Like all good musicals, Fun Home left me with its best songs ringing around my head. The stage adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s brilliant graphic novel, which she calls “a family tragicomic”, has finally made its way from Broadway to London’s Young Vic. It’s gorgeous and moving, deserving of the hype, and its songs are so invasive that I’ve spent the last day or so humming an upbeat Jackson 5-ish number about the funeral home and its formaldehyde and aneurysm hooks.
In my somewhat culturally uptight experience, death is not something people talk about, much less confront, but I’ve noticed that funerals are increasingly becoming a topic of conversation. (Please, invite me to your summer parties – I’m really upbeat and fun.) Funerals are changing rapidly. In Britain, only 22% have an obligatory black dress code. DIY ceremonies are on the rise, with more family members conducting funerals themselves. The Co-op announced in May that it would be changing its approach to funerals, offering “no frills” options to accommodate a shift towards more celebratory memorial services.
I read about Garrett Matthias, the five-year-old from Iowa who died of cancer, whose parents helped him to write his own obituary. His final words were perfect – “See ya later, suckas!” – as were his funeral plans: “Funerals are sad. I want five bouncy houses (because I’m five), Batman and snow-cones.” I read Colin Brazier’s beautifully written piece for the Spectator, in which he explained why he would be holding a traditional service for his wife, a ceremony that would allow mourners to be lachrymose about their loss. “It’s unfair on children to insist that a funeral should mean rejoicing in a life now passed,” he said, rejecting the growing vogue for bright clothing, and calling for what he sees as propriety.
That these conversations are happening at all has a wider impact. Bereavement counsellors say they cannot impress enough the importance of talking about death. There’s a brief scene in Fun Home in which young Alison’s father, an undertaker, asks her to hand him a pair of scissors as he performs whatever tasks are necessary on the funeral home’s incoming client. It’s her first time seeing a dead body, and no comment on it is passed. As an adult, Alison questions the matter-of-factness, wondering if it was simply a way to offer a necessary rite of passage.
As many cultures have long recognised, there is much to be said for addressing death head-on, no matter what choices we make or conclusions we draw as individuals about the best way to mourn a person, and commemorate a life. My first experience of a funeral was an Irish one, and the day before that, there was the wake. An Irish wake is very matter-of-fact, the body laid out in the room as people talk and drink and grieve around it. I have not experienced anything so open since, and more and more, I think that is a shame.
A few months ago, I went to an installation by the photographer Taryn Simon called An Occupation of Loss. It is one of the most extraordinary spectacles I have ever seen. Simon spent years documenting paid professional mourners around the world, people invited to funerals to lead and assist with displays of grief. She invited them all to perform their tasks and rituals, in a kind of underground amphitheatre, as the audience walked around in reverent silence, listening to wails of grief from around the world. (Seriously, invite me to your party, I’m a hoot.) What was most striking wasn’t how sad it was, but in those moments of togetherness, how wonderfully cathartic.
The holy grail of motorway service stations
My partner is a musician and recently I had a brief stint as her roadie, because she had been booked for a show in Bristol followed by one in Aberdeen the next night, and she thought perhaps I could help with the driving. I was not a good roadie. My cover was blown on the first night, when I thought I should at least try to act like professional crew, until the venue staff asked, “What’s the tech spec?” and I looked blank and lost, as the strange words attempted to form some sense in my mind.
I have never done a week on the road before, and I learned a lot about service stations. For people used to travelling up and down the country, service stations seem to have a secret word-of-mouth rulebook that is passed from person to person. I learned that a grab bag of Monster Munch should never be a meal. I learned that M&S was a good thing to find, because its sandwiches will be your sole source of vitamins for the day. I learned never to buy petrol on the motorway unless you are practically spluttering to a stop, or unless money is a burden to you. I learned that Tebay Services on the M6 is the holy grail, not only for its views of the Lake District, but for the fact that it has edible food, a pleasant shop and ducks.
So when the travel watchdog Transport Focus released its list of the best and worst service stations in the country, I felt my week as a roadie gave me sufficient authority to challenge its accuracy. There is no way that any service station on the M6 Toll in Staffordshire is better than Tebay. Did I mention there are ducks?
No appetite for Insatiable?
The backlash facing Netflix’s new show Insatiable has been enormous, with a change.org petition campaigning for it to be pulled reaching more than 100,000 signatories. The show, about a girl who loses weight and takes revenge on her bullies, has been criticised for “causing a devastation of self-doubt in the minds of young girls”. The series is not due to be released until 10 August and objections seems to be based on a 90-second trailer, which suggests it will be an arch black comedy in the vein of Jawbreaker or Heathers. Perhaps it will be awful, perhaps not, but I’m waiting until I’ve seen at least 15 minutes to decide whether it should be cancelled or not.
