A Dead Cheap Despatch Post.

Guess what my reading matter was for part of this evening. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King? ‘No.’ Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment? ‘No.’ A few Shakespeare sonnets, perhaps? ‘No.’

I read the whole of the Central Co-Op’s ‘Funeral Plans’ information pack.

And very illuminating it was. It appears that if I pay them £1,750 up front now, they will undertake to collect my remains, shove them into a cheap wood-effect coffin (with chrome handles), convey them to a proper people incinerator at the nearest crematorium, and then hold onto the ashes for collection. And there’s still nothing extra to pay even if my life continues to walk its monotonous and wholly unremarkable path for another ten years yet while funeral costs treble. That sounds like a good deal to me.

Bear in mind that the cost of a short, standard, no-frills funeral is around £4,000 (and rising) these days. And further bear in mind that I don’t have very much money, and the two people who would be faced with the burden of paying for a funeral have no money at all. And then consider that I regard the whole business of having a funeral to be for the benefit of the bereaved, not the deceased, and it makes good sense to lay out the money now – as long as the potentially bereaved have no objection. Doesn’t it? I think so.

But I still have questions. I intend to go and ask them soon before the price goes up.

(Having written this, I was suddenly amused by a little thought. Wouldn’t it be fun to go into the swanky-but-subdued office at the funeral parlour – where they must have a ‘chapel of rest’ around the back somewhere for those awaiting despatch because I’m sure they all do – and ask: ‘I’ve never seen a dead body. Could I have a look at one of yours please?’ I wonder what the response would be.)