As it Happens

The Last Time

A poll of 45,000 listeners for digital TV station Music Choice in 2008 revealed their top ten choices for music played at funeral services: Queen: The Show Must Go On; Led Zeppelin: Stairway to Heaven; AC/DC: Highway to Hell; Frank Sinatra: My Way; Mozart: Requiem; Robbie Williams: Angels; Queen: Who Wants to Live Forever; The Beatles: Let It Be; Metallica: Nothing Else Matters; U2: With or Without You.

All There in Black and White

Red, white, yellow, purple or black - which of these colours would you associate with death? The answer is all of them – but it depends where in the world you are. In China, white is the funereal colour – and in Japan, they wear white carnations, as we might in Great Britain at a wedding. In Egypt, someone in yellow may have suffered a bereavement and in certain cultures in Southern Africa, red means mourning. In Thailand, purple is worn by widows. And our customs may confuse others as well: in China, black is the colour traditionally worn by young boys.

The Best Medicine?

Most schoolboys above a certain age will have learned that Henry I died of a surfeit of lampreys – to those who have seen a specimen of this eel-like flesh-sucking predator, just one might be classified as a surfeit – but he was by no means the only great man of the past whose end came in an unexpected way. The great Greek painter Zeuxis is said to have died of laughter at his own depiction of an old crone; another Greek, Philomenes, died of laughter at seeing a donkey eating the figs set out for his own dessert. The laughter of the soothsayer Chalchas at having outlived the predicted hour of his death brought about that demise - and the legendary giant Margutte died of laughter watching a monkey trying to pull on a pair of boots.

Death is nothing at all....?

The well-known passage that begins with these words is often – as in the Lasting Post Readings section – laid out as a poem. But it started life as prose, part of a sermon given in St Paul’s Cathedral in London in May 1910 at a time when the late King Edward VII was lying in state at Westminster. The preacher was Henry Scott Holland, a Canon of St Paul’s, who was both an Anglo-Catholic priest and a Christian Socialist. The sermon in fact suggests that there are two immediate reactions of grief at the death of a loved one, both valid but neither being the whole truth. First, as the Canon points out to begin with, ‘there is the familiar and instinctive recoil from death as embodying the supreme and irrevocable disaster. It makes all that we do here meaningless and empty. It is the pit of destruction. It wrecks, it defeats, it shatters.’ It is only then that he considers the opposite view that has become so well-known. Lasting Post is indebted to Father Christopher Lindlar, parish priest of St Andrew’s Church in Deal, Kent, for permission to use part of the article on which this abstract is based.

A sting in the tail

The Irish playwright Samuel Beckett is well-known for his nihilistic outlook on life – though perhaps less well-known for being the only Nobel prizewinner for literature with an entry in the famous cricketing annual Wisden – but he was far from humourless. He wrote that it is right that each of us should be able to “grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.”

One way traffic

Heard later in the evening at an annual dinner for crematorium managers: “I am often called upon to toast my guests, but few of them rise to reply....”

Graveyard humour

New research carried out by Age Concern Funeral Plans and published in October 2008 has revealed some of the ways the British would like to be remembered in their epitaphs. The survey of over 2,000 people shows that the British sense of humour lives beyond the grave. When asked what their own epitaph would say, the responses included “another one bites the dust”, “at last, a decent night’s sleep”, “who turned out the lights?”, “move along please, there’s nothing to see”, “I’ll do it tomorrow” and “don’t stand so close”. The research also revealed that three-quarters had not really thought about their own epitaphs before, but when asked to write one, many were very sure of what they would like said for them.

Dicing with death

Most people know, even if only because they have seen James Bond get on the wrong end of Rosa Klebb’s toecap in the film of From Russia With Love, that the puffer fish contains a deadly poison. The active ingredient of the fatal fugu, as the Japanese call it, is tetrodoxin, a powerful paralysing agent with no known antidote, more than a thousand times more deadly than cyanide. The venom is found in the creatures’ liver, muscles, skin and ovaries. One to avoid for culinary purposes, one might think, but then one is not Japanese. There it is a prized delicacy and it can by law only be prepared by specially-trained cooks. The emperor is not allowed to eat it – again by law: the message seems clear enough. But 20,000 tons of puffer are nonetheless eaten in Japan every year – and many diners do not survive the experience: between 100 and 200 deaths are attributed to fugu poisoning every year.

Personalising gravestones in the US

In the UK, the rules about what you can and cannot have on a gravestone, though varying locally, are often quite restrictive and, as those making such arrangements find out from time to time, quite rigidly enforced. Not so, however, in the United States. As well as many quirky epitaphs, of which a selection appears elsewhere in On a Lighter Note, the grave markers themselves may take unusual forms. Well-documented instances of these include a wishing well complete with winchable bucket (it is not clear how far down it goes), a very large light-bulb with the words ‘World’s Greatest Electrician’, a golf bag with a full set of clubs - and a bingo card. We are not told how lucky the occupier of this one was.

Brightly coloured fantasy coffins from Ghana

In the last fifty years the Ga tribe in coastal Ghana have developed a new tradition. They honour their dead with brightly coloured fantasy coffins. The coffins are designed to reflect an aspect of the dead person's life; their trade, a hobby or even a vice. A fisherman might have a coffin shaped like a fish and a driver might have a mercedes or a cadillac. Other popular coffins include mobile phones, leopards, canoes and lions. One person who had a cigarette business and smoked heavily recently went to his eternal rest in a cigarette.

Ashes to ashes

With seven out of ten people in the UK choosing to be cremated, increasingly unusual ways to dispose of the ashes are appearing. Memorial Spaceflights is a company that uses rockets to shoot ashes into space. A Welsh company called Here in Spirit makes urns that incorporate a loved one's ashes into the glaze. Another company, LifeGem creates synthetic diamonds from the carbon found in ash.

Glamour model calendar with a difference

A firm of undertakers in Rome has enraged the Vatican by producing a calendar featuring scantily clad models draped over its range of coffins. Maurizio Matteucci, the owner, has defended the calendar. He said: "It is good marketing but it is also a way to play down such a serious subject and to smile. Coffins are consumer goods like any other things so I sell in the same way any other goods are sold. The calendar is very popular."

Eternal rest at Disneyland

The Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland in the US was recently closed after a woman was caught on security cameras apparently dumping a loved one's ashes into the water. Although the scattering of ashes at Disneyland is strictly forbidden there seems to be a growing number of people wanting to find eternal rest within the Disney gates. The trend seems to have started at the Haunted Mansion but sources say the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and Space Mountain are now also favoured spots.

Italian politicians award themselves free funerals

The politicians in the Veneto region of Italy have given themselves an unusual perk. They have voted through a measure giving all councillors elected to the regional government in Venice E7,500 worth of funeral expenses. The decision has caused considerable public outcry particularly as it transpires that the vote was taken late at night in a failed attempt to avoid unwanted scrutiny.

Lack of graves in China creates bubble

Lack of space in parts of China has created a bubble in the cost of graves in recent years. The cost of a basic grave cost has soared to as much as £1,500 in some provinces of the country as demand has increasingly exceeded supply. The situation has been exacerbated by unscrupulous get rich quick schemes encouraging small investors to invest their life savings in buying graves to sell on at a fast profit. A number of fraudulant schemes have finally forced the Chinese government to act. Legislation was introduced in 2007 that stipulates that a grave can only be sold to a purchaser who can prove they actually have a body to put in it.

A Mausoleum themed hotel opens in China

A Chinese entrepreneur called Jiao Meige has opened a hotel in Lishui Town in Jiangsu province modelled on a Mausoleum. The hotel is located in the middle of an old cemetery and has beds in the shape of coffins. Mrs Meige has opened the hotel to let people experience the feeling of death. She thinks that it will be very realistic. As she says "there are no services at night and the guests can go nowhere since outside is just a vast graveyard." She does however note that bookings from people appearing to suffer from mental health problems will not be accepted.

Man buried in vintage Morris Minor

An Indian farmer has been buried in his beloved vintage Morris Minor which he owned since 1958. Mr Narayanswambi's last wish was to be buried with his car and so when he died in 2007 at the age of 64, his family arranged for a huge grave to be excavated. Mr Narayanswambi's body was then placed in the car before it was lowered in the grave at Sivapuram in Tamil Nadu.

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