I love syncronicity - those moments in life when things come together randomly and yet seemingly by prior arrangement.
Was driving along the Leeds ring road today and saw a breakdown truck - that was broken down, nothing to do with the rest of this piece but it looked beautiful, a breakdown truck broken down at the side of the road with its bonnet up and the driver scratching his head staring at the engine, and it got me thinking, if an AA truck breaks down, do they call out the RAC ?
Anyway, back to the title.
Just after I'd passed the poorly breakdown truck I got stuck behind a hearse on a bit of the ring road thats single carriageway, had to follow it for five minutes or so at 40mph, there was just the hearse on its own, no courtege, but it had a coffin in the back and a single bunch of flowers and just two undertakers - the song that was playing on the radio at the time was Eric Carmens "All by Myself", syncronicity at its best.
So I'm driving behind this hearse with its lonely looking coffin in the back and I notice that its a white coffin and its quite square for a coffin, or at least the back of it looks square, not slightly pointed like coffins are supposed to look, and then as I concentrate on the coffin a bit more I notice that it looks, well, sort of like a cardboard box and I think that maybe the undertakers have just picked up a box of coffin handles or something from their wholesalers.
Just then we reached a bit of the ring road that turns into a dual carriageway and I pull alongside the hearse at some traffic lights and get a good look at the coffin.
Its is a coffin, its a cardboard coffin, its got three bits of string hanging out of this side of it presumably as handles and the top looks just like a filing box lid thats been hastily shoved on top because it looks lop-sided, and as I pull further alongside the hearse I can see the other end of it and its like one of those fold-flat cardboard boxes that you make up by folding one edge over the other to make them lock together, you can tell this because there's a gap all down the side of the cardboard coffin that you could easily get your fingers inside.
And its been puzzling me all morning, these cardboard coffins are promoted as being "green" and "environmentally friendly", but what is more environmentally friendly than a wooden coffin anyway ?
I'm all for eco-friendly stuff and a coffin made of chipboard is obviously not as eco-friendly as one made of pine or even mahogany (as long it they are from renewable sources of course), but the cardboard coffin that I saw today just looked cheap and nasty and if I'm going to meet my maker (whoever my maker was, I can't find my warranty record), then I don't want the last word from my relations to be "oooh doesn't that coffin look cheap and nasty, suits him doesn't it "
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2 comments:
mmmmmmm, interesting, Eric Carmen was very appropo.
Coffins here in the US tend to be rectangular, are often made of steel, plated, painted, typically have a deeper finish than a Mercedes and a cost that reflects it. Lucky for me coffins are not required if you are being cremated
I won't be needing a Mercedes coffin but I'd like to think that the handles aren't going to rip off or the bottom fall out as they carry me up the aisle, it would be nice for us cremation-ists to have the Mercedes option on a hire basis though, they can whip me out of it once I go through the curtain and sling me in the oven in a bag as long as the Mercedes coffin doesn't have a visible label on the back reading "Hired from Acme Funeral Services"
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