it did. He soon brightened up and started chatting, delighted to be up in the middle of the night with his mum and his auntie.

Sean had a favourite storybook at the time in which the characters had a midnight feast. He decided it would be a good idea if we had one ourselves. So we spread a teatowel on the living room carpet, made a little picnic of fruit, biscuits and drinks, and settled down for a 'feast'.

And the doors started banging open and closed, and the lights going on and off, like some kind of post-modernist actorless theatre performance. I don't know whether it was the influence of Sean's recent nightmare, or whether there really was a change of mood or something, but this time 'the lady' was scaring him. 'It's the lady, it's the lady,' he kept saying, and clinging to his mum. And I don't know whether it was the wine I'd drunk, or what, but I shouted at Dilys to stop, told her it wasn't reasonable for her to frighten Sean and that she should move on now.

You know what? She did. It all stopped, right there, right then. We lived in that house for a couple of years, and we never had another light go on or off, or another door open or close, without a clear and evident reason.

Paranormal #1

2008-09-15T12:56:00.002Z

Last week Crystal posed a question on her blog:

What are your thoughts on the paranormal? Does it scare you, fascinate you, fill you with dread, enlighten you? Does it make you ask if there really is more to this life, or does it simply make you shake your head in disbelief?

She was asking for people's opinions, but it got me thinking about my own paranormal experiences. Crystal has lots of these and blogs about them regularly. I've had two. Here's the first one.

When I was in my late teens, I had a boyfriend who I will call John. We went to stay with some slightly older friends who had just moved into a huge old tumbledown house in the country, with the aim of renovating it for use as a conference centre. They had made up a bed for us in a first-floor room which was otherwise unfurnished. There was a small rug on the floor, but no carpet, and no central heating – which didn't matter as it was a warm late summer weekend. They apologised for the rough-and-ready nature of our accommodation, but we weren't worried.

The evening passed pleasantly with lots of chat, food and I daresay a drink or three. We went to bed late and fell into a deep sleep. Then, in the middle of the night, I woke up. John woke at the same time. The same sound had disturbed us both. Something was walking round the bed, with a heavy clanking tread. We couldn't see anything – the room was pitch dark – but there was, and I know this sounds corny but honestly, there was, an icy chill in the air. John and I dived under the bedclothes and clutched each other, shivering and exchanging staccato whispers: What is it? I don't know. What shall we do? I don't know. We were both terrified, but the sounds soon died down, and eventually we went back to sleep.

In the morning we both felt a bit silly. Was it a dream, we wondered? Should we say anything?

Over breakfast, in the course of conversation, John made an oblique quip about old houses being haunted.

'Why do you say that?' our host asked.

'We had an odd experience last night…'

John turned to me for help, evidently unsure what to say. I explained what had happened. Our hosts looked at each other, then at us.

'You too, then,' our host said.

'Eh?' John said.

They told us that two other couples had stayed in that room before us. Both had reported the same experience.

I'll tell you about my second and, so far, only other paranormal experience next week. And the week after that, I'll try to work out what I think about them.

When Do You Compliment?

2008-09-08T08:09:00.004Z

Let's get one thing straight before we start. To compliment is to say something nice about someone. To complement is to add one thing to another to improve it in some way. So 'those red shoes compliment that black dress' is nonsense, because shoes can't talk. 'Those red shoes complement that black dress' works, because it means the shoes make the dress look better. Got that?

And the other day I saw a wagon with, emblazoned on its door, 'Tiles Brought And Sold.' Dear, dear, dear…

Anyway, if I'm not careful this will turn into a lengthy rant about improper uses of English. Let's get back to compliments. I wrote about complaining last week, but I think it's as important to compliment work well done as to complain about poor service. And I do.

I remember, many years ago, I was working in London with troubled teenagers. One girl, the first time I met her, made a disclosure of sexual abuse. In these cases we had to involve the police, so I called our local station and they sent round a policeman. He and I sat with her while she told her story again, in the course of which she also spoke about 'the voices' she heard and how they had told her she must die on a certain date – just two weeks away. It became increasingly evident that she was seriously disturbed, yet the policeman dealt with her with enormous sensitivity and compassion, leaving her dignity entirely intact. (This was in the late 1980s, when the Metropolitan Police weren't exactly renowned for their sensitivity.) After he had left I rang the station again and asked to speak to the senior officer on duty. I refused to tell anyone the reason for my call – this was actually for reasons of confidentiality, but I confess to taking naughty pleasure in the alarm it evidently caused; I'm sure they were expecting a complaint. When I was put through to the senior officer, I told him what had happened, and said how impressed I was with the policeman's work. He was astonished, then grateful, and finally asked if I'd be willing to put my thoughts in a letter, so it could go on the policeman's record and be taken into account when he was considered for promotion. I was very happy to do so.

A few years ago I was rushed into hospital with acute abdominal pains. After two days the pain had subsided and I was allowed to go home, albeit with strict instructions to come straight back if the pain returned. (It didn't – and nobody ever found out what caused it.) At the follow-up appointment with my doctor, I gave her a full account of my experience, ending by saying that I felt I'd been very well looked after and I was very grateful for the NHS. She exhaled sharply and said she'd been waiting for the 'but', because she was sure I was going to complain. Maybe I come across as a complaining type of person – but I think it's more that we live in something of a 'complaint culture' and it's rare for people to reward good service with a compliment.

I'm very glad to say it's not at all rare in the celebrant business. Nearly every funeral I do results in a card, letter, email or text message of thanks. Quite often families send gifts or flowers after the ceremony, or give me a cash tip in an envelope on the day (I think these are the ones who know how much we get paid – £100-£155 in the UK, depending on the region you work in. We definitely don't do it for the money; it comes in handy, for sure, but you can't make a living from being a celebrant. Did you know the average cost of flowers for a funeral is £229? I know florists need to earn a living, too – but I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about how that makes us feel).

Sorry, I seem to be having a tangential day. Where were we? Oh yes, compliments. I keep all the cards, letters and emails in my Nice Letters File (everyone should have one) so I'm going to share a few quotes. Names have, of course, been changed.

Jim, Sally and I would like to offer you our very grateful thanks for conducting Bob's funeral. We felt it was very much the sort of ceremony he wanted and your words encapsulated his life. They helped enormously with our grieving process and the three of us are now able to move forward.

We were all so grateful for the way you conducted last Friday's ceremony that I wanted to write and thank you again. Your calm professionalism helped us to cope with our feelings of sadness, so that we too were more able to play our parts. It was certainly a comfort to know that you would step in and cover for us if need be.

These occasions are always very distressing to those involved and you helped greatly in relieving that distress and making us think about the love we had shared with Sam during his life.

One of my friends, a committed Christian, was especially complimentary. He said he felt included and well able to share with us as we said our goodbyes to Mother.

I could go on, but you'd get bored and I'd start blushing. But aren't those lovely? I often get my Nice Letters File out and read a few of them if I'm feeling a bit down. They never fail to cheer me up. And it's because I know how good it feels to receive a compliment for work well done, that I try to give a compliment whenever I think it's deserved.

So what do you think about this? Do you think the way I approach compliments makes sense, or do you think I'm missing something? Do you give compliments, or do you keep quiet? Do you receive compliments on your work – and, if so, how does it feel?

When Do You Complain?

2008-09-01T08:50:00.003Z

I'm coming out of the closet: I'm a staunch complainer. I'm not a member of the Green Ink Brigade, though – I aim to base my complaints on reason and fact.

I made such a complaint last week. In brief: four weeks after receiving the critique of my novel, I decided it wasn't helpful. I was unhappy about the service I'd received from a reputable literary agency. I wrote them a carefully worded letter explaining why the critique hadn't worked for me. I didn't think it would get me anywhere – but it did! The director of the agency agreed, and is arranging for me to have another critique, free of charge.

A lot of people have said, both on the Novel Racers and by email, that they couldn't have made such a complaint. And that got me thinking about complaints in general. You see, I believe that if you receive poor service, it's important to complain. If you don't complain when something goes wrong, how will anyone know? If I hadn't written that letter, the agency would have assumed I was happy with the critique I'd received – and that the reader, whose first critique it was, could be given further manuscripts. As the agency acknowledged that her report 'had not worked', I can't see them giving her more manuscripts without, at the very least, clarifying their expectations and requirements. She did make some good points, so she evidently has potential as a critique writer. If she can learn whatever she needs to learn from this experience, and produce useful critiques in future, then I will have helped her too. I will also have helped other aspiring writers – and this is one of my main reasons for complaining: it can help to prevent other people having a similarly bad experience.

Another reason is that a complaint often yields redress. A few years ago I was groped in an off-licence by another customer. It was fairly unpleasant, and the staff were no help at all. I wrote down the details, sent them to the head office, and received a lovely bouquet of flowers and a full apology. Last year I spent over an hour on the phone to my insurance company, trying to get an answer to a simple query; ended up speaking to several different people, being cut off twice, and generally having a very frustrating time. After about half an hour, while I held the phone with one hand, I typed an account of my experience into their online feedback form with the other hand – which was useful as it stopped me imploding from rage, and also resulted in a very nice bottle of wine. Also, in both cases, the companies concerned said they would review their staff training procedures to try to prevent a re-occurrence.

Other complaints have yielded nothing but a response I could summarise as 'tough, live with it'. And I don't always complain, even when I'm not happy. Top Bloke and I were badly short-changed by a Corgi-registered plumber a while back, and I was all for writing to Corgi, but Top Bloke counselled caution. 'This is a small town,' he said, 'there aren't many plumbers here, they probably all talk to each other, and we might find we couldn't get a plumber to work for us any more.' I saw the sense in that. Then recently I was expecting a parcel by guaranteed next-day delivery, an expensive service that in theory guarantees delivery by 1 pm. The parcel didn't arrive; I telephoned the sender, who began to make enquiries; then at 1.35 a harassed postman appeared at my door, full of apologies and explanations about being short-staffed. Our local post office closed recently and the main one in town is under enormous pressure as a result. So I didn't complain, because I know they've got problems; I know they know what they are; and I know there is very little they can do about them.

I've been on the other side of the fence: managing complaints procedures, mostly in the non-profit sector. I know that organisations and individuals can learn a lot from complaints. It's not an easy way to learn lessons – it can be stressful and time-consuming – but ultimately it's more beneficial than detrimental. Some years ago the Charity Commission, which regulates charities here in the UK, produced a report called Cause For Complaint? They say that a complaints procedure can bring a range of benefits, including, crucially, strengthening charities' capacity to deliver good-quality services and building the trust of their users, stakeholders and the wider public.

I'd also be happy to be complained about, should the need arise. The British Humanist Association, the charity which trained and accredited me to work as a celebrant, has a robust complaints procedure. I'm glad to say that nobody has ever complained about me – but I'm also glad to know that they can, if something goes wrong. I make a point of telling families this option is available.

So what do you think about this? Do you think the way I complain makes sense, or do you think I'm missing something? Do you complain, or do you keep quiet? Have you ever been complained about?

(I pay compliments, too, when credit is due. I'll write about this next week.)

Triple Decker

2008-08-25T08:36:00.004Z

There have been three notable things (thanks, Cathy) in the blogosphere this week.

The first was sent to me by Charles (thanks, Charles) and concerns the granting of an unusual last request. A young Puerto Rican man had said many times that when he died (well actually he's reported as saying 'if', but I expect he meant 'when') he didn't want to be viewed lying down at his wake; he wanted to 'be seen standing'. So when he was killed at the age of 24, his family relayed this request to the funeral directors, who seem to have done a good job.

I found the second one in the Guardian. Marc from the Netherlands tells the tale of his mother's euthanasia. It's a story of an ordinary family dealing with a very difficult situation, of regret, love and missed opportunities. Unflinchingly honest and emotionally graphic, I found it incredibly moving.

The third came via Lisa (thanks, Lisa), and it's a blog. The blogger is Adrian Sudbury, a young man of 27 who died of leukaemia last week. His story is inspirational. He was diagnosed in November 2006. Doctors soon discovered that, uniquely, he had two strains of the disease. He had a bone marrow transplant in 2007, but earlier this year his body rejected the transplant. Yet he spent his last year of life campaigning for classes on blood donation, organ and marrow transplants to be made compulsory in UK schools. The transplant he received gave him that extra year, and he did more with it than many of us do with an entire lifetime. If you are an organ donor, and/or you give blood, why not join the bone marrow register too?

I've just read a post over on the Novel Racers, asking how writers keep going when life gets stressful. How much more stressful can life be than knowing you are terminally ill? Yet it did get worse for Adrian when his fiancee, who he had been with for seven years, left him in April 2008. Nevertheless, he promptly wrote an impressive post about the experience. I only discovered Adrian's blog a few weeks ago, and never commented - but I have read most of his archives. He was a serious writer and I think he would be glad to know that, as well as helping so many people through his health campaign, he has also helped at least one writer simply through his own writing. Because now, any time I start feeling life is too difficult for me to be able to write, I will go back to that post, re-read it, and change my mind.

Pick And Mix

2008-08-18T05:27:00.004Z

There is a term that is often used disparagingly of people trying to find their spiritual way: they are held to be taking a ‘pick and mix’ approach to religion. But isn’t this what we all do? To take just one example, Cherie Blair is a devout Roman Catholic – yet she admits to using contraception, which contravenes the teaching of the Catholic church. Isn’t this pick-and-mix? Aren't Muslims who drink (or, in the view of some Muslims, who don't drink), pick-and-mix? What about the observant Jewish boy I knew as a teenager who had a secret weakness for pork pies and ham sandwiches?

I think I’m a pick-and-mix atheist, because sometimes I slip into agnosticism. As long-time readers will know, I am a member of the British Humanist Association, which trained and accredited me to do funerals. The BHA has a creed and I accept it, on the whole. But like all creeds – like everything made of words – there is scope for debate. The humanist creed speaks of human experience as part of the basis for understanding and morality. Some people have religious experiences that contribute to the basis for their understanding and morality. Religious experiences are human experiences. Any of us can have them. I remember sitting in a room full of humanists who were contemplating, with considerable alarm, the possibility of a death-bed conversion to religion. It didn't worry me. If it happens, I'll deal with it.

I am glad that some people are making a virtue of their pick-and-mix approach. One such is Pam Vetter, an American celebrant who kindly contacted me a few weeks ago because she wanted to write an article about my blog and my work. (Welcome, American Chronicle readers!) Pam is clearly a perceptive and discerning woman with very good taste in bloggers (ahem). She is also as passionate about producing good quality, memorable, family-owned funerals as I am. But there is one difference between us: she offers hymns and prayers.

I’m beginning to wish I could do this. I know I’m more flexible than some BHA celebrants – we have our fundamentalists who won’t allow even a CD of a hymn tune to be played or a single candle to be lit. I have no problem with either. A quick tale: Fred died at the end of a long and happy life. He was a staunch and lifelong atheist, so I was astonished when his family told me they wanted The Old Rugged Cross to be played during his funeral service. They quickly explained that he had loved the tune, and often whistled it around the house when he was doing odd jobs. We tracked down an instrumental version, beautifully played by a brass band, and everyone was happy. Candles seem to me a lovely symbol of the brightness and brevity of life, and anyway I’m sure candles – or their equivalent – were invented before religion. Another quick tale: at the beginning of Sandra's funeral, her eight grandchildren, aged three to seventeen, each lit a 'memory candle' for Grandma while I drew an analogy about her memory and influence continuing to light their lives in the years ahead. This gave them a role in the ceremony; the seventeen-year-old helped the three-year-old; and the candles burned throughout the service as a constant reminder that a wonderful Grandma would live on through her terrific legacy of eight lovely grandchildren.

So I'm flexible, up to a point. But I would feel hypocritical saying a prayer, and if I tried to lead a congregation in singing a hymn, they would all run screaming from the chapel. Yet this does worry me at times. It’s clearly not right for the clergy to be asked to take a funeral with no religious content. But if I’m not really a conviction atheist, and the most important aspect of my work is to give families as much choice as possible about every aspect of the funeral service I create with them, can I claim an equivalent right? I’m not sure I can.

I get around this, at present, by directing families who want a little religious content in their services to the Unitarians. I like the Unitarians, they’re ace. They don’t start with a religious framework and fight to impose it on people’s lives. They start from where each individual is, and they respect the fact that everyone is on their own spiritual journey (even, I would assert, no doubt to the rage of most of my fellow humanists, those of us who don’t believe in God). They too make a virtue out of pick-and-mix which seems to me a very sensible approach. But they're a bit thin on the ground around here.

So you know what I wish? I wish Pam could come and work on my patch. Then I would know for sure that families who wanted some religion in their funeral would be in very, very good hands.

A New Meme

2008-08-11T08:21:00.004Z

I don’t do memes very often; they can be hard to answer without revealing too much (the old anonymity problem, yawn). But it has just occurred to me that I could start one. And as everyone seems to be in the doldrums at the moment, it might be a Service To Blogging. (Or not, if nobody fancies joining in. Worth a go anyway, I reckon, as I can’t think of anything else to write about.)

So here it is, with my answers: The Funeral Meme.

1. What kind of funeral will you have?

Humanist, i.e. non-religious. Unless my beliefs change before I die, which is always possible.

2. What music would you like at your funeral?

I’ve chosen three pieces. As people are coming in, I’d like an instrumental version of ‘Jesu Joy Of Man’s Desiring’ – it’s a delightful lilting tune and will please the Christian mourners. For the committal, I’d like the ‘Salva Me’ from Verdi’s Requiem, sung in Latin; to my mind, it’s the best musical evocation of people’s bewilderment in the face of death. (Yes, I know; two religious tunes. It’s about the music, OK?) And at the end, ‘Why Worry’ by Dire Straits, which sums it all up really: 'Why worry, there should be laughter after pain, there should be sunshine after rain, these things have always been the same so why worry now?'

3. If you could have anyone to speak your eulogy, who would you choose?

Stephen Fry. I don’t know him; I’ve never met him; I think he’d do a really good job.

4. If you could have anyone to play live music at your funeral, who would it be and what would they play or sing?

I’d have Karine Polwart to sing an unaccompanied lament.

5. Will there be a ‘do’ after your funeral and, if so, where and what kind?

I sincerely hope so. I’d like all my friends and family to get together at my house or a local pub, eat, drink, chat, cry, laugh and generally have a good time.

6. What’s the most unusual funeral wish you’ve ever heard, and did it come true?

A dear friend of mine says that at her committal, she wants everyone to be served with champagne, so they can drink a toast to her accompanied by ‘See What The Boys In The Back Room Will Have’ (scroll down for lyrics). She is, as far as I know, still very much alive, but I hope it comes true because it would suit her perfectly.

So there you are. A new meme. I tag anyone who fancies having a go (do let me know if you do it, though, so I can come and read your answers). If you’re a non-blogging reader, feel free to do yours in the comments box.

Who Am I Again?

2008-08-04T08:59:00.002Z

My phone is refusing to ring.

It's definitely working. I tested it from my mobile this morning.

Work often goes quiet at this time of year. I haven't done a funeral since the week before last, and haven't visited a family for almost three weeks. People are on holiday, too busy having fun to get round to dying. Things will liven up again by the end of September, but, for the moment, I'm at a loose end.

This morning I sat at my desk, chin on hands, feeling bored, willing the phone to ring with a summons to an interesting job. Then I realised I was, effectively, wishing for someone to die. Which doesn't sound like me – or, at least, it doesn't sound like the person I prefer to think of as me. But it was me, evidently.

Who I am is very closely linked with what I do, and when what I do doesn't seem like me, I start feeling more uncertain than usual. I'm a funeral celebrant, but I'm not being one at the moment, so who am I today? I'm a writer, sometimes, but that's not going so well either. It's as if the ground is shifting beneath my feet. Maybe I could see this movement as good, exciting, a chance for new opportunities to emerge. My head is willing to buy into that idea, but as far as my stomach's concerned, it's just something that makes me lurch around feeling slightly sick.

I don't think I'm having a mid-life crisis, because I have no desire whatsoever for a red convertible sports car. So I guess it's just a plain old identity crisis. Which is an odd thing to write about under a pseudonym – and, to be honest, that isn't helping either right now. There are too many disparate bits of me, scattered too widely. I need to gather them in and regroup.

The Vicar's Knickers

2008-07-28T07:41:00.002Z

One of the crematoriums where I regularly take services is housed in a very peculiar building. If you came in as a mourner, you wouldn't notice anything odd: you'd go into the chapel through the front door, then out again through a side door, in the usual kind of one-way system. But for those of us who work there, the architect kindly created a labyrinth of passages and rooms and toilets behind the scenes, so we can get from A to B without interrupting a service or bumping into a group of mourners on the move.

The only trouble is, it's an absolute rabbit warren, with lots of options for taking different routes or using different rooms, depending on where the current groups of mourners are in their process through the system. The passages and rooms are mostly featureless with small frosted glass windows, and there are no signs on any of the discreet wooden doors, so it's very easy to get lost or misjudge an entrance. Worst of all, the door from the vestry into the chapel opens onto a short passageway facing the side of the altar, so there is no line of sight into the chapel itself. Early in my career there was one occasion when I listened carefully, heard nothing, walked out into the chapel and then beat a quick retreat as I saw a congregation with their heads bowed in silent contemplation. Now I tiptoe out and peek round the corner – but it's far from ideal.

I did a service there last week, very straightforward, all went smoothly, and as usual I left the chapel at the end and waited outside the door to say goodbye to the mourners. I should make it clear that I was still inside the building at this point: there's a short passage with double doors at either end, one set leading from the chapel and the other set leading to the outside world. Although perhaps in some ways misguided, that architect definitely had his heart in the right place; he built somewhere for us to say goodbye to mourners with full protection from the weather – not something every crem provides.

I was shaking someone's hand when a door behind me, that I'd never even noticed, opened into my shoulder. I turned to see a vicar disappearing swiftly back inside, and made a mental note to give him a shout when everyone had gone. So a few minutes later, when the last mourner had left the building, I turned, pulled the door open, looked into a room containing a couple of armchairs, and merrily called 'All clear!'

Only the vicar was doing a wee.

In the small toilet off the room with the armchairs.

And he had left the door, between the two, wide open.

Four Years

2008-07-21T06:33:00.002Z

Wednesday is my blogiversary. Four years! Who'da thunk?

Not me, that's for sure. Sometimes I feel as if I can't keep this blog going for four more minutes. But then I have a conversation like the one on the phone with my sister the other day. Here's how it went:

Zinnia: I've got a funeral to do next week.

Zinnia's Sister: Easy or hard?

Zinnia: Easy. It's a repeat booking.

ZS: Hahahahaha!!! What happened, did they knock on the lid? Hahahahaha!!!

Zinnia: No, it's not –

ZS: Do you do those for zombies? One every deathday? Hahahahaha!!!

Zinnia: Listen, it's –

ZS: Don't know why I've never seen you in a zombie movie. You'd fit in really well, heeheeheeheehee!!!

Zinnia: Get a grip! I did the dad in 2003, now the mum's died. Get it?

ZS [unable to speak due to paroxysms of cackling mirth]

Zinnia: Glad you find yourself so amusing.

ZS: [sounds of gasping, eyes being wiped etc]

Zinnia: I am so going to blog this and show the world what an Uppity Little Sister you are.

What a gift that conversation was. And talking of gifts, there is a tradition on this blog that on my blogiversary, readers de-lurk to leave a gift for me in the comments box. I'm sure you can think of many things I need, or would enjoy, and as these are virtual gifts – the fairy godmother kind, if you like – the only limits are those of your imagination. Off you go!

How Far Can You Go?

2008-07-14T07:00:00.001Z

The case of Lillian Ladele caused a furore here in the UK last week. She is a registrar, a public servant whose role includes performing civil marriage ceremonies for heterosexual couples and – for the last two and a half years – civil partnership ceremonies for homosexual couples. Lillian Ladele is a Christian who believes that the practice of homosexuality is morally wrong. She has refused to conduct civil partnership ceremonies, and as a result has been bullied and harassed at work. Last week a tribunal found that she had been discriminated against, and awarded her compensation.

There was lots of squealing in the media about the result being homophobic. It can certainly be viewed that way – but I don't think it's that simple.

I heard a commentator on the radio saying 'if she didn't want to do civil partnerships, she shouldn't have been a registrar.' Lillian Ladele has apparently worked for the Council for more than ten years, and civil partnerships weren't looking like ever being a possibility ten years ago. Also, once they did become legal, registrars were able to opt out of taking civil partnership ceremonies if they wished. It is only since registrars' employment status changed via a new law in December 2007, so they could no longer opt out, that this has become an issue. And it doesn't look as if the employers thought through the implications of this very carefully.

I heard another commentator saying of Lillian Ladele 'she is a public servant, paid for by public money; she should obey the law.' I find this a more useful argument. However, other public servants are able to opt out of parts of their jobs on grounds of conscience. Take doctors, who can opt out of terminating pregnancies, among other things. This has been the case for years and years, and nobody tells those doctors they're discriminating against women. So why shouldn't it be the same for registrars?

If the media were to pick up this post (yeah, right), they would doubtless conclude that I was supporting the Christian against the gay people. But it's not that simple, either. I'm in favour of everyone being able to exercise their right to conscientious objection. Not just the people I agree with, but everyone.

However, there is one thing that worries me about registrars. In some parts of the country, they are beginning to undertake civil funeral ceremonies as well as civil marriage and partnership ceremonies. If they want to opt out of overseeing civil partnerships, they can say so in advance. But dealing with newly bereaved people often involves surprises. Would a registrar begin the process of working with a family and then, on discovering the dead person was in a long-term same-sex relationship and their grieving civil partner is the chief mourner, say 'sorry, I can't do the funeral for you after all, bye'?

I really do hope they have thought this one through.

Public Service Announcement

2008-07-07T07:03:00.003Z

I was recently contacted by a man called Charles Cowling who is a funeral celebrant (trained by the opposition, but he seems to be a nice chap). He has a publishing contract for a consumer guide to funerals which is due out in the UK later this year. Unusually for a writer, he has published the first draft of his book online and invited comment. I can only think of one other person who has done this *blushes modestly* although I'm sure there must be others.

I think the Good Funeral Guide is a much-needed and potentially very useful book. Charles says 'I don’t want to set myself up as a panjandrum, so I have posted the text on the www and invited people to pelt me with their views. It’s now a collaborative thing. If it takes a village to raise a child, I reckon the death village is the best place to raise this book.'

So, dear co-habitants of the 'death village', if you'd like to contribute, please go here and give your two penn'orth.

Evelyn

2008-06-30T08:35:00.003Z

Evelyn was furious with her son Andy for dying from a drug overdose. She stormed up and down her tiny living room, three paces and turn, three paces and turn, while I sat on the sofa trying to project tranquillity.

'Stupid bastard!' she said. 'He knew not to take drugs. But he still did, and now he's dead. What fucking use is that?'

I didn't have an answer, but luckily it was a rhetorical question.

'I'd like to give him the biggest damn telling-off he's ever had in his life. He may be nineteen years old but he's not too buggering big to slap.' She sat down hard into an armchair, rammed her elbows onto her knees. 'He doesn't deserve a fucking funeral. And I don't want one. So why the hell are we doing this?' She glared at me over her clenched fists.

'If you don't want a funeral,' I said, 'you don't have to have one.'

Evelyn's body sagged, her energy visibly draining away. 'I do,' she said quietly.

'There's no legal requirement. The funeral director will oversee the disposal of his body if that's what you want.'

'But you're here now, and…' There was an appeal in her eyes.

'I can go right back out that door,' I said. 'No obligation. No charge. And no hard feelings. The important thing is that you get what you need.'

'It's not just me, though, is it? It's all Andy's bloody cousins, and his mates, his school-friends, the neighbours, bloody everyone. Word gets around so fast, people keep phoning to find out when the fucking funeral is. Nobody says "are you having a funeral?".'

'So you don't want a funeral, but you feel you have to have one.'

Her face lightened. 'That's exactly it.'

'What would make it easier for you?'

'Can it be short?'

'As short as you like.'

'Really? Really, really short?'

'Absolutely. No readings, no poems, no music, if that's how you want it.'

'Oh no, I do want music. Do you know The Needle And The Damage Done, by Neil Young?'

I nodded.

'I want that. It's all I can think of.'

'We can just play that, then, if you like.'

'You'll need to say something, or people won't understand.'

'You don't want to speak, yourself?'

'No. I'd only start swearing at Andy.' The image brought the edge of a smile to her lips.

She didn't want a procession. The coffin was placed in the chapel ahead of time, then the funeral director and I seated mourners as they arrived. When everyone was present, I explained that this was especially difficult for Evelyn and she had asked for a very short, low-key service. She felt that the Neil Young song said everything that needed to be said, so we would listen to the music and then leave the chapel together in silence.

And that's what happened. Evelyn sat in the front row, her face tightly drawn, tearing a tissue into tiny shreds with her fingertips.

I felt very sorry for Evelyn, and not just because of Andy's death. It was as if the way we choose to mourn didn't work for her. She truly didn't want a funeral.

I know a funeral isn't compulsory, and I know some people choose not to have one. I've done a number of funerals where the deceased had said he or she didn't want a funeral, but the mourners over-rode those wishes because of their own need for a ceremony. But this was the first time I'd planned a funeral with someone who really didn't want one herself. I guess by definition I'm not likely to come across this situation often. For myself, I can't imagine a situation where I wouldn't choose to get together with friends and family to celebrate the life and mourn the death of someone we have loved. But I think I need to be more sensitive to the fact that some people feel differently.

Virtual Bereavement

2008-06-23T08:16:00.005Z

Have you ever visited a blog you liked and found that it had been taken off the Internet? I have, a few times, and it has always felt like a real loss, as if someone I was used to seeing and chatting with – a particular shopkeeper, perhaps, or an acquaintance in the local pub – had simply disappeared.

But what about when you find out, from the Internet, that someone you knew online has died? I've had half a dozen emails over the last few months from people who lost friends they only knew online. And they don't know how to grieve.

It's hard enough when we lose a real-life friend. We need to talk about that person, cry about them, get hugs. It seems that when we lose someone we knew online, the grief is just as real, and we need to do all the same things. But we don't have real people to do them with. I've learned from others' experiences that non-virtual friends don't understand. They look mystified. 'He was only a blogger. You didn't really know him.' How wrong they are!

When people blog, as when they meet in other ways, they make connections, share thoughts and feelings, find kindred spirits, and become friends. Bloggers support each other in many ways, including through bereavement, but blogging alone is not enough. An email exchange or an e-hug may help, but it's just not the same as a real, messy, chaotic, burbling, talking, crying, hand-holding session with people in the hard self.

We need to think about this. It happens; it is happening. There are people I only know in cyberspace that I care more about than many of the people I know in real space. In fact I need some new terminology for 'real' life, 'real' space, because many of my online friends ARE real friends – and therein lies the problem. When one of my blogfriends dies, the experience of loss will be as painful for me as it already has been for others. I've managed to avoid most virtual interactions beyond blogging, but I suspect this could also be an issue for users of MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, XBoxes, etc.

For us bloggers, blogs themselves can have a part to play. There is a beautiful blog by the late Michael Thaler, a wordsmith who used his skill to chronicle the last two years of his life. When he began blogging, he had known for four years that he had a spectacularly rare form of cancer, and didn't know how long he had to live. His blog is a wonderful celebration of life, and his generous, free-thinking spirit shines through every post. Coincidentally, he even blogged about the death of a blogfriend. The last posts on his blog were made by members of his family after he died, which provided space for his blogfriends to contribute their comments. I know this has happened with other blogs where the blogger knew they were dying – but for many of us, death comes unexpectedly. Perhaps, therefore, one thing we could usefully do is to leave instructions with our nearest and dearest so that, when we die, someone will post to let our own blogfriends know what happened and give them a chance to say what they need to say in the comments box and by email.

I don't believe that we can bridge the gap between life and death. But I know we can make connections between our virtual and non-virtual relationships – and I think when a virtual friend dies, this can be particularly helpful for both sides. Michael's family posted to say that they found the comments and emails from his blogfriends very comforting. So I'll be writing those instructions myself in the next few days, and I hope you will do the same.

Humans or Animals?

2008-06-16T07:20:00.003Z

Crystal Jigsaw made some interesting points in a recent post about the effects of the credit crunch on people's pets, which sparked a good debate in her comments box. Crystal's post was inspired by another from Flowerpot, who lives in Cornwall.

Then last week we had the stranded dolphins in Cornwall, which was headline news on the Jeremy Vine show. A listener contacted the show to say 'the people of Cornwall can't stand by and see these dolphins suffer.' Very laudable. So why are the people of Cornwall apparently happy to stand by and see children in need of family-based foster care languish in institutions? And to stand by and let single elderly people moulder away in isolation? And to stand by and let charities that are doing essential work with Cornish people close due to lack of funding?

Please note I'm not trying to start an anti-Cornwall campaign; it's a lovely county, and I'm sure similar tales could be told of every county in the UK. I'm also in favour of kindness to animals: I adore my cats, have been a vegetarian for most of the last 30 years, buy only free-range organic eggs, and so on. But I do wonder why we seem to find it so much easier to help animals than to help people. Perhaps because it IS easier: animals don't talk back, so can be anthropomorphised into grateful recipients of our attentions, while humans are vocal, opinionated and not always suitably grateful for the charity they receive. We don't give freely, we give to get, and animals can almost always be relied on to provide the cute, liquid-eyed, heart-melting feel-good factor that charitable donors want in exchange for their money. Humans, on the other hand… need I say more? One argument for prioritising animals is that they are defenceless. But so are many humans, particularly the young, the impoverished, some people with severe disabilities, those living in war zones, some sick or injured people, and so on.

I'm also not anti-animal charities, because of course they also help people: not only those who love animals, but also – and to me, I'm afraid, more importantly – those who depend on animals for their livelihood. For example, most UK residents will know of the Donkey Sanctuary for its tourist attraction in Devon. But it also does international work in poor countries where donkeys are valuable working animals, an essential part of a family's assets. I wonder whether it could fund this international work if it didn't have the 'come and stroke the cute donkeys' site in rich old England. Or am I too cynical?

Terence Blacker sees double standards in many aspects of Britain's attitudes to animal welfare. I recommend reading his article if you're interested in this subject, as he makes several points more authoritatively and cogently than I can do here. I agree with his conclusion that we must continue to make animal welfare a priority. But I would say not top priority; not before human welfare; at best, alongside.

What do you think?

I've Scored A Hat Trick!!!

2008-06-09T06:54:00.004Z

Do you remember how excited I was when I had a piece selected for Shaggy Blog Stories in March of last year? And then again when I got into the Messages anthology in December? Well, now I've had a piece chosen for You're Not The Only One, another blog-based anthology put together by Peach to raise money for War Child.

War Child is a charity that helps children affected by war. Did you know that one child dies as a result of war every three minutes? Neither did I. That's 480 children per day. Or over 175,000 per year. Those of us who are in the book have already agreed to buy at least one copy each; that was part of the deal. But those of you who aren't in it can also help, if you wish, by buying a copy here. At present around half of the cover price goes to the charity (the team are hoping that will increase - Lulu have done this before for fundraisers); the other half buys you a damn good book focusing on the camaraderie of blogging.

Motorbikin'

2008-06-02T06:50:00.002Z

Don’t do it. Just don’t. It’s not worth it.

Are you a biker? Are there people in the world who love you? Then think about how they’ll feel when you die in a crash.

Is that hard to think about? Then let me help you. Imagine those who love you most. See them curl their bodies around the pain of losing you, trying to hold it in, trying to keep it out. They scream out their suffering, tears and snot and drool mixing on their faces. They cannot sleep for picturing your beloved body tangled in twisted metal. Food tastes like sawdust. Their heads throb like the tolling of a bell. Every simple daily act – getting out of bed, taking a shower, putting on clothes – is an ordeal. Anything more complicated is impossible. Whatever you did goes undone: perhaps the lawn grows long and unkempt, or the food cupboards slowly empty, or the children no longer have stories read to them at bedtime. The people you love most move through their lives, disconnected, longing to go with you wherever it is you have gone, unable to reach you.

If you have children, they will fail at school, misuse alcohol and drugs, wind up in a dead-end job, screw up their close relationships. Do you want that on your conscience?

Sell your stupid Harley or Ducati or whatever your idiot brain thought was a good idea, and get a car with side impact bars and an airbag. Then you can prevent all this grief. And don’t give me the old ‘it won’t happen to me’ routine. I’ve cremated too many bikers who spun that line to give it any credence.

I’m fed up with doing funerals for people in their 40s who were perfectly healthy apart from the brain aberration that made them think it was a good idea to hurtle around at 60 mph on an unstable two-wheeled machine. I know some bikers live into their dotage – but far too many of them don’t. Yes, the bike hearse is cute, but really, it’s far cuter at exhibitions than coming down the crematorium driveway with a dead biker inside and an escort of morons. At the last biker funeral I did, one friend of the deceased, crash helmet in hand, waddled down from the car park in his leathers, looked at the hearse, and said to me ‘Simon would have liked that.’ I couldn’t help thinking that, given the choice, Simon would almost certainly have preferred to be alive. And he HAD that choice which is what makes me so CROSS!!!

Whew. Breathe.

That’s better. I think I needed to get it out of my system. Funerals do seem to come in clusters, for some reason, and so far this year has been the year of the biker funeral. It is hard to sit with families, and hear them rationalising the most terrible experience they could have imagined into ‘he would have wanted to go that way’. But you’re missing something, guys; he wouldn’t have wanted to go at all, and he didn’t need to; his death was not wonderful and brave, it was futile, because…

Enough. We’ve done that one. I hope you get the point. And if there are any bikers among my readers, I don’t want to hear rationalisations about advanced driving courses, superior equipment, extra safety devices or any of that crap. All I want to hear is ‘Zinnia, I realise the error of my ways, and I guarantee that I shall never again risk my life by riding a motorbike.’ If you’re a biker and you can’t say that, just pass by the comments box for this week, OK?

Right To Die?

2008-05-26T19:42:00.003Z

Hot on the heels of last week's post comes this initiative from Salford Council: a 'right to die' card that enables anyone carrying it to refuse treatment in a medical emergency. The card is a form of advance health care directive, another being the living will.

According to the media, the pro-choice people are hailing this card as an important step forward for people's rights, while the pro-life people are trumpeting warnings about the complexity of individual circumstances, and how difficult it is to accurately predict feelings and wishes for future situations that for most of us are literally unthinkable. I don't much like this division into 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life', although I can see how it makes life easier for journalists. Personally, I'm pro-choice and pro-life. And I don't think I have the right to make decisions for someone else, or to judge the decision another person makes in a situation that I have never been anywhere near.

The 'right to die' card may help some people by reassuring them that they are less likely to undergo a lingering, painful, terrifying death. And I can see why it would get Government backing, because refusing medical treatment saves money - an unpalatable fact, but nevertheless unarguable. But I can't help thinking about people like Terry Wallis and Jan Grzebski, both of whom woke from comas after 19 years. If they had held 'right to die' cards, as I understand it - and I'm not a medical professional, so please do correct me if I'm wrong - they might well have had treatment withdrawn when their chances of recovery became minimal. I can't find any information on the Internet after the initial media interest, so I'm not sure whether they are happy about their experiences. But, for me, it raises questions about whether I would choose this for myself, or whether I would forgo the trauma of waking, severely disabled, having lost 19 years of my life to a coma and not having a great deal to look forward to. I know life is infinitely precious. But why should my life be more precious than others? Do I have the right to be kept alive for 19 years, hooked up to expensive equipment and nursed round the clock, when in other parts of the world children die of diarrhoea?

This is where I get stuck between 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life'. Because the resources of this world are limited, and one thing the media conveniently forget is that my 'choice' to undergo expensive resuscitation - which has a poor prognosis in any event - effectively diverts resources from those whose need, I would argue, is greater than mine. I know it's not that simple: the NHS has allocated budgets, so even if I choose to carry a 'right to die' card it won't make any practical difference to the lives of people in developing countries. But I hear a lot about people's 'rights' to IVF, or to surgical procedures for obesity management, or to expensive rehab and years of therapy for their drug or alcohol problem. I know infertility, obesity and addiction cause untold anguish to many. You may argue that it's easy for me to say, who has never wanted a child, or struggled with my weight, or suffered from addiction. Nevertheless, I'll say it anyway: there is too much talk about people's rights where the health service is concerned, and too little about people's responsibilities.

I suspect that, for some people, carrying a 'right to die' card will feel like taking responsibility. I haven't decided whether to carry one myself - but I'm glad to have the option. This discussion will continue as the development of science and ethics create new dilemmas for us all to consider. And in that context, a card - which enables people to change their minds in most situations - offers, if nothing else, more flexibility than that other, much revered method of making your views known to medical professionals: the tattoo.

Euthanasia

2008-05-19T07:55:00.001Z

I am cautiously in favour of allowing terminally ill people to die with dignity, if and only if they choose to do so when they are capable of making such a choice, under strict medical supervision and with checks and balances that are as failsafe as possible. I know this is a very difficult issue and there are strong arguments on both sides. But I do think that if I was, for example, in the advanced stages of motor neurone disease, and facing the imminent prospect of death by suffocation, like Diane Pretty I might prefer a chemical cocktail if the option was available. I also find it hard to get past the point that we regard it as humane to put animals out of their misery when they are suffering intensely with no hope of recovery, but we are not willing to do so for our fellow human beings.

But this article by Jon Ronson highlights some horrifying practices within the euthanasia community. It features an American Unitarian minister who helps others to die when they are not terminally ill but have mental health problems. I had no idea this went on. I do know that mental health problems can feel unbearable to sufferers, and that there is a strong link between some types of mental health problem and suicide. But surely, with mental health problems, there is always - or almost always - some hope of recovery or improvement, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time to the person concerned? Two members of my family, both now dead of old age, had severe and enduring mental health problems, self-harmed and attempted suicide, but also had periods when they were comparatively stable and happy. I saw these alternate over decades and, in the good times, they would each say that although there had been times when they wanted to die, they were glad they hadn't succeeded because they were now enjoying their lives.

Even worse, the article features someone who is helping people to die in exchange for money. Quite a lot of money - approximately $7000 per person, apparently (although let's remember this is being reported in a newspaper, even if it is the Guardian, so we can't be sure about the figures).

Jon Ronson has made a documentary about this which will be shown tonight in the UK (Monday 19th May, 10 pm, Channel 4 if you're interested). Apparently, part of the rationale for the American Unitarian minister is that he is helping people on to a better life. I guess if you believe that, the whole thing might be more defensible. But it doesn't work for me.

Copyrights and Copywrongs

2008-05-12T07:30:00.004Z

All bloggers need to know that under UK law, a writer owns the copyright to their work, even when they have published it on the Internet, even if they publish it under a pseudonym. (I'm not sure about international copyright law. But this is how it works in the UK.) The only way you can change that is by signing a contract that transfers the copyright to someone else. If you haven't done that, it's yours.

Recently there have been a number of cases of newspapers stealing bloggers' writing and republishing it without permission or payment. This is a criminal offence and if any newspaper did it to me, I'd be looking for a 'no win, no fee' intellectual property lawyer. Zoe of Girl With A One-Track Mind wrote an interesting piece on this in the Guardian last week, focusing on the experience of JonnyB who had whole posts published in the Mail on Sunday without his knowledge. Jonny, being a kindly soul, simply sent the Mail a stern reprimand and an invoice for £200, which they duly paid. In their reply they described bloggers as 'amateur writers' which made me seethe with rage - how do they know? Jonny blogs under a pseudonym, I've never met him and I don't know his real name, but I've read his blog for years, he writes like an angel, he works from home, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if writing of some kind is part if not all of his real-life professional identity.

But it gets worse. I found out from Rachel that Natalie, a blogger I hadn't come across before, has not only had parts of her blog published in the Daily Mail (you'll notice I'm not dignifying these 'news'papers with links), but also has been totally misrepresented there as an 'e-venge blogger'. There are various good posts about this already up on the web, so I'm not going to go into all the details here. Natalie has asked bloggers to spread the word and I'm happy to help, because this treatment of the new media by the old media is outrageous and should be stopped.

Advice As Requested

2008-05-05T08:16:00.007Z

Emerging Writer asked what advice I have for couples with different religious backgrounds (Catholic and atheist) when it comes to funerals. This is an interesting question. I've done funerals for couples who are Church of England and atheist or agnostic, but Catholicism is a different matter.

I was brought up as a Catholic, so I know a bit about it. In my research for this post I consulted one of the most thoughtful, intelligent Catholics I know, who also happens to be my dad. This is a work in progress and there may be another post about it in due course, but here are my thoughts so far.

For any Christian, a funeral is about someone's passing on into the next world. Although Christians naturally grieve for the loss of someone they love from this world, they rejoice that people are going to meet their maker, friends and family, and feel comforted because they believe they will meet those people again one day themselves.

For atheists, a funeral is part of the process of coming to terms with the end of someone's life. It's a celebration of that life (at least, it is if I'm doing it), and a recognition that the person lives on in the memories of others and in the unique influence they have had on their family and friends.

So in a funeral service, atheists look backwards, primarily, while Christians look forwards. As an experienced ceremony designer, I can't see a problem in creating a ceremony to honour both belief systems – and as many of you know, I have done a double-act with a vicar (more than once in fact).

However, I'm not sure this would work for Catholics, who value their religious services very highly. A full-scale requiem mass has no space for a secular tribute. A progressive priest might choose to make space, or be happy to do a double-act with a humanist celebrant, but a traditionalist wouldn't.

So I think Emerging Writer's couple have several options. If they liked the idea, they could try for a double-act – but they would need to be aware that some Catholic priests would be unwilling to do this. Another option would be to have two funerals on the same day, say one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with lunch in between. However, you would have to bear in mind that you can only have one committal (where the curtains close in a crematorium chapel – the most common choice for atheists – or burial in a graveyard, the most common choice for Catholics). So it might be possible to have a Catholic requiem mass in the morning, then a celebratory humanist-led wake in the afternoon; or a humanist funeral in the morning, and a Catholic memorial service in the afternoon.

A further option for this couple, if they're in Britain, would be to seek the services of a Unitarian. Unitarians describe themselves as 'a creedless religious movement of people who encourage freedom of thought and nurturing community.' I have a lot of respect for Unitarians; if I believed in God, I'd probably be one. Many people in our pluralist, multi-cultural society - myself included - profess respect for the beliefs of others. Some take pains to be sensitive to those beliefs, e.g. by not eating in front of Muslims during daylight hours in Ramadan. But few of us willingly engage with others' beliefs and use the experience to reassess our own. The Unitarian community 'welcomes you for who you are, complete with your beliefs, doubts and questions.' They are also, uniquely, very willing to design services for weddings, funerals etc for mixed-faith couples. I think we could all learn a lot from their approach.

But the main piece of advice I would give to this couple is to work out what they want, write it down, and make sure their nearest and dearest have copies or know where to find them. That will make life much easier for everyone when the time comes.

Humph RIP

2008-04-27T07:08:00.005Z

I don't have much truck with celebrity anything, particularly as I'm not a TV watcher. I read the Guardian online, so I pick up bits and pieces. But I often find myself puzzled, in conversation, when someone is talking to me about people they assume I know – most recently a couple called 'Adam and Joe' (or maybe it's 'Adam and Jo') – who usually turn out to be from television.

And when something happens to a celebrity I have heard of, I don't feel emotionally involved; I keep that for people I know in person. For example, my most vivid memory from when Diana died was the experience of a journalist girlfriend who was telephoned by a colleague at 4 am that Sunday morning. He told her Diana had died in a car crash and she needed to get her arse into the office pronto. As the office was in London, and my friend was asleep in bed with her lover in Manchester, she asked her colleague if he thought she was born yesterday, gave him a stream of abuse for disturbing her with such a ridiculous mickey-take, and slammed the phone down. Apparently he had to ring back several times before she would believe him.

I didn't cry when Diana died. I felt sorry for her, and more sorry for her sons, but I watched the public outpouring of grief with detached fascination. Yet I shed tears this week for Humph.

Humphrey Lyttelton wasn't a celebrity, he was a personality. He was full of contradictions: a modest man of great stature; a toff who became a conviction socialist; a perfect gentleman who told the rudest jokes on radio. He was impossible to categorise: he was a professional musician with his own record label, had a lifelong interest in calligraphy, and held silliness in high regard. He was a journalist and author, too. And he felt like part of my family. He chaired the wonderful anarchic radio comedy game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue from its inception in 1972. I was eight years old then, and listening soon became a family ritual. We didn't have a television, so the radio was enormously important in our lives. And of course in those days there was no option to 'listen again'; I can still hear the urgent cries of 'Quick! It's starting!' that brought us all from our various pursuits to the living room as the opening music played.

I got married a couple of decades ago. He'd never listened to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. I should have realised it wasn't going to work. Top Bloke, on the other hand, grew up with the programme like I did. Humph and his colleagues influenced the development of our own humour as much as The Goon Show or Monty Python or Molesworth. One of the best things Top Bloke ever did for me was to get tickets for a live recording of the show. These tickets were rarer than testosterone in a frock shop, and despite Top Bloke's best efforts over the years we only managed to go that one time, but it was a fantastic evening. I laughed until I cried, until my ribs and face hurt, until I could barely breathe. I felt incredibly privileged to be privy to the off-mike banter of Humph and the teams. And now I know what Samantha looks like!

This has puzzled my friends, at times, as much as their televisual references puzzle me. These days Top Bloke and I can introduce people to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue through the 'listen again' function on Radio 7 or the clips on the programme's own page on the BBC website. They don't always get it. 'Mornington Crescent' will have us in stitches while our friends try to work out the rules. 'One Song To The Tune Of Another' makes other people go 'eh?' but often has us laughing from the announcement, particularly when it's something challenging for Jeremy Hardy, Stephen Fry or Sandi Toksvig – or yet another way of getting Rob Brydon, with his silken vocal cords, to sing 'Delilah'. (The words of 'Whiter Shade Of Pale' to the tune of 'My Old Man's A Dustman' was a classic – try it, it works.) The programme is so entrenched in my head that my own personal cure for insomnia is an imaginary round of that game where each panellist has to say a word that has no links whatsoever to the word said by the previous panellist. This has a wonderfully surreal effect, and I find it stops me worrying about whatever's keeping me awake, and amuses my brain gently into sleep.

For me, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue was the main attraction where Humph was concerned. I also listened, albeit more sporadically, to his 'Best Of Jazz' programme on Radio 2. Humph had an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things jazz, and was a well-regarded professional player himself, working with an eclectic range of musicians from Sidney Bechet to Elkie Brooks, Helen Shapiro to Radiohead. I love jazz, and I enjoyed the programme. But for me, the best music was always when Humph got his trumpet out at the end of the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Christmas Special, and his joy in jazz mingled, for a few moments, with his joy in comedy.

Humph chaired the show with a unique combination of the reluctant and the irrepressible. He affected a world-weary air, and often subverted the stereotype of the chairman by feigning inattention or boredom. When I saw the show live, they recorded a half-hour show in one take, and then re-recorded a couple of segments where something hadn't quite gone right – a panellist coughing, perhaps, or a slip in someone's speech. The producer would come onto the stage, give instructions to whoever needed to repeat a line, then re-record it. Humph had to do a couple of these, and one wasn't quite up to the required standard. 'Sorry, Humph, could you do that again?' the producer said. Humph propped his chin on one hand, looked at the audience, heaved a sigh and said 'I'm losing the will to live.' As he was over 80 at the time, this was edgy humour, and got a big laugh.

But he never did lose the will to live, or to work, which for Humph seems to have been much the same thing. He did the last gig with his jazz band the night before he went into hospital, was in the middle of recording the latest series of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and had almost finished both a book and an album. He leaves a tremendous legacy of music and humour, and his life is definitely something to celebrate rather than mourn.

So, as the comedy jazzman of time meets the grim reaper of eternity, and the sad listeners of fate snivel and reach for the handkerchiefs of destiny... it's the end of the show.

Danny #2

2008-04-21T05:38:00.003Z

Outside the crematorium I saw Geoff stepping out of the shiny black limousine and went over to say hello. His face was taut and he took my hands and held on to them as if he needed an anchor.

‘How are you doing?’ I said.

‘I don’t know how people get through this kind of thing that don’t have a close family.’

And they were clustering around him, the three sons unmistakably Geoff’s with the same smooth kindly faces, their partners, and a younger woman with a small boy at her side wearing a dark blue waistcoat, tailored trousers and white shirt. I looked down and saw sticky-out ears, a spiky blond crew cut, and alert blue eyes above cheeky cheeks.

‘You must be Danny,’ I said. ‘You look very smart.’

He grinned with his whole face, then looked up at Hannah to check that she’d heard. She smiled back at him. I looked at the others and they were all smiling, even Geoff, who had let go of my hands for those of a daughter-in-law. I could feel a smile on my own face, and I thought maybe I understood why Danny was so special to Edith. He hadn’t said a word to me but he radiated charm.

None of the other grandchildren were there; they must have been at school. Danny was the only child present and I hoped his mother had brought a colouring book or something to keep him occupied during the service. I think funerals often seem long and boring for small children, so I don’t mind children running around during my services, and sometimes two or more will play quietly together in a pew or in one of the aisles. But there wasn’t anyone for Danny to play with.

I needn’t have worried. He sat still on his mother’s lap, blue eyes looking around the chapel like searchlights, occasionally stretching up to whisper a question which she would answer just as quietly.

I worked through the service which seemed to be going down well. The audience was attentive, nodding at tales of Edith's dedicated teaching career, smiling at stories of dancing and flowers, laughing at anecdotes of her frequent malapropisms – like when she told Geoff proudly after winning a prize in a pub quiz that ‘we extinguished ourselves tonight’, and her insistence that a doctor who specialised in looking after important ladyparts was called a ‘groinacologist’.

Usually when I’m constructing a tribute to someone from information their family has given me, I put the family chronology first and stories of work, holidays, hobbies etc second. Mostly it seems to work better that way, with the family presented as the backdrop for the rest of a person’s life. But for Edith it seemed to make sense to do it the other way around, to talk about who she was at work and in her social life, and then focus in on the family that seemed the very core of her existence. So I spoke about how she met and married Geoff, and then their joy at becoming parents, Edith’s life as a mother, and a grandmother, how she loved being a hands-on grandma and taking care of her own sons’ children.

‘And then,’ I said, ‘just as she thought she’d run out of grandchildren to care for and play with, Danny came along.’

Danny sat bolt upright as if I’d poked him with a cattle prod, and his mother narrowly avoided a headbutt to the chin.

‘Edith loved Danny very much,’ I said.

‘She’s talking about ME!’ squeaked Danny, unable to contain his surprise in a whisper.

A chuckle ran round the chapel.

‘Mum, did you hear? The lady’s talking about ME!’

The chuckle grew through stifled giggles and a few irrepressible snorts into a full-scale blast of contagious laughter. Danny caught it and his own laughter rose above the rest, spurring everyone else on to greater heights of mirth.

During my training I learned techniques for managing the threat of tears, but nobody taught me how to avoid getting the giggles when everyone else was already hooting with laughter. I bit my lips and dug my nails into my palms, and then I caught sight of Geoff. He was rocking back and forth in the front pew, tears of laughter streaming down his face, the sight of me trying not to laugh evidently rendering him completely helpless. He caught my eye and pointed at me, and I was lost too, cackling away with the rest of them. Even the funeral director, sitting at the back of the chapel, was gasping and dabbing her eyes.

Eventually the laughter subsided and I was able to finish the service. At the end, as usual, I walked out through the exit doors and waited for the funeral director to lead the mourners from the chapel. Geoff came first and took my hands again, not clinging this time but with a friendly handshake.

‘That was marvellous,’ he said. ‘I told you I wanted a happy funeral for Edith, but I never imagined that.’

‘Not my doing,’ I said. ‘It was that great-grandson of yours.’

Geoff’s eyes twinkled. ‘He did help it along, didn’t he? He's a one-off, that boy.’

‘He’s a star,’ I said. ‘Do you hire him out?’

Danny #1

2008-04-14T07:56:00.010Z

Edith died a lovely death. Sitting in her comfy armchair, with her beloved husband Geoff by her side, after a good dinner, at the end of her favourite television show, she turned to him and said 'I feel a bit queer. I think I'd better go to the bathroom.' But she never made it out of her chair; she had a massive heart attack and was dead in moments.

Geoff and Edith had been married for 58 years and had three sons, five grandchildren and one great-grandson. Geoff was a dapper, courteous man; shocked and sad, but – unlike many people – showed no sign that he felt Edith's death was unfair.

'It was bound to happen to one of us sooner or later,' he said. 'I miss her terribly. But what a way to go.'

'Great for her,' I said. 'Bit hard on you, though.'

'That's life,' he said, and one side of his mouth smiled.

'You said on the phone that you'd been to a humanist funeral before.'

'Several, as it happens. Including two of yours.' He grinned at the surprise on my face. 'I wouldn't expect you to remember. You must shake an awful lot of hands.'

'So as an experienced person, have you had any thoughts about what you want for Edith?'

'I don't know what you'll think of this.' His expression was serious now. 'I really want a happy service. She was such a happy person. We are so happy as a family. And so lucky. She used to say that to me, almost every day, how lucky we are. We're not rich, or famous, but equally none of us has drug problems, or are alcoholic, or suffer much from health troubles, and we have enough money to live comfortably.' He gestured around the living room of his small bungalow, immaculately clean and tidy with ornaments on every available surface. 'All the boys found good partners and good jobs. We're a close family, and we have close friends. And we were born English. I don't care what the papers say, I'm glad to live in a country with democracy and pubs and the NHS. Edith was right. We're very, very lucky.'

'You'd like the service to reflect that?'

'I would. I've chosen the music, it's all songs we used to dance to. She loved to dance, right up until the end, she went to line dancing at the community centre every Thursday night, and we'd go to tea dances in the town hall on a Sunday afternoon.' He handed me a CD with glamorous dancers on the front. 'They're all on here. "I Could Have Danced All Night" coming in, then "Romance de Amor" in the middle, and "'S Wonderful" to go out.'

'Dancing made Edith happy, then.'

'It was one of the things that made her most happy. Dancing, and flowers, and children. She grew beautiful flowers.'

'I can see that.' The little front garden was visible through the window, its small square lawn edged with a profusion of bulbs in full bloom: various daffodils and narcissi, and tulips in every size and colour.

'Yes, that was all her own work, I wasn't allowed to get involved.' He chuckled proudly. 'But children were her favourite thing. She was a primary school teacher, she taught the second year children, the seven and eight year olds.'

'Which school?'

'She started at St John's primary school in the City, after she'd done her training. Then of course she had a gap when the boys were young. But as soon as Alex, that's our youngest, as soon as he was settled at school she went back. She said she got bored at home on her own all day. And she found a job at the school at the end of the road here, where the boys went. She was there for the rest of her working life. Loved it. Especially when children she'd taught brought their own children to her class. That made her so happy, you'd have thought it was all her doing!'

I answered his smile with one of my own. 'So did she find it hard to retire?'

'She would have done, if it hadn't been for the grandchildren. We had three by that time. One is older, Hannah, because our oldest boy married a woman who already had a child from a teenage liaison, didn't matter to us, Hannah was our first grandchild and that was all there was to it. She was at secondary school, but then they had two more in quick succession, and Alison, that's their mum, needed to go back to work, but childcare is so expensive, and Edith stepped in. And by the time they got to school, our middle boy had two, so she looked after them. And then by the time the last one of those had gone to school, Hannah had Danny, the first great-grandchild.'

'Sounds like Edith never got a break.'

'She didn't want one. She just loved being with children, playing with them, feeding them, cleaning them up, and always chatting as she went. Some of our friends are different, they say to their children no, you sort it out, I've done my time. I can see why people might feel like that. They've every right. But Edith didn't want to. She lived for children, and they loved her too.'

'She sounds like the perfect grandma.'

'And great-grandma. She and Danny had a really special relationship. She would never have said so, but I think he was her favourite, out of all the children. Maybe she knew he'd be the last. He's nearly five now, he's really going to miss her.'

'I think you all are.'

His chin trembled, but he held onto his control. 'Yes. We are.'

To be continued...

Life Before Death

2008-04-07T08:02:00.003Z

Look, okay, let's redefine this blogbreak, shall we? I'm not reading much, and hardly commenting at all - which I'm finding surprisingly liberating. But I'm obviously still posting. I'm sure I'll get back to regular reading, and commenting, in due course. Then again, maybe I will take a break from posting at some point in the next month or two. The trouble is that I keep coming across things I want to tell you about.

An exhibition in London is one of them. It's called Life Before Death, and it's at the Wellcome Collection in Euston Road until 18th May. I will be in London between now and 18th May, for one day, which happens to be a Monday, which is the only day of the week when the Wellcome Collection is closed, which is very very annoying. But luckily I was able to see some of the photos from this exhibition on the Guardian website last week. And they were fascinating, moving, incredible pictures.

They are black-and-white portraits of people taken shortly before, and immediately after, their death. I know that news of this exhibition spread round the web like a virus, but if you haven't seen the photos yet, you can have a look at some of them here. There's an interesting article by the excellent Joanna Moorhead about the exhibition here.

Talking of viruses, if you've had an email from me claiming to be a big international e-commerce company, don't be fooled; I'm only a blogger. And my apologies for the inconvenience. Some spamming hacking moron got into my hotmail account. I have now changed my password and notified Hotmail Support, so with any luck it won't happen again - at least for a while.

The Marvels Of Modern Technology

2008-03-31T08:47:00.003Z

There are many reasons why people may be unable to attend the funeral of someone they love. Living abroad and being unable to raise the money, or get the time off work, is a common one. Travel hold-ups regularly prevent people from getting to funerals. Personal illness or injury is less common, but does happen. I met a woman some years ago whose husband had been killed in a car crash in which she herself was seriously injured. His funeral was held while she was still in intensive care. She told me that she didn't fully realise he was dead for eleven years, until she next attended a funeral, found herself weeping copiously throughout - although she's not usually a weepy person, and hadn't been particularly close to the man who had died - and understood then that she was dealing with unresolved grief for her husband. And sometimes people don't find out that someone they love has died until the funeral is over, such as neighbours who are on holiday abroad.

Nobody enjoys funerals (except me, and I'm a bit weird) but they do play an essential role in helping people move through the early stages of their grieving process. So I was very glad to read about an innovation, currently being trialled at twelve UK crematoria including Cambridge, Southampton and Peterborough, where a live webcast can be made of a funeral. This has been available in the US, Canada and Australia for a few years now, and seems to work well. If any readers have experienced it, please tell all!

Each of the funerals that I, or any of my BHA-trained colleagues, conduct will have a script written especially for the occasion. I always offer the family a hard copy (or more than one if they wish) and an electronic copy. This offer is usually accepted, and I know that copies are often posted or emailed to people who weren't able to attend. I'm sure it brings some comfort - and a hard copy will continue to be useful for people who don't have Internet access - but I think a live webcast would be much more help, so mourners who can't be there in person can attend virtually. DVDs and CDs will also be available, for those who can't 'take part' at the exact time of the ceremony.

Some professionals who conduct funerals may not be happy about being filmed. It doesn't worry me - in fact it's already happened a couple of times, by people with camcorders; once I was asked in advance and once I wasn't. As a celebrant, I'm used to performing for an audience, and I don't mind if some of that audience are not physically present. Also, I have had a lot of feedback over the years from people who have found it very comforting to re-read the script I've prepared for the funeral of someone they love. It may be that some people would find it equally, or more, comforting to re-run a funeral on DVD. I suppose there could be concern about a funeral ending up on YouTube, but personally, I wouldn't be bothered if one of mine did.

If a family doesn't like this idea, they don't have to take it up. Like everything else to do with funerals - up to and including the funeral itself - it's not compulsory. But it increases people's options, and that, it seems to me, is a very good thing.

The Guardian's take on the story
A snippet from the BBC
More about Hampshire
The Mirror

And now I'm going back to my blogbreak! Honest!

Hello And Welcome

2008-03-22T16:10:00.004Z

Greetings, Guardian readers. The Guide is correct: this is indeed a blog covering the thoughts and anecdotes of a non-religious funeral celebrant. However, last week I decided to take a blogbreak. So, rather than knock up something hurried and mediocre, here are some links to previous (non-fiction) posts that may be of interest - i.e. those that generated more comments and emails than usual.

A series of posts about my positive experiences of care homes:
Post One
Post Two
Post Three
Post Four

A double-act with a vicar:
Post One
Post Two
Post Three
Post Four

Lottie was a baby whose parents chose to terminate the pregnancy because of her multiple disabilities, and I conducted her funeral:
Post One
Post Two
Post Three
Post Four

If you haven't run out of tissues yet, here's A Really Sad One

Some bereavement advice:
What To Write
What To Say
What To Do
A Cold, Cold Christmas

And, because it's not all about death, one about a civil partnership from the days before civil partnerships: Sam and Felipe

Enjoy! And please feel free to leave a comment.

Time For A Break

2008-03-17T15:37:00.003Z

Do you know that it's eighteen months since I last had a blogbreak? I've been feeling somewhat stale of late; tired, fractious, worn; I wonder if that's why. So I'm going to take a short break from blogging (well I'll probably still read, but I doubt I'll comment much if at all). I'm not sure how short is 'short', so let's find out together, shall we?

Zinnia Goes Off-Topic

2008-03-10T08:30:00.002Z

Sorry, non-UK readers, but I need to vent.

Last week there was a ripple in our wee nation’s papers about a Government U-turn on road traffic management (har har de har har). ‘There are real, practical things we can do today to tackle congestion’, declaimed Ruth Kelly, our current transport secretary. The proposal is to let drivers use the hard shoulders of motorways which, for non-UK readers, are the inside lane, historically reserved for broken-down cars that would otherwise obstruct the traffic and for vehicles from the emergency services which need to get to places quickly. So where will the clapped-out cars and emergency vehicles go now? Nobody seems to know the answer to this question, but people say feebly ‘it’s been trialled on the M42’ which is a nothing motorway in the middle of the country that goes from nowhere to nowhere. So that’s all right then.

The U-turn to this idiotic scheme has been made from another idiotic scheme: road pricing. The original plan was allegedly to charge drivers on the busiest roads approx £1.30/mile, which could add up very quickly to an enormous amount of money. This is the usual New Labour strategy of proposing something completely preposterous, so when they ‘climb down’ and suggest something half as bad, everyone goes ‘ooh that’s a much better idea’, not realising that if the second suggestion had been made originally, it would have been greeted with almost as much outrage as the first. Even the Green campaigners were reported as saying, in response to the U-turn, ‘There is going to be a need for road pricing and the Government needs to be more proactive about introducing schemes’ (Stephen Joseph of the Campaign for Better Transport, reported here).

WHAT ABOUT PUBLIC TRANSPORT MISTER GREEN CAMPAIGNER???

Sorry to shout, but it seems to have been completely overlooked in the entire debate. I am lucky that the small market town where I live has a railway station on a branch line; there aren’t many of those left in England. We have around one train an hour, most days, for the half-hour journey to the nearest mainline station. (We used to have through trains to exciting places like the nearest airport and the nearest bit of seaside, but they were quietly done away with a couple of years ago.) The word ‘days’ is key here. In the last couple of weeks I have been invited to two early evening events in different places, each about an hour and a half’s train journey from here with one change. I’m not good at driving in the evenings because I get sleepy, and anyway free wine was on offer which is clearly incompatible with driving, so travelling by train seemed ideal. But in each case the last train back left at around 6.30 pm – thereby enabling me to be at the events in question for 15 minutes at best.

Time is not the only issue. Next weekend Top Bloke and I are going visiting in London. It takes a fair old while to drive there, and will cost about sixty quid in petrol, so I thought maybe we could go by train. We were going off-peak so I guessed it wouldn’t be too expensive. I looked on the Internet and, yes, there were trains at suitable times. I had visions of us reading companionably on the floor outside the toilet; maybe taking a trip to the buffet for a polystyrene cup of unpalatable tea; it was looking good. Then I clicked on to the page with the prices. The cheapest return tickets were seventy-two pounds. Each. We could have a week’s holiday in the Med for that (although cheap air travel is of course deeply immoral and wrong and bad and killing off the planet all by itself so quit with the comments already).

It’s not as bad as £1.30 per mile, but it does seem ridiculously expensive. I’d use the ‘national’ coach networks if they came anywhere near the town where I live, or even joined up with the aforementioned mainline train station, but no, they’re right across the other side of the city, and there is no direct bus joining the two. I should probably take a taxi…

A couple of years ago I spent a holiday in Italy. I took a train from Rome to a small town in rural Abruzzo, with one change; a journey of around three hours, through beautiful mountain scenery. Italian trains are utilitarian, with plastic seats, no tables, and toilets that simply have a large hole at the bottom which, at sixty miles an hour, is amusingly draughty. There’s no buffet for them to make extra profits out of (the Eyeties missed a trick there, what?), no trolley dolly, no frills at all. But there are lots of trains, they mostly run on time, there are enough seats, and they are astonishingly cheap: I think it was about a fiver each way.

Now I’m sure you will want to tell me about all sorts of historical and economic and political stuff, like how mainland Europe got its railways bombed to buggery in WWII so they’ve got much newer and better track to work with, and how Italy has high taxes that subsidise the trains so aren’t we better off here with ‘lower’ taxes and more ‘individual choice’, and how state control of a transport system is a good thing in Italy but not here for complicated reasons I shouldn’t bother my pretty little head about. I don’t care about any of that. I just want a public transport system that works and that I can afford. I want it really badly, and I don’t understand why I can’t have it, and I feel angry and helpless and a little bit like crying.

Fantasy and Reality

2008-03-03T06:24:00.007Z

My grandmother, my aunt, my sister and my nephew are (or, in the case of my grandmother, were) all devotees of The Archers (for non-UK readers: a long-running radio sitcom set in a fictional village). The Archers has many fans; I have played its ‘dum de dum de dum de dum’ theme tune at several funerals. I am not among them, and neither is my cousin. He always amused me at family gatherings, when the Archers' fans would be in a huddle discussing the latest events – ‘can you believe what Shula did?’ ‘But don’t you think Eddie was out of order?’ – and he would prowl around them, saying not-quite-sotto-voce ‘It’s a story. It’s not real.’ And they would turn on him and yell ‘shut UP it IS real!’ This happened so many times that it has passed into our family argot as a standing joke, so now whenever someone is discussing the plot of a film or play they have seen, or a book they have read, someone else will mutter ‘It’s not real. It’s a story.’

Blogging is like this. Although I guard my anonymity carefully because of my work, I have met a few trusted blogfriends over the years, and they all say the same things: ‘You’re not as quiet as I expected. What a loud laugh you have! And aren’t you tall?’ My blog persona is evidently less talkative, slower to amusement and physically smaller than my real-world persona. And yet Zinnia is a real part of me. She’s what the psychologists call ‘my preferred self’, the patient, compassionate, creative, supportive part of me that is uppermost when I’m working on a funeral. It is real, but it’s not all of me; it couldn’t be. Yet when I’ve shown other sides of myself on this blog, commenters have often squawked in protest. Blog readers seem to need blog writers to stay predictable. Some bloggers do very well from recognising and meeting this need. Others – I suspect the majority – shift and change, and probably lose readers in the process.

One blogger who has shifted and changed, and increased her readership despite this, is Petite Anglaise. She is a very successful blogger: she has lots of readers and commenters; got dooced; got a big book deal; you probably know all this. Her autobiographical book has just come out, and I found it fascinating. She writes, on her blog and in her book, so bravely, facing choices she’s made that in retrospect could make a lesser woman writhe in shame, and depicting them with unflinching honesty. Her writing is compelling in its candour.

The primary subject of Petite’s book is relationship break-up and its aftermath. Who among us, having been through the break-up of an intimate relationship, can look back and say we have always acted with maturity and excellent judgment? I know I can’t; I know I haven’t. Yet some of Petite’s reviewers have charged her with immaturity, poor judgement and so on – seeing only the surface; missing the courage and maturity it takes for someone to go public, in beautifully written detail, about a time in their life when they made difficult choices and didn’t always select the wisest option.

It’s not a ‘book of the blog’. There’s nothing wrong with those; I’ve read and enjoyed several. Petite, however, has learned her craft. She has carefully structured a book in which several narrative threads (her relationships with men, her daughter, her work, her friends, her blog, and her readers) are deftly woven together. It’s a page turner that kept me reading even though I already knew the outcome. The Parisian setting is cleverly evoked, and her use of imagery is delightful.

As a blogger myself, I was particularly interested in Petite's rendition of her developing relationship with her blog. This is one of the narrative strands that appears in the book but not on the blog. She reflects on the effects her writing and publishing has on her life, as she goes along, and adapts her methods as a result. Her evident awareness of the actual and potential effects of her blog only seems to reinforce her desire to 'tell it like it is' – or to worry when, as happens from time to time, for some specific reason she doesn't feel able to do so.

Even without the constraints of my work, I doubt I would be brave enough to portray the ‘real me’ on a blog, let alone in a book. Most of the time I only dare to show you the best of me. I wish I was as brave as Petite, but I’m not; I fear the ‘real me’ would be uninteresting and unworthy. I take my hat off to Petite. Her book is a story – and it’s real.

All In A Good Cause

2008-02-17T12:47:00.012Z

Occasionally blogging makes me despair of people when I come across our more depressing manifestations, whether bitchy small-mindedness or full-scale stalking or something inbetween. But mostly I think it's a force for good. It seems to me that bloggers help each other, and other Internet users, in a whole host of ways. We celebrate each other's triumphs and commiserate in grief, offer support in times of trial and provide windows on our worlds for people whose lives were hitherto unimaginably different from our own.

But recently there has been a spate of blog-based activity aimed at helping people beyond the digital frontier. The most immediate demonstration of this comes from Caroline Smailes, a novelist who wrote a novella called Disraeli Avenue and then persuaded her publisher, typesetter and cover designer to give their services for nothing so that it could be published as an e-book for free download with the option to donate money to charity. I read Disraeli Avenue last night, and it's a damn good book, with lots of different voices held together by a particular environment. So go and download it, have a good read and then, if you are able, make a donation to One In Four, a small UK charity that provides support for survivors of sexual abuse. They operate on shoestring funding so small donations make a big difference to them. And if you can't afford to donate, go read the book anyway.

The next is one where you might want to join in, because it's currently being compiled by Peach and her associates, who are looking for blog posts sharing any kind of personal experience for inclusion in an anthology. This will be sold to raise funds for the charity Warchild, a charity that - appropriately for a blog-based project - helps children all over the world. Peach says: "We would like you to submit (to us at bloggersforcharity at yahoo dot co dot uk) a written piece about something you've been through from any aspect of your life that you want to share. It can literally be about anything: your relationships, your past, a road not taken, being a parent, an illness or your regrets etc. We've called it "You're Not The Only One" to reflect the camaraderie of blogging." The deadline is 29th Feb. They are happy for the piece to have been published on your blog, but ask that you don't submit a piece that has been published elsewhere. There's more info in Peach's post about the project.

The third is one that I'm in!!! It's the 'Your Messages' anthology, edited by Sarah Salway and Lynne Rees, launched last month in London. For this anthology, writing was published on a blog set up for the purpose last November, where Sarah and Lynne posted one 'Message' from their original collaborative book (300 pieces of 300 words each) each day for a month and invited everyone to write 300-word responses in the comments box. They then made a selection and published it to raise money for Kids Company. It's a great book for dipping into, and you can buy it here.

And last but not least, because I'm in this one too, Mike's amazing effort last year to get an anthology of funny blog posts compiled and published in one week flat for Comic Relief is still available and still worth buying if you haven't already done so.

Look, I've learned to put images in my posts! Took ages, though, and quite a bit of swearing, and a tech support call to a real-life friend who is also a blogger and without whom this post would not have seen the light of day, thank you *mwah*.

And why are you posting on a Sunday, Zinnia, old fruit, I hear you ask? Because I'm going on holiday first thing tomorrow morning and won't be back until late on Monday 25th. A girlfriend and I are heading for some winter sun, something I've never done in my life before and I'm very VERY excited. So next week's post will be on Tues 26th. Until then - let's raise money for charity!

It Takes All Sorts

2008-02-11T08:40:00.000Z

I did a couple of very similar funerals in one week last year. Both were for men in their early 70s who had died after a short illness; each man left a widow; both women were supported by two friends when I visited. They lived quite near each other in very similar small terraced houses, both of which were very tidy and spotlessly clean when I visited.

The meetings were almost identical. Each widow wanted a simple, respectful service, with me doing the whole thing. The format was the same in both cases: music to come in to, an introduction, readings, a long tribute to the deceased, quiet time for reflection or prayer, committal, music to listen to, closing remarks with announcements, music to accompany us out of the chapel. Neither of them wanted poetry.

Even the men were similar, it seems. Both spent most of their working lives with one organisation (the Post Office in one case, a local manufacturing firm in the other); neither was bothered about holidays; both enjoyed a meal and a few drinks at the pub more than anything else; both were family men.

Although families are very clear in my mind during the time I work directly with them, these are the kind of everyday funerals where the details blur quickly once the service is over. But I remember these two because there was one difference, which seemed particularly striking against the background of their similarities.

I always ask families if they're having a get-together after the service, and, if so, whether they want me to announce it towards the end of the ceremony or whether they prefer to tell people themselves. Sometimes people prefer the latter approach because they can only cater for a certain number, or because there are particular individuals who they don't want to attend. But mostly, if people are planning a gathering, they ask me to announce it. And, again, these widows were no exception. But that was the last of the similarities.

'We're having it here,' Ben's widow Sheila told me. 'Heaven knows whether we'll fit everyone in.'

'They can queue down the street,' her friend Daisy said, cheerfully.

'We've made a list,' her other friend Liz said. 'We'll do the shopping the day before.'

'I think we'll be making sandwiches all the morning,' Sheila said.

'And getting the place ready,' Daisy said. 'We're having drinks in the kitchen and food in here.'

'I hope the weather's good,' Liz said. 'Then they can use the garden.'

We all looked through the tiny conservatory to the small square of grass.

'They'll have to go out there to smoke, anyway,' Sheila said.

'It's tricky,' Daisy said, 'because you never know how many will come back after a funeral.'

'We should have enough,' Liz said.

'If not,' Sheila said, 'it's family hold back.'

'That's right,' Daisy said. 'We'll go easy. And we can always knock up a few more sarnies if need be.'

'Or go up the chippie afterwards, when everyone's gone,' Liz said.

'We're going to chill out, then, Zinnia,' Sheila said. 'I've got a couple of bottles of wine in, and when we've done all the clearing up, we'll sit in here and have a few drinks and something to eat ourselves.'

'Chips are good after a hard day,' Daisy said.

'Very sustaining,' Liz said.

Sheila looked at her friends, her eyes deep pools of affection. 'I think that'll be the best bit,' she said.

Dave's widow Gill had a very different approach. 'We'll be over the road at the pub afterwards,' she said.

'He loved that pub,' her friend Mary said.

'He used to say it was his second home,' her other friend Fiona said.

'I've asked Baz and Karen to do a proper spread,' Gill said. 'We've been to a couple of funeral dos there, and they usually put on a free spread, but it's only sandwiches and crisps and that. I want a proper spread for Dave. I don't care what it costs, you only get one funeral.'

'What are you having?' Mary said.

'A full salad buffet and a carvery, and puddings too. And I've asked them to keep it going all day, to keep refreshing it. I think they're getting some help in.'

'Prawns?' Fiona said.

'Of course!' Gill said. 'Zinnia, prawns were Dave's favourite food of all time. If we ever ate out, or got a take-away, he would always have prawns if he could. In fact, when we went over the road, he usually had prawn cocktail followed by scampi and chips.'

'So would you like me to announce it,' I asked, 'or are you going to tell people yourselves?'

'Announce it for us, please,' Gill said. 'And I realise some people will have to go back to work, but could you say that we'll be there all day and all evening, and there will be plenty of food available, and people are welcome to come and go, and we'd be really grateful if as many people as possible could at least look in and have a quick bite and a drink with us to celebrate Dave's memory in his favourite pub.'

'No problem,' I said.

I was invited to attend both wakes, but declined: I hate going to them, I always feel like a prop in the wrong play, so I have some carefully crafted excuses that never let me down. But I heard afterwards that both were, in their own terms, successful. Sheila's house did manage to contain all her guests, the weather was good, the food held out, and everyone was gone by 6 o'clock. The party for Dave went on until 11 pm, almost everyone who had been at the funeral looked in at one point or another, and many people were there for the duration.

But I still wonder, when everything else was so similar, why the difference? Was it something in the mens' personalities that didn't come through to me? It didn't seem as if Ben was any more of a family man than Dave, or Dave any more of a party animal than Ben; but perhaps this was the case. Or was there a financial difference? Had one family always been profligate and the other thrifty? And, if so, which was which?

I'll never know for sure. But one thing I do know is that I find working with families endlessly fascinating because of these quirks and oddities.

Zinnia Considers Misbehaving

2008-02-04T08:32:00.000Z

I hadn’t worked with Shane before. No, not that Shane – this one was a funeral director with Jarwood’s, a firm in a town outside my usual area. I’d done a few funerals for them years ago, when there weren’t so many humanist celebrants around, but I hadn’t heard from them since 2001. And I didn’t remember Shane.

‘I was with Pemberton’s then,’ he said. ‘But my dad runs Jarwood’s, so I always knew I’d end up here.’

Telephone in one hand and mouse in the other, I’d been checking my files. ‘Is your dad called Mike?’

‘That’s the one. You’ve got a good memory.’

‘I’ve got a computer,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘That’ll be handy, I can email you the confirmation.’

‘Blimey, a funeral director who uses email! Do you know how rare you are? Actually, I guess you probably do.’

‘Indeed. It’s a very traditional trade, ours, isn’t it?’

‘Which reminds me, why me? Is everyone away over your way?’

‘No, it’s because the funeral’s at Scopthorne. Gordon grew up round there, his parents were cremated there, and he told his wife Margaret that he wanted to be near them.’

Shane gave me the details of the family who wanted a straightforward funeral for Gordon, a man in his mid-80s who had died in a nursing home (which, as usual, the family couldn’t praise highly enough and asked me to thank publicly for their unfailing support and compassion). After I’d visited Margaret I emailed Shane to check he was taking the CDs to the crematorium and asking whether he knew they wanted a donations plate for Age Concern. He emailed back to say yes to the first and no to the second, that he’d sort it out and thanks for getting in touch.

I didn’t think any more about Shane. I knew from our brief contact that he was professional, efficient and caring, in common with the vast majority of FDs around here. He had a deep voice with a local accent, so I assumed he was also considerably older than me and lugubrious, in common with most of the male FDs around here.

On the day of the funeral, the vicar before me had used every minute of his allocated half-hour, so by the time I had put my script on the lectern and run through the music cues with the chapel attendant, the hearse was already outside. I went out and had a quick chat with Margaret while the funeral director’s men were getting the coffin ready. Then I looked around for Shane.

A hand in a black leather glove touched my forearm. I looked around into a black-coated chest. That was unusual as I am fairly tall. My eyes travelled upwards and met dazzling blue eyes set in a smooth-skinned angular face – think Viggo Mortensen crossed with Daniel Day-Lewis.

‘Zinnia?’

I closed my jaw with a snap. ‘You must be Shane.’ Bloody hell, he was gorgeous! I was grateful to my well-trained voice for sounding calm and professional. My stomach, less well trained, was doing jumps and leaps and backflips to try to get my attention. I worked on ignoring it.

Shane held out his hand and took mine in a warm grasp with a smile that made my knees begin to melt. I couldn’t believe this. There was an open-backed hearse with coffin, funeral director’s men at the ready, grieving family and friends, and me ready to dissolve in a puddle of desire.

‘Good to meet you. Shall we make a start?’

‘Whatever would please you,’ I breathed, gazing up into his mesmerising eyes, feeling my heart race faster as his face came closer to mine and...

Back in real life, I simply said ‘yes,’ and we got on with the funeral. But all the way through the service I was aware of Shane standing at the back of the chapel, legs crossed loosely at the ankle and one shoulder resting against the wall, making his standard-issue long black overcoat look sensational. I tried to focus on the family, but I couldn’t help hoping that Shane, too, liked what he saw.

At the end I went out first, as usual, and waited for Shane to lead the family out. I wondered whether he would come out first, alone, like some FDs did. But alas, it was not to be. He arrived with Margaret on his arm.

Shane took my hand and gave it a gentle shake. ‘Thank you, Zinnia,’ he said, with a laser blast from his entrancing eyes. And then they were gone, others coming behind, wanting to shake my hand and say ‘thank you’ or ‘goodbye’.

I went back into the chapel, wondering whether I could find an excuse for another word with Shane. The chapel attendant was packing up the CDs. Maybe I could take them out to him and persuade him to ravish me on the flower terrace, or carry me away in his hearse to a life of… gadzooks! Thwarted again. One of Shane’s men came in to fetch the CDs, and I couldn’t think of any other pretext.

I picked up my papers, put them in my briefcase and headed for my car. It was time to get back to reality. While I drove I made the whole thing into a story in my mind, and by the time I reached home I’d stopped feeling as if I needed the air-conditioning on in the car. But it did occur to me that it was just as well Shane works a long way away, where I won’t run into him often.

Knitting Patterns

2008-01-28T07:40:00.001Z

When I'm working with families, planning funerals, I often hear the sentiments 'It was meant to be,' or 'things happen for a reason.' The former seems odd coming from self-defined non-believers – 'meant' how, by whom? The latter is usually an attempt to put a positive spin on a negative happening and, while I applaud the positivity, I'm not convinced by the sentiment. What reason? It hints at some broader design, and therefore designer, that I find hard to believe in.

Young people seem much happier with the concept of chance. 'That's so random,' is a favourite saying of several people I know in their 20s. And yet I wonder whether they're talking about the same thing.

In the course of my work, I recently met Judy who had been my neighbour in the city 20 years ago. We had lived next door to each other for five years and got to know each other well, sharing cups of tea at each other's kitchen tables, lending and borrowing, sometimes going out together in the evening to the cinema or pub. When I moved away to the country we didn't keep in touch. But I remembered her fondly, and it seems she felt the same, because she asked whether we could go for lunch together after our meeting.

At lunch she told me an extraordinary story. She had been in the habit of taking a holiday with a group of friends to Chania in Crete every summer, but one year, soon after I'd moved away, for a variety of reasons, none of the others could go. She was fed up about this, thought of going on her own but felt apprehensive, and hadn't made her mind up when one day at work a colleague, who she only knew slightly, popped out of the lift and said 'hello, Judy, do you want to come on holiday to Chania with me this summer?' They had spent a fortnight together and, during that time, Judy had met the love of her life.

'Thirteen years ago,' she said, 'and we've been living together for twelve of those years. I've never been so happy. But when I think about how it started, I still find it hard to believe.' I waited for her to say 'it was meant to be,' or 'things happen for a reason.' But she didn't. 'It was so random,' she said.

Judy is happy to take the intervention of chance in her life at face value. Others ascribe meaning or reason to such events. But in doing so, aren't people doing themselves a disservice? Isn't it we who are good at finding meaning and reason in events and their relationship to other events? Isn't that how we create the stories of our lives, by paying attention to the things that matter and connect, and ignoring irrelevant flotsam and jetsam?

Book Reviews

2008-01-21T12:09:00.000Z

I don't know whether anyone has noticed that I don't write book reviews on this blog. A lot of my friends in the Novel Racers, and other writer/bloggers, post regular reviews of each others' and other people's books. I always enjoy reading and discussing books, so why don't I post reviews here? I think it's partly because my critical faculties are fairly well-developed, and I don't wish to offend. I can almost always find something good to say about a book, but equally, I usually find something to criticise – constructively, in most cases. But it seems fairly pointless posting a critique of a book that has already been published. Even if the author agreed with my critique, it would be too late for them to do anything about it. And it would almost certainly be too late to use my feedback to improve their next book, because that's probably finished and on its way to the publishers by the time the one under discussion has been read and reviewed.

I do read books by the Novel Racers and other bloggers, and I email the author to give them whichever of my thoughts I think might be appreciated and/or useful. This seems to be acceptable; there are only two blogger authors who have not replied to my emails (no, I'm not telling you who they were!) and I don't think it's because I upset them. At least, I hope it isn't. I do try to be diplomatic! I know from experience how much work goes into writing a book, and how horrible criticism and rejection can feel. This is probably why the etiquette on blogs seems to be only to post positive reviews, yet doing this would feel false to me. So I don't review books on here at all.

But I'm going to make an exception now, for three reasons. The first is that the book isn't published yet, so the author can use my feedback to make improvements if she wants to. The second is that I have hardly any constructive criticism to offer; I like her work very much as it stands. The third is that she has reached the semi-finals of Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award competition, and I want to persuade as many of you as possible to read the short excerpt that is available online and write her a review yourselves, because I know she works very hard at her writing and I think she deserves a chance in this competition.

Here's the review I'll be posting on Amazon. (It isn't there yet – because of the anonymity issue, I had to create an account in Zinnia's name, then buy some books (oh, the hardship!), then wait 24 hours – but it should be there some time tomorrow.)

Dead Line fizzes with originality. Settings are quickly brought to life with a few deft strokes. The characters are engaging and the dialogue witty; I laughed out loud twice. There is a huge amount of energy and verve to the writing, and almost every paragraph raises an intriguing question in the reader's mind. It is a very good sign when the beginning of a book goes at break-neck speed like this. I was so disappointed when it stopped suddenly at the end of the excerpt, and reading the author's synopsis only heightened my feeling of disappointment, because it raised even more questions that I want answers to! I am not a great fan of urban fantasy as a genre, but the author handles her unusual subject matter with a light and humorous touch that makes it a very appealing read. The compelling characters drive the action, and I am longing to find out more about the relationships between them and what happens to them.

So, blogreaders, if you like the sound of that, please go here, download the free excerpt for yourself, read and review. Let's support a fellow blogger!

And what about the constructive criticism, I hear you cry? Well, I did spot a couple of typos, and I had a couple of ideas that might improve specific paragraphs in very small ways, but that was it. I'll be emailing Rachel directly about those. And I wish her the very best of luck in the competition.

Habit Rabbit

2008-01-14T08:16:00.001Z

Soooo, how many of you have stuck to your New Year resolutions? Come on, hands up. Hmmm. Thought so.

Not easy, is it? You know what helps? Don’t make ‘em in the first place, suckers!

Keeping to a new resolution requires you to change your habits, which is very difficult. (Unless you’re a nun or a monk, in which case you simply have to take off your habit, put it in the wash, and find a clean one for tomorrow.) It usually takes several weeks, at the very least, to install a new habit – and, as an ex-smoker, I can confirm that some habits take years to change permanently.

However, one thing I have observed over the years is that the news of a death or a terminal illness can bring about a change in habits. For some people, hearing that someone close to them has died or is terminally ill – or that they themselves are unlikely to live much longer – can act as a wake-up call. This can often have very positive results. Long before I started doing funerals, I had a friend, Belinda, who was always talking about how she wanted to go to university. She had left school ten years before, with adequate A levels, and had decided to have a gap year to save up some money before going on to university. Somehow she had never quite got around to stopping work and restarting her studies, although she dreamed about it constantly. Then her mother died suddenly, which made her realise that her own time was limited, and galvanised her into action.

Another example was my parents' friend Philip who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in his mid-50s and given six months to live. His wife asked what he wanted to do with his life, and he said he'd always wanted to learn to play the banjo. So they bought him an instrument, found him a teacher, and he enjoyed it very much.

There are many similar stories in this article. I find it fascinating that some people want to do more – to achieve something they've never achieved, or find a way to leave their mark on the world – while others want the opposite, to slow down and experience life more fully, appreciate its smaller gifts. But there's one part that worries me, and it's something I've seen expressed several times in Blogland too. It's the exhortation to tell everyone you love that you love them, because if you don't, one day it will be too late.

I'm not a verbally demonstrative person, generally speaking. I don't end every phone call with 'love you, bye' – in fact I don't end ANY phone calls that way (unless I'm taking the mickey). The only person I ever say 'I love you' to is Top Bloke, and then not very often (treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen, that's my motto). If I told everyone I love that I loved them, they would think I was after their money. I'm just too damn British to go around saying soppy stuff. My family and friends know I love them because I keep in touch, remember their favourite foods and produce them when they visit, don't suggest they come with me to the ballet if they hate ballet, don't expect them to chat on the phone during a crucial match involving their favourite football team, and so on.

Nevertheless, this 'tell them soon or it might be too late' business has been bothering me for a while. But Gladys put me right. I met her last week to plan her brother Victor's funeral. Vic had been a bit of a loner since his divorce many years ago, always happy to socialise in the pub but never wanting visitors at home or liking to visit other people's homes – unless he could do something practical to help them. An excellent woodworker and DIY enthusiast, many people relied on him to put up shelves, fit cat flaps, fit new locks to a door, all those odd jobs around the house, he could and cheerfully would turn his hand to anything. But he wouldn't sit down and have a cup of tea or a meal afterwards, he'd turn up, do the job and go away again.

'He's always been like it,' Gladys told me. 'Even as a child. I'm older than him, and I can remember, he would help other children with their homework, or meet up with them for a game of football, but he was never one for just hanging around, mooching, you know, like kids do.'

'Did you grow up round here?' I asked.

'No, we were born in Scotland,' she said. 'We moved here when Vic was 12 and I was 15, Dad got a good offer of work, and we've been here ever since. But that reminds me, we've got a cousin, Morag, she's coming down for the funeral. She hasn't seen Vic for years, or spoken to him, they hadn't fallen out or anything, but you can imagine he wasn't one for keeping in touch. And she's not much better. It's just one of those things that happens in families, sometimes. But I'd like you to mention that she's come all that way. Because, just because they hadn't spoken, it didn't mean they didn't care, did it?'

I was so grateful to Gladys for showing me that I don't need to start acting like, well, an actor, just in case someone close to me dies in the next day or two. So grateful, in fact, that I'd like to say: thanks, Gladys. Love you. Bye!

Sound Advice Needed

2008-01-07T07:06:00.000Z

I have a work-related dilemma and I would appreciate advice, particularly from those with a religious/spiritual outlook. I know there are some people among my readers who define themselves as religious and/or spiritual, and if there are any I don't know about, this would be a good time to de-lurk. I'd be very happy to hear from anyone else, as well; in fact anyone at all who has any advice on the question I am about to pose.

But first, some background. When I am working with families to help them plan a funeral, a central part of my job is to take them through various options: do you want music; if so, what; have you thought about poetry; does anyone want to read a poem or share some memories on the day, or do you want me to do it all; that kind of thing. People seem to find this helpful, particularly those who haven't been involved in planning a funeral before. I often get comments towards the end of meetings along the lines of 'we were dreading this but you've made it really easy.' I don't think that's a comment on my personal qualities, but a compliment to the British Humanist Association's excellent training, during which I was taught how to break the process down into digestible bite-sized chunks.

One option is for a short period of silence, during which people who are religious can say their prayers to themselves if they want to, or people who wish can meditate, or anyone can remember the person who has died in their own way or just think their thoughts if they prefer. I offer this as an option, and the vast majority of families choose it. I think I've had it turned down a couple of times on the grounds of the deceased being vehemently anti-religion, and once because there were only going to be six people at the funeral none of whom were religious. Otherwise it's usually accepted as a way to help everyone feel included.

Twice in the last week I have worked with families who have chosen to give people the option of private prayer/meditation/reflection, but to music rather than silence. In one case this was tranquil classical music, in the other a raucous show tune. So here's the question. If you pray or meditate, would you feel able to do this with music going on? And, if so, would the type of music make any difference?

I don't know whether the disciplines of prayer or meditation carve tracks into the mind that can then be followed at will under most circumstances, or whether silence is a necessary aid to prayer or meditation. I suspect the latter, because churches, temples, ashrams etc are in my experience mostly quiet places. And of course I will still follow the wishes of the families I work with, even if what they choose isn't what I would regard as ideal. But I’m sure people come to the funerals I conduct primarily because they care for the person who has died, or for someone close to him or her, not because they are humanists (although of course some will be). And while the needs of the people I work directly with are my top priority, I want to include everyone, as far as I am able. So I'd be grateful for any input you can give to increase my knowledge here, so that I can better represent a wide range of needs when I'm working with families.

Thank you!

If

2007-12-31T09:19:00.000Z

If you made friends, at school, with two big-hearted boys.

If one boy was an extrovert guitarist, and the other an introvert who was happiest behind a keyboard.

If they found that they loved to play music together, and spent most of their spare time doing so, and chose other people’s songs to sing, and laughed a lot, and wrote songs of their own, and drove each other mad sometimes, and began doing gigs, and dreamed of being successful professional musicians.

If you were a listener who took joy in their joy and liked to help them advertise their gigs.

If they went to the same university so they could continue playing music together, and you went there too because it offered the courses you wanted to take.

If they grew into kind men, the guitarist showing his kindness in flamboyant ways such as picking up the bill for group restaurant meals or taking his current girlfriend on a surprise city break in another country, the keyboard player quieter in this as in everything else, going with you to advise when you bought your first car and then, when you got home, a little shell-shocked by the amount of money you’d spent and still not entirely sure you’d picked the best deal, making you a cup of tea without you having to ask, carefully, just the way you liked it.

If they got better and better at playing music and at living, becoming more realistic in the process, finding office jobs after university, learning that the life of a professional musician was out of reach, but that they could entertain many, many people by playing in pubs and at parties.

If they found a bass player, a drummer and a fiddler to help them with this.

If you went to their gigs from time to time, along the years, and felt at home there, with the music that was always the same and always changing, making a bridge from the past through the present to the future.

If in middle age the guitarist told the keyboard player, in complete confidence, that he had been diagnosed with an acute form of leukaemia.

If the keyboard player then told this to you, because you had been his lover for many years now, and anything told to one of you in confidence was always understood to be shared with the other, and it never, ever, went any further.

If you held the keyboard player through seismic sobs that made his body ache.

If you went with him to their next gig and, your eyes sharpened with knowledge, saw that the guitarist was a little thinner, and a little more breathless, but still his very own colourful self.

If the music was as joyous as ever, the guitarist, as always, amusing himself on stage by assigning solos to band members in different orders, never the same twice, to frustrate and confuse and annoy them so they would play more passion into the music.

If the partygoers were all dancing, children and parents and grandparents and partners and brothers and sisters and friends, the floor shaking to the beat of their feet and a smile on every face.

If the evening ended with a quiet track, Summertime, and a couple of couples danced close and slow.

If, when the song finished, the bass player and the drummer and the fiddler slid away to the bar in a jovial trio.

If the guitarist then began strumming an introduction, and the keyboard player picked up the tune quick as a lick, and they settled into a lazy swinging groove, and your throat closed as you realised they were going to end with What A Wonderful World.

If the guitarist sang his love of life, paced a little slower than usual as if he wanted to make it last, the keyboard player enhancing every single note, both facing out into the room but ears tuned only to each other, in perfect time and harmony.

If as the last chord chimed they shared a look that held a lifetime of affection.

Would the walls of your heart bulge outward, and the reservoirs in your head brim close to overflow?

A Cold, Cold Christmas

2007-12-24T08:14:00.000Z

At this time of year I think of all the people I've worked with in the last twelve months, going through their first Christmas without their parent, grandparent, spouse/partner, sibling, or – most difficult of all – child. 'First' isn't always 'worst'; sometimes the first time is numb, automatic, and the second Christmas, when the numbness has worn off and everyone else seems to have forgotten your grief, is more painful. But often it's the first that's the hardest.

I think this is because the past infiltrates the present and pulls bereaved people backwards. When we're grieving, we are the ones who have to make the acts of separation. We have to create and perform our festive rituals (or hold fast to the lack of them), whatever they may (or may not) be, without recourse to the person who, this year, is missing in inaction, tucked up in their nice warm urn or comfy coffin, damn them, not having to struggle through the rigours of day-to-day life, leaving us to struggle twice as hard. By conducting ourselves through the days of our lives, we can feel as if we're betraying our dead because we are moving further from them, leaving them behind. They left us and, in so doing, have forced us to leave them. But often we don't want to, it's so very, very hard to move ourselves forwards against the pull of the past, and our lack of desire to do this saps our drive and motivation and leads to the apathy of grief.

That apathy can feel like a terrible imperative. 'I don't want to do anything.' The longing to be under the duvet, shut away from the demands of the world. 'I can't be bothered.' The wish to be left alone and then, when the wish is granted, the misery of loneliness and grief combined. Everyone grieves differently, but most people go through some version of this. And it's particularly harsh at Christmas, when the demands of the world are so much greater than at other times. I think this even applies to people who don't 'do' Christmas (those living in a Christian country, anyway) because resistance to the prevailing mood still requires effort.

Bereaved people often wail 'how long will I feel like this? When will I feel better? When will I feel like me again?' There are no answers to these questions – but the longer you give in to the apathy for, the longer it will take. (Please note: this is not some kind of 'pull your socks up' directive.) If you are suffering from grief-related apathy, whether severe or mild, I suggest three things.

Recognise it and name it. Talk to people about it. Don't be ashamed of it; there is no need.
Set yourself achievable goals. If your apathy is severe, these may be very small. Getting washed, dressed, out of the house and going for a ten-minute walk on your own may be a major achievement. It's often easier to do things when you can draw on other people's motivation, when they arrange and encourage and cajole. If ten minutes of activity on your own account is all you can manage in a day, that's fine; head back to the duvet afterwards. But try to keep managing that, each day, until you can add another goal – and so on.
Notice the good parts of your life. I don't mean 'count your blessings' (although you can do that too, if you like), I mean pay attention to times when the apathy shifts, if only for a moment: when something makes you laugh out loud; when you talk to a friend and become so pleased about their good news or concerned by their troubles that you forget your sadness; when sunshine or good food or companionship lift your spirits, if only by a millimetre. Because these parts will increase, and the sad, painful, difficult parts will decrease. It will be slow, and grief never really goes away, but over time we find ways to round off its sharp edges so that living with it becomes bearable.

Baby steps. That's what it's about. I'm thankful this year isn't a 'first Christmas without' for me; I've been through enough of them to know how horrible it can be. For those of you going through it in 2007, I send love and sympathy, and hope it will be better than you fear.

Season Of Goodwill

2007-12-17T07:48:00.000Z

I watched the hearse crawl down the drive towards me, followed by four assorted cars. As the cars peeled off into the car park, the hearse slowed even more, to give the mourners time to park and walk over to the crematorium. I wondered whether funeral directors did special slow driving courses. No limo and no crowds – Des's funeral wasn't going to be a grand occasion.

The hearse arrived under the canopy as the mourners were coming down the path. Perfect timing; the funeral director's men would be able to get Des's coffin onto the bier as the mourners assembled. Gill, the funeral director, gave some instructions and then came over to me and pressed an envelope into my hand.

'Funny family,' she said, sotto voce.

'You're telling me,' I muttered.

We exchanged the look that funeral professionals use when they'd like to share a smile but it's not appropriate, a kind of tightening at the corners of the eyes while the mouth stays firmly in line.

I spotted Margaret and Carmen, both dressed in best black togs, smart shoes and sad faces on. A large motherly woman was holding Margaret's hand, with two small boys trailing behind, looking pale and uncomfortable in dark suits.

'Hello, Carmen, are you feeling better?' I said.

She nodded, and one of the small boys let out a volley of coughs.

'Annie's two have got it now,' Margaret said. 'This is my sister, Annie, this is Zinnia, the lady who's doing the funeral for Dad.'

We shook hands and said our 'pleased to meet you's.

'Sandra's here too, with her daughter,' Margaret said, jerking her thumb to the right. I saw a thin taut woman dressed in beige, like a sepia copy of Margaret. A younger version of herself was standing next to her, not touching, the pair of them watching Des's coffin as if it might misbehave.

'We're having a little wake afterwards, back at mine,' Margaret said. 'Mince pies and mulled wine, seeing as how Dad loved Christmas. Would you like to come?'

I'd rather swim with crocodiles, I thought. 'That's very kind of you, but I'm afraid I've arranged to visit another family, and I don't want to let them down.' Which was an outright lie.

Margaret and Annie made polite 'aaahs' of disappointment.

Jane came over. 'Is everyone here, Margaret?'

Margaret looked around. 'I think so.'

'Shall we get going, then?'

I took my place in front of the coffin and I could hear Jane organizing people behind me. I wished I could look round and see how she was managing.

'When you're ready, Zinnia,' she said, which is funeral-director-speak for 'off you go.'

As there were only ten or twelve people present, Jane took Margaret into the front left pew and left the others to find their own places. Carmen, Annie and the two little boys joined Margaret. There was room for Sandra and her daughter too, but they chose to sit in the front right pew, arms folded, eyes on the coffin. As I read the tribute to Des, Margaret and Annie smiled, laughed, and occasionally dabbed away a tear. Carmen looked sad, and the boys looked as if they were trying to behave, most of the time. Sandra and her daughter sat still as tree-trunks, their faces impassive. At the committal, Margaret and Annie wept, Carmen joined in, and the boys began to look worried. They all huddled together for comfort, arms around each other, hands holding hands. Sandra and her daughter, across the aisle, didn't move.

At the end I went out first, as usual, and waited for the mourners. Jane brought Margaret out, tears still running down her face. She took my hand in both of hers. 'Thank you, Zinnia, that was perfect.'

Annie came up and put one arm around each of our shoulders. 'Didn't she do a good job?' she asked Margaret, who nodded.

I was aware of Sandra and her daughter walking straight past with faces of granite. Annie and Margaret saw them, too.

Annie released us and rolled her eyes in exasperation. 'Is she coming back to the house?'

'Hope not,' Margaret said, letting go of my hand. 'Probably. She'll think she ought to.'

'She won't stay long.'

They walked on down the ramp, I shook hands with a couple of other mourners and it was over. Although I knew so little of what had happened in that family, I was surprised to find that I pitied Sandra. But I wasn't sorry to see the backs of them all. I felt as if their implacable antipathy had left a stain on me that would take some time and effort to remove.

Family Minefield

2007-12-10T08:56:00.000Z

I find doing funerals at this time of year harder than at other times. There’s something about the approach of Christmas, with its expectations of family togetherness and joy, that casts the sadness and grief of bereavement into sharp-edged shadow.

Margaret was a perfectly groomed woman with hard eyes and a small house with everything in its place. Her eight-year-old daughter Carmen was curled in an armchair in front of the TV, pale and listless, and coughing like she smoked sixty cigarettes a day.

‘Are you feeling poorly, Carmen?’ I asked.

She perked up for a moment. ‘I was sick in the night,’ she said. ‘So I can’t go to school today.’

‘That’s a pity,’ I said.

She caught my grin. ‘Yeah. Shame.’ She made a little smile herself before turning back to the TV.

Margaret’s father Des had died the previous week, her mother Anne 15 years earlier. Her father had been 87, but in reasonably good health and living independently in the next street, so his death had come as a shock.

‘How many people do you think will be at the funeral?’ I asked.

‘Not many,’ Margaret said. ‘Dad was very self-contained, he wasn’t a particularly sociable man. He said he’d seen enough people in the war to last him a lifetime. And he didn’t live round here until a few years ago. So probably about eight or ten.’

‘Auntie Annie’s coming,’ Carmen said.

Margaret’s eyes softened a little. ‘You’re looking forward to that, aren’t you, sweetheart?’

Carmen nodded, her attention still mostly on the TV.

‘Annie’s my sister. She lives in Cornwall, but we’re always on the phone, and we visit each other as much as we can. She’s coming up at the weekend and staying for the week. I can’t wait to see her, to be honest.’

‘So were there just the two of you?’

‘No, there’s my other sister Sandra. She’s still in Newcastle where we were born. I don’t know if she’ll be coming, and I don’t care. I haven’t seen her in 14 years.’

‘Does she know your father has died?’

‘I asked the funeral director to send her a letter.’ Margaret’s face shut like a portcullis, so I thought I’d try a different line of questioning.

‘What about grandchildren?’

‘Dad had seven of those. Annie’s got two, Rory is eight like Carmen and Benjie is six. I’ve got four, two are at school, there’s Roxie who is ten and Annabel is thirteen. Sandra has one daughter, Caroline, who would be 15 now. And then there’s my oldest daughter, Leah, but I don’t know if she will be there.’

‘You threw her out, didn’t you, Mum?’ Carmen sounded proud and smug.

‘I did. Right little madam, she is. Went too far.’

‘Er, right, I see,’ I said. Although I didn’t.

‘When Mum died,’ Margaret said, ‘Dad was in a terrible state. As you’d expect. He’d never done any cooking or washing or shopping for food, he didn’t know where to start. Sandra lived a few miles away from him, but I did more for him than she did, even though it’s three hours’ drive from here. Annie used to fly up every fortnight and spend the weekend with him, make sure the fridge was stocked up, take him out to the pub and keep him company. OK, Sandra was eight months pregnant when Mum died, and it was hard for her with a new baby. But it’s not that hard.’

‘So did he move down to be nearer to you?’

‘Yes. His sight was deteriorating and he needed more support. Which he was never going to get from Sandra.’ Her face was expressionless. ‘Annie would have had him but he didn’t want to go that far. He liked to visit, though, we used to take him in the car with us, didn’t we, Carmen?’

There was no answer from the armchair, where Carmen seemed to have fallen asleep. Margaret gave me a fleeting smile.

‘Kids,’ she said.

‘Talking of which, let’s go back a bit, what was Des like as a dad?’

The portcullis came down again and I had a feeling I’d asked another wrong question.

‘Our family,’ Margaret said, enunciating each word, ‘are not very close. Apart from me and Annie. And the kids get on fine, mine and hers. But my parents, that was a different story.’

One you’re not going to tell me, then, I thought. I wasn’t sure where to go next.

Carmen woke up with a volley of coughs. Margaret went into the kitchen, came back with a jar of honey and a teaspoon, and coaxed her to take some to soothe her throat.

‘Mum,’ Carmen said, as soon as she could speak, ‘I was having a dream about when I made a Christmas card for Granddad at school. And I remembered I really did make one for him. What shall I do with it now?’

Margaret, still kneeling by the armchair, moved her body as if to put her arms around her daughter, but then seemed to realise that she still had an open jar of honey in one hand and a sticky teaspoon in the other. She looked at Carmen waiting trustfully for an answer, opened her mouth, shut it again, and turned to me. Her portcullis had disappeared in a fog of helplessness.

‘I don’t know, love,’ she said, an appeal in her eyes.

‘Will you be going to see Granddad?’ I asked.

‘I will. I don’t know if Carmen – ‘

‘I want to go too,’ Carmen said.

‘Is it OK?’ Margaret asked. ‘Can children go?’

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘if you’re happy about it.’

‘And then I can give Granddad his card,’ Carmen said.

Margaret’s face twisted as she fought back tears. ‘I’ve got him a card, too. And a present.’

Carmen got off the armchair, took the jar and the spoon from her mother’s hands, and put them on top of a newspaper on the sideboard. Then she knelt down on the floor and gave her mum a hug. Margaret’s tears won the fight and she folded up and sobbed.

Carmen patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘Don’t cry, Mum, you can give Granddad his card too. And his present.’

Margaret raised her head, laughing through her tears. ‘I don’t think he’ll have much use for a c-cordless phone with extra-large b-buttons. Who's he g-going to c-call? Ghostbusters?' She laughed and cried and hiccupped.

Carmen's face grew even paler. 'Mum?'

Margaret pulled herself together with a heroic effort. 'I'm all right, love,' she said. 'It's just, you know how Granddad loved Christmas.' She pulled Carmen into her lap and looked at me, her arms around her daughter. 'It really brought him out of himself. He turned into a big kid. He'd play with Carmen all day, all her new games and toys.'

'I miss Granddad, mum.' Carmen's lips were trembling.

Margaret gathered her into a closer hug. 'I do too.' A lone tear slid down the side of her nose. 'And I love Christmas as well. But I'm dreading it this year.'

She was such an odd mixture. Grieving for her dad, evidently loving one sister and daughter, but rejecting the other sister and another daughter. I wondered what had happened in her family. Maybe the funeral and the festive season would provide an opportunity to heal some of their wounds. But, then again, maybe not.

Christmas Stuff Rant

2007-12-03T06:29:00.000Z

In the course of doing my Christmas shopping (yes, even us non-religious types, you know how it is) I received a catalogue entitled ‘Essentials By Post: Things you really need, practical and useful devices for the house, garden, DIY and travel.’ So, I thought, Tupperware pots in different sizes, probably; maybe a dibber or two; hammer and nails; that kind of thing. Sounds interesting. Let’s have a look.

Wheelie Bin Covers. WTF??? How are those essential? What’s wrong with the dribbly white-painted house number that everyone else uses?

Humorous Dog Leads. As long-term readers will know, I am not a dog person. But if I was, I don’t think I’d want to take my dog out using a pink lead that proclaims ‘One Of Us Is A Bitch’ or a blue lead declaring ‘One Of Us Has No Balls’.

Pocket Chainsaw. (I’m not making this up, honest.) Supplied in a handy belt pouch. (Not a pocket chainsaw, then, is it?) Essential for the serial killer. (OK, I did make that last bit up.)

Virtually Indestructible Remote Controlled Airplane. I’m sorry, but there is no way that is a practical and useful device for the house, garden, DIY or travel. Lots of fun to play with, OK, maybe that’s arguable. But essential? I don’t think so – and even the cheeky copywriter for this catalogue doesn’t claim that e.g. ‘a garden is just an empty airport lounge without one’.

A book. At last! That’ll be useful, surely. Or at least interesting… oh. It’s called 101 Things To Do In A Shed. Why??? ‘Whether you want to explore model-making, do simple experiments or simply enjoy a bit of peace and quiet with the radio and a glass of beer, this book is a treasure trove of great ideas.’ Now I can take the piss out of men about sheds, idiocy, and inability to multi-task as much as the next woman, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about men in my decades on this planet, it’s that when they want a bit of peace and quiet in their shed with the radio and a glass of beer, they do NOT need a book to suggest it to them. If I was a bloke, I’d find that blurb downright insulting. ‘Simple experiments,’ indeed.

We are encouraged to buy so much unnecessary and non-essential stuff that it boggles my mind. Our nearest supermarket has just expanded and now that, too, offers a ridiculous amount of stuff. The Christmas aisles are full of ‘humorous’ gift packs, toys that will break within days if not hours, ‘must-have’ decorations in co-ordinated colours, and so on.

I remember going to a smallish Sainsburys supermarket with a Czechoslovakian girl in the summer of 1990, less than a year after the country’s borders opened. Karolina was in her mid-20s, it was her first day in the decadent West, and she was fascinated by everything. I thought we would go on a picnic, and was walking around the store ticking off my mental list… baguette, cream cheese with garlic and herbs, cherry tomatoes, grapes… when I realised I’d lost her. I retraced my steps and found her transfixed in the biscuit aisle.

‘What’s up, Karolina?’ I asked her. ‘Are you OK?’

‘There are so many biscuits,’ she said. ‘When people in England want biscuits, how do they choose?’

‘Well, they probably think about whether they want fancy ones or plain ones, and whether they like chocolate on them or not, and then they…’

My voice trailed off, brought to a halt by her expression of disbelief.

‘In my country,’ she said, ‘we have two kinds of biscuit. If you don’t like one kind, you buy the other kind. It is very easy.’

I’m very glad she didn’t visit at Christmas time.

What's In A Name?

2007-11-26T06:40:00.000Z

I got this from Jen:

“List one fact, word or tidbit that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your first or middle name. You can theme it to your blog or make it general. Then tag one person for each letter of your name.”

So here goes.

Z – zest, that which I have for life, oh yes, and also that which I love to peel very thinly from lemons and oranges and simmer in a light sugar syrup with slivers of root ginger before using it to marinade fresh melon chunks for dessert, to be served chilled with top quality organic vanilla ice cream, yum.

I – imagination. Keith Johnstone said 'the imagination is our true self' and I reckon he had a point.

N – novel, of course, as in 'new' because I like new experiences and also as in 'book', mine, or I guess I can just about say 'books' now as one is with agents (see below) and the other is underway, see word counter which I very cleverly put on my sidebar all by myself with no help from anyone but now the whole Zokoutou site seems to have died so if it doesn't resurrect itself I'll have to start again with another one, dammit. (It was a bugger to update, anyway. At least, I thought it was. Just in case it does come back, if anyone knows an easy way to update it, please do reveal all in the comments box. Thank you.)

N – nudity. My favourite form of dress, but only when the weather is warm enough and nobody's looking (Top Bloke doesn't count). No, there will not be photos, so don't bother asking.

I – improvisation, also known as 'making it up as you go along', also known as 'the way I work', at least for first drafts. It's fun getting in touch with this part of the process again.

A – agents, love them all, especially the literary ones, especially the five who are reading the first three chapters of #1, if you've stopped by my blog here's a big kiss for you *mwah*

I'm not tagging people, because I hate being tagged – but I do like this new 'do it if you feel like it' vogue for these things, so: do it if you feel like it!

And have a wonderful week.

A Free Lunch

2007-11-19T11:51:00.000Z

The funerals went well. Les's cremation was straightforward. Reg's burial was drizzly, but the crowd were cheerful beneath their solemnity, and enjoyed casting clippings from Reg's beloved acers into the grave. Irene and Joan were at each other's sides throughout both services. They each sent me the usual thank-you card afterwards, and then I forgot about them as I moved on to work with other families.

Six months or so later, I got an email from Joan, asking me if I would like to meet up with her and Irene. She said they had both felt very supported by me during the process of planning and conducting their husbands' funerals, and would like to buy me lunch to say 'thank you'. Well, I'm anyone's for a free lunch, so we arranged to meet in a local Italian restaurant on a Friday.

I was greeted with warm hugs and offered a glass of wine. I didn't have much to do that afternoon so I said 'yes, please.' We sat down and chatted over a delightful meal, Joan and Irene reminiscing about their lives, gently mocking each other and taking turns to top each other's stories, in between asking me about my life and opinions. The restaurant was full, so the waiters didn't hurry us, and the sisters' perfect manners and ready laughter made it a very pleasant occasion.

We had reached the tiramisu when Joan broached the serious business of the meeting.

'Zinnia, you will do our funerals, won't you? When we go?'

The temperature at the table seemed to drop. Irene and Joan were both looking at me, their faces serious.

'The thing is,' Irene said, 'it's going to be terrible when there's only one of us left.'

'We don't have health problems or anything,' Joan said. 'But I'm 75 and Irene's 77. We can't go on for ever.'

'Of course I will,' I said. 'As long as I'm not away on holiday or anything.'

They looked at each other and heaved great sighs of relief.

'It will help,' Joan said.

'Knowing that it'll be you,' Irene said.

'One thing we won't have to worry about,' Joan said.

'And we'd like to meet you for lunch every now and again,' Irene said.

'You don't need to bribe me.'

'But we want to make sure you do our funerals,' Joan said.

Irene nodded. 'So we thought, y'know, every now and then, a few used notes in a plain brown envelope – '

Joan grinned. 'To make sure it's really you by our coffins.'

We were obviously heading back in the direction of banter. 'No need,' I said, returning their smiles. 'I'll happily cremate the pair of you.'

At which point I realised, we all realised, that the restaurant had gone very very quiet.

Stop Press

2007-11-12T07:42:00.000Z

Quick news update for those who are interested: I finished my novel 10 days ago. Last Monday afternoon I emailed a query and synopsis to six agents. Within 48 hours five of them had asked for sample chapters. That's five out of six! Within 48 hours!

Of course they may all still reject it. But I think it's a very positive start.

Proper post below.

Irene and Joan

2007-11-12T07:38:00.000Z

When I thought about visiting Irene and Joan, I imagined a pair of ordinary old women, identikit sisters, people you wouldn’t notice if you passed them in the street. How wrong I was. Irene was a large woman with big gold earrings and layered hippyish clothes in various shades of purple. Joan was slender and well-groomed, wearing a lemon-yellow trouser suit and high heels. But they were both in their 70s, and their personalities were alike.

Irene welcomed me into her home, and Joan offered me tea, moving around her sister’s kitchen with ease and familiarity.

‘We’re down to half a packet of biscuits, Reen,’ she said.

‘Put them on the list, then. And don’t call me Reen.’ She turned to me. ‘Sixty-six years I’ve been saying that to her. And she still does it.’

‘Only to wind you up,’ Joan said cheerfully. ‘Take a seat, Zinnia.’

I sat at the kitchen table, a warm radiator at my back. Irene brought a mug of tea and half a packet of plain chocolate digestives, Joan came behind her with two more mugs of tea. They sat opposite me, next to each other. Irene put her hand over Joan’s for a moment and looked at her.

‘All right?’

Joan nodded, and Irene withdrew her hand.

‘This must be very difficult for you both,’ I said.

‘It is,’ Joan said.

‘But it’ll be worse when one of us dies,’ Irene said.

‘True,’ Joan said. ‘Les and Reg, they were lovely men, we both had good marriages. We’ll tell you about them in a minute. But we’ve been there all our lives.’

‘You weren’t there for the first two years of mine,’ Irene said.

‘Be quiet, Reen, I’m the pedant round here. Although you’re right, of course. But you wouldn’t have been taking much notice then.’

‘True,’ Irene said. ‘We always thought we’d outlive them.’

‘And we have.’

They exchanged a look again, seeming to communicate as much without words as they did with them. I got my laptop out and decided on a safe opening gambit.

‘Have you always lived in Ambleford, then?’

‘Yep,’ Irene said. ‘We grew up here, it was just the two of us. Joan married first, of course, being the one with the looks.’ She dug Joan in the ribs with her elbow and received a light slap in response. ‘Whereas I, being the one with the brains, took my time deciding.’

Joan pretended to ignore her sister and fixed her eyes on mine. ‘When Les and I married, we moved in with his mum and dad to begin with. That was quite common at the time. Then when we’d saved up enough we bought a little house in Bowmore Crescent.’

‘And when I married Reg,' Irene said, 'he moved in with my mum and dad for a couple of years, and then we bought one too!’

‘In the same street?’ I asked.

Irene and Joan shared another of their looks.

‘That’s right,’ Irene said. ‘Just a few doors away.’

‘In and out of each other’s houses, we were,’ Joan said. ‘And the kids, too, once they came along.’

‘We each had two, like our parents did,’ Irene said. ‘A boy and a girl for me, and two boys for Joan. All born within five years of each other.’

‘And then later, when we could afford it, we moved to bigger houses in this street.’

‘And we were with each other all through our pregnancies and labours. They didn’t let the men in, in those days.’

‘They wouldn’t have wanted to come in, would they?’ Joan grinned. ‘Les couldn’t have coped.’

‘No. And Reg would have hated it. He was an electrician, very good with his hands. And I was a nurse. He always said he didn’t know how I could do my job. He thought he had the easy one.’

‘I think he was right,’ Joan said. ‘Lucky you were a nurse, though, wasn’t it, as things turned out?’

‘Yes.’ Irene turned to me. ‘You see, Reg had a serious head injury a few years ago. He was pruning the apple tree and fell off the ladder, landed on his head, silly chump. He had a form of dementia after that.’

‘It’s been hard for Irene,’ Joan said. ‘She couldn’t leave the house.’

‘I could. It was Reg who couldn’t.’

‘He got terribly anxious if he had to go out. Really panicky, hard to manage.’

‘But he was okay at home. Except he couldn’t remember things.’

‘Like how to make tea. Or where the bathroom was.’

‘But it didn’t bother him, did it? I didn’t mind helping him. He knew who I was. I’m not sure I could have managed if he hadn’t.’

‘And he still enjoyed life. He always enjoyed a glass of port and a piece of Stilton, didn’t he, Irene?’

‘It was his favourite supper-time snack.’ She smiled, remembering.

Joan leaned forward. ‘Irene did a marvellous job looking after Reg. You must say that, Zinnia.’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ Irene said. ‘Anyone would have done the same.’

‘No they would not!’ Joan said. ‘You looked after that man with such devotion.’

‘He would have done it for me,’ Irene said, and then dissolved into giggles.

‘He would not,’ Joan said, chortling. ‘He was useless when you were ill, it was always me that looked after you.’

‘All right then, he wouldn’t. But he would have done what he could.’

‘You see, Zinnia, Les and Reg, they were good men, they did all the man stuff like DIY, sorting out the cars, they both worked all their working lives, Les was a teacher like me, that’s how we met. But there were some things they weren’t very good at. Like looking after sick wives or children. Changing nappies.’

‘Christmas,’ said Irene. ‘Remembering birthdays. Buying presents.’

‘Arranging holidays. Cooking, on the whole. Although Les liked to run the barbecue here in the summertime.’

‘So Joan and I have always been a team. And we’re still doing it, now they’re dead. Organising everything.’ Irene turned to her sister. ‘I think it’s worse for you, though, Les going so suddenly.’

‘He didn’t suffer much,’ Joan said. ‘He dreaded a long decline. I think most people do. But he was fit until a few days before he died. I think it was worse for you, Reg being so ill for so long, and you being tied as his carer.’

‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ Irene said, and they shared another long look.

I often see love in action at the family meetings I go to: children comforting bereaved parents, partners supporting each other, grandparents finding consolation in caring for young grandchildren. And I regularly hear about loving marriages that lasted all people's adult lives. But I rarely see a bond like the one between Irene and Joan.

Sisters

2007-11-05T10:06:00.000Z

Paul from Newell's is one of my favourite funeral directors. I hadn't heard from him for several weeks when he rang me on a Monday morning.

'Hi, Zin, can you do a funeral for me please?'

'Paul!' I reached for my diary. 'Good to hear from you. It's been a while, I thought you didn't love me any more.'

'Love you loads, always have, always will.'

'You're a darling. When do you want me?'

'Today, tomorrow and for ever more. But I'll make do with next Monday, 10 am at Scopthorne. It's an elderly chap, Reg Price, he'd been going downhill for a while. His wife Irene looked after him. It's her you'll be seeing. Lovely woman.'

He gave me the details, and I rang Irene. She had a plummy voice and a lively sense of humour. We arranged that I would visit her on the Thursday morning.

Then on the Wednesday morning, before I had seen Irene, Paul rang again.

'Zin, I've got another one for you.'

'Blimey, they're like buses, aren't they?'

'You won't believe it when I tell you.'

'What?'

'It's Irene's sister's husband this time.'

'Do you think they plotted it?'

We giggled, unprofessionally.

'His name is Les Donaldson and hers is Joan,' Paul told me.

'Was it expected, like Reg?'

'No. Les had been ill for a few days. They had the doctor, who said it was a virus, then he just died.'

'At least they won't have to have a post-mortem, then.'

'No. And the other thing is, Joan wants to see you at Irene's tomorrow. They seem very close, the sisters, and they were wondering whether you could plan both funerals at the same time. To save you two trips, as much as anything.'

'Of course I can. Do they want similar funerals, do you think?'

'They're definitely both humanists, but Reg's will be a burial and Les wanted cremation. And that's all I know. You can tell me, tomorrow.'

'Will do.'

And I'll tell you lot too. Next week.

Eight Random Things

2007-10-29T08:15:00.000Z

Maht, Rachel and Liz have all done this meme, none of them tagged me (or anyone else either, lovely people that they are) but I've been keeping it in reserve for a week when I couldn't come up with a blog post of my own. Which is this week, because I'm still very focused on finishing my novel, synopsis, covering letter, identifying agents to send it to, etc etc etc. So here goes.

1. I don't do sick. Honestly. If you're sick at me, I'll run away. My head knows it's irrational but my legs get scared. (There's a great puke scene in the novel, though. Not sure how I managed that.)

2. I worked as a recruitment agent, once, for a week. I was terrible at it. It doesn't appear on my CV.

3. I really wish global warming wasn't a problem because I would love to drive one of those huge great American cars with fins.

4. Mountains make me nervous.

5. I am very impractical. I don't care how it works, I just want to use it, and if it breaks down I need someone else to fix it. Or I'll buy a new one.

6. My ideal holiday involves bloke, beach, books, bars, beer and bed. (Well actually I prefer wine to beer most of the time, but it doesn't start with b. Brandy's not bad – especially seven-star Metaxa – but I couldn't drink it all night.)

7. I saw Stardust last weekend, and loved it.

8. I have a penchant for puns. I was once at a very boring conference where, at lunch, a bowl of conference pears was placed on the table. 'Conference pears!' I crowed. My co-lunchees looked at me blankly. 'At a conference! Isn't that funny?' Apparently it wasn't.

Bloggers Behaving Badly

2007-10-22T05:59:00.000Z

There seems to be a lot of bitchery and backbiting around in the blogosphere right now. As far as I can tell, this varies from full-on stalking and harassment, through temporary obsessiveness, to the occasional misguided post or comment. Of course these are also features of the wider Internet – this is an astonishing example – but they're here in blogland too.

Some of the stalking is strangely fascinating to read about. I’ve heard it described as ‘car crash blogging’ and it feels like that: I don’t want to see, but I find it hard not to look. There are no blog-related links in this post because I don’t want to draw attention to this blog, but if you want to join the traffic jam on the other carriageway, a little judicious Googling will set you on the right route.

But I bet it’s anything but fascinating if you’re on the receiving end. Given what some of my blogfriends are going through, I’m glad I’m still fairly anonymous in blogland. Even then I know it’s pure luck that I haven’t attracted the attention of a blogger with some kind of compulsion or fixation. However interesting it may be for outsiders to read about, stalking and harassing are criminal offences and have no place on the Internet or anywhere else.

The temporary obsessives are another matter: those who get a bee in their bonnet about another blogger, write a vitriolic post or two, scatter some comments around and then lose interest. Nasty for the subject while it’s happening, but hey, blogland is in a sense part of the media, so it goes with the territory. Those of us working on books can use the experience to thicken our skins ahead of the inevitable rejections, negative reviews etc. And all emotional experience is fuel to the writer. Without it, we’d have nothing to say.

Those who have made the occasional misguided post or comment – well, who amongst us has not? I know I have. Not so much posts (I don’t think) but certainly comments. Not often – but there have been one or two occasions where something I’ve read has made me so angry that I’ve left a fairly vicious comment, only to go back and delete it a few hours later when I’d calmed down. Emails, too: there are times I’ve hit ‘send’ and then regretted it.

Humour is a tricky one, as well. I know I’ve offended people by leaving a comment I thought was funny but they didn’t. I’ve laughed at sallies in comments boxes that I later discovered had upset others. It can be hard to tease some people effectively in writing, no matter how many emoticons you use.

It seems to me that one of the greatest principles of the Internet is freedom of speech. Of course this isn’t accessible to everyone (people in certain countries (although even then, there is progress), those who can’t afford a computer, etc) but for those of us who can blog freely, well, we can say what we like. The trouble with freedom of speech, though, is that it enables other people to say things we don’t like. That outfit has never suited you, the spot on your nose makes you look like Coco the Clown, and haven’t you put on weight? The knee-jerk reaction is ‘you shouldn’t say that’. It’s hard to read things that hurt, that feel like personal attacks, that ARE personal attacks in some cases. The old adage that ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me’ is simply untrue. And one of the downsides of the Internet, in this context, is that it’s almost permanent. Even deleted posts and blogs can be recovered from caches by the technically expert (to which elite group, as we all know, I do not belong).

People saying things we don’t agree with, to us or to one of our blogfriends, is bound to happen. So far, so manageable: a click of a mouse and on we surf, to find someone whose views are more in accord with our own. But bitching and backbiting? Taking bits of blogs or comments out of context? Making personal attacks? Bad manners, for sure, but not actually illegal, however hurtful it is. The question is, what to do when it happens to us.

It seems there are a few options:

1. Ignore it completely. Probably the most dignified response, but not necessarily easy.

2. Respond once on your own blog, in a careful and well thought out way, then ignore it. Could be useful: you have had your ‘right of reply’ and all your loyal commenters will zoom off in a gratifying rush to defend you in the attacker’s comments box.

3. Respond once in the attacker’s comments box, in a careful and well thought out way, then ignore it. Much less useful as all their loyal commenters will take whatever you say as proof that their beloved blogger was right all along.

4. Try to enter into a dialogue with the attacker, to convert her/him to your point of view. Which is almost certainly pointless.

5. Attack back. Definitely pointless, although the resulting posts and comments may well make amusing reading for others.

One reason I’m thinking this through now is that if I ever manage to get a publishing deal, I’ll be much more likely to find myself in the firing line. In which case, I hope I’ll be able to take my own advice. No promises, though!

Tunnel Vision

2007-10-15T05:57:00.000Z

Novel, novel, novel, novel, novel.
Dialogue, plot, editing, pace, grammar.
Shut up, body, you can’t possibly be hungry again, it’s only… oh. 6 pm.
But that’s not long since lunch.
We didn’t have lunch? Are you sure?
(huge growling confirmation from stomach)
OK then. Let me just finish this bit…
(dangerous-sounding roar from stomach)
All RIGHT!

Gets up and goes out to kitchen, trying to remember how to feed herself…

*******************************

Feet. Cold. Need socks.
Reluctantly leave computer and zoom up to bedroom to find socks.
No clean socks.
Turn out underwear drawer in a frenzy, knickers and bras flying everywhere.
No clean socks.
Consider wearing dirty socks. Luckily not that far gone.
Consider nicking a pair of Top Bloke’s socks, but not that far gone either.
Top Bloke comes in to disrobe for shower. Unusually, this fails to distract me from my sock hunt. Although he doesn’t, either, express any carnal interest in the unkempt woman prowling around the bedroom muttering things about socks.
Remember the last time I left the house was a week ago when I went to see a friend for an overnight visit. Bag still not unpacked. Could there be, could there possibly be… there are!
Feet happy. Small part of brain says Do Washing Now. Pick up laundry bag, run downstairs, stuff dirty clothes into washing machine, turn it on, return to computer vaguely registering howls of anguish from bathroom, momentarily wonder what Top Bloke is up to, get back to novel with sigh of relief.
0.0001 seconds later Top Bloke appears in doorway, dripping, towel round waist, froth from partly-shampooed hair sliding down side of head, expression of rage on face.
‘Zinnia!’
‘Uh?’
‘How long have we lived in this house?’
‘Er…’
‘Do NOT put the washing machine on when I’m in the SHOWER!’
oh yes. it makes the water go cold.
‘Sorry.’
He stomps out to the kitchen to turn the washing machine off, then back upstairs to finish his shower. He’s really cross. He probably won’t speak to me unless he has to, for a while.

More time for writing, then…

Air Fair

2007-10-08T05:43:00.000Z

I am getting sooooo fed up with having my nostrils assailed by synthetic scents everywhere I go. Why doesn’t anyone else seem to mind about this? On Google, light pollution gets 18.5 million hits, noise pollution 2.2 million, smell pollution 2 million, scent pollution 656,000. Of course light, noise and smell pollution are horrible too. But scent pollution is driving me crazy, and I feel as if I’m the only one.

You know some things I really, really hate? Those disgusting Magic Tree things taxi-drivers hang from their rear-view mirrors, for one. They make me gag. Going into a toilet to discover that someone has just sprayed it liberally with air-freshener. That makes me wheeze.

Yes, we are all equipped with functioning bottoms, so sometimes there is farty air in a car or a post-dump miasma in a toilet. But, for goodness’ sake, hasn’t anyone in the 21^st century ever heard of windows? Do you remember fresh air? So it might be a bit chilly. But cold is real, farty poo smells are real, and I don’t hold to the belief that every single aspect of our world that is slightly less than ideal can be sorted out at the touch of a button. That way of looking at things has got us into enough trouble already. Let’s give it up.

I’m not against scent, as such. I don’t use perfume myself – for some reason every time I try my skin converts it into Essence of Horse Piss – but some of my friends do, and often they smell delightful as a result. And I enjoy using pleasantly scented bath foams and shower gels. The ones from Lush smell lovely. I know this from using them in friends’ bathrooms – and my own, when I’ve been given them. Recently I was in BigCity with my mum on a girlie shopping trip that was supposed to involve my sister, too, only she was poorly that day and couldn’t come. I spotted a Lush shop and suggested to my mum that we get some consolatory bubble bath as a gift for her. My mum was keen, so we went towards the shop, and as we got within 50 yards we were hit with a wall of pong that we could barely fight our way through. The stench inside the shop was nauseating. We couldn’t tell the difference between three different bubble bath tester pots – even when we held them right up to our noses they all smelled of shop stench – so we grabbed the one with the nicest name and got the hell out of there.

In the small town where I live, among the betting shops, bakeries, charity shops and newsagents, we now have Candleworld, an emporium of scented candles to fragrance your home. It reeks. They always have the door open, and I have to cross the street. I don’t know how anyone can work in places like that.

I love my sense of smell. It tells me when the onions I’m frying for a casserole are ready to be stirred, or when Top Bloke is stressed and needs a hug. It triggers memories, Proust-style: the aroma of warm ripe tomatoes in the greenhouse brings me back my grandmother, and Aramis aftershave makes me want to slap someone to commemorate a loathed colleague of 20 years ago. Woodsmoke reminds me it’s autumn, vinegar from my wine glass suggests I pour it down the sink and open a different bottle, the buttered-toast smell of Top Bloke’s sleeping skin soothes me into sleep myself. Of course my nose also alerts me to such delights as unwashed people’s body odour and stale grease from restaurant vents. But if I never smelled bad smells, I wouldn’t appreciate the good smells so much.

Humanity smells. That’s a verb and a noun; you can’t have one without the other. Yet there seems to be a drive to sanitise our entire society. Our approach to bad smells is like our approach to misdeeds and death: cover them up! Mask them with something else! There must be no unpleasantness!

Am I the only person who feels this way? Sometimes I think I must be. I even struggle in friends’ houses sometimes. One friend has such a love for scented cleaning products that I have to mouth-breathe whenever I visit her home. But I didn’t realise how absurd this whole thing was getting until I read about a new car that has six fragrances available through the in-built ventilation system. And do you know what one of them is called?

Sweet Air.

That almost rendered me speechless. But the worst one is the wall-mounted air-fresheners in my local crematorium chapel. They squirt out a bit of vile-smelling substance every few minutes. And they always seem to go off during the silent time for remembrance, with a sound like a chicken's last breath. It Does My Head In!!!

Zinnia Is Very Excited

2007-10-01T05:13:00.000Z

I got wonderful feedback on the third draft of my novel! My feedback-givers said things like ''I really liked the dialogue... I think the scene-setting was really good... I had quite a few moments when I laughed out loud... it's a very real human book... it's intelligent and thoughtful and sensitive... It's better than anything in Richard and Judy's top ten.' OK, my feedback-givers were friends and family, but they were all chosen because of their critical faculties and because I trusted them to tell me what they really thought. And it wasn't all praise; I have a list of things to sort out in the next draft, and at least three new scenes to write. But I can already see how to approach the work I need to do, and I really don’t think it'll take very long. I have a fairly clear month, so I'm aiming to get it done by the end of October, and off to agents early in November.

The feedback has provided a marvellous boost and lots of motivation. I now don't want to do anything except work on my book, and it's very annoying when I have to do tedious things like eating or sleeping! So not much of a blog post for you this week; I'll try to do better next week.

(In other news: Blogger has been playing up for a few weeks. I used to be able to write a post, hit 'publish' and that was it. Now I have to fiddle around and republish several times to get anything like my usual format. And it's different in different browsers: if I get it looking OK in Internet Explorer, it goes funny in Firefox, and vice versa. I've emailed Blogger support, and I'm hoping this will get sorted out soon, but until that happens, there may continue to be problems.)