Gherkin Street

By Red Dinger:

It must be tough working in a funeral parlour. It must get lonely. There would be plenty of people to talk to but not so many to talk with. The dead aren’t exactly great conversationalists. They are not much for playing cards either.

Mind, you, that’s probably a good thing for the poor undertaker. I’m guessing that it would probably be a good sign it was time to get a new job if your customers started talking to you.

“Fred, do I look good in this suit?”

“Am I looking a bit peaked?”

“Sorry if I sound funny – I'm not gritting my teeth, you try talking when you have rigormortis.”

“That’s strange, I don’t remember taking Viagra just before dying. Will this erection go down of its own accord or is something good going to happen to me in the afterlife?”

Exactly what sort of person becomes an undertaker anyway? Is it just those people that really love to wear top hats? Or is it just make-up artists that couldn’t get a gig anywhere else? I reckon undertakers must be one of two types of people; those with a fascination with death or those who are undaunted by it.

The former bunch are just plain creepy. I simply just don’t want to know what they get up to behind the closed doors of the parlour. There’s another irony, its called a “funeral parlour”. The only other “parlours” in life are a damn sight better for the countenance – I give you the "fun" parlour and "massage" parlour as two good examples. What exactly makes a funeral parlour a “parlour”? Maybe they do get up to fun stuff when we aren’t looking?

That would have to be the second group, those who are unfazed by dead bodies. I‘ll bet they are the ones who are stripping the corpses and arranging them into funny poses. Never, ever, do anything bad to one of those types of people because in death its only a matter of time before a picture of you ends up on the internet – no doubt with a carrot up your backside and makeup smeared inappropriately all over your body. Sort of like being Brittney Spears, I guess.

But there is so much tradition and etiquette in being an undertaker. During the funeral you have to be sincere and respectful. After hours you can be a complete deviate. That said, its only a matter of time before you get busted. Probably for giggling when you put firecrackers in the coffin of someone being cremated or hunks of chuck steak in the coffin of the bloke being buried at sea (so the sharks have a go).

Relatives must drive you nuts as well. There you are, shaking the remains out of the urn over the cliff in a dignified manner all the while being scrutinised by the living. All the self doubt. Should I not have banged the bottom of the urn to get the last few ashes out? Was it poor form to pocket the wedding ring which somehow made it through the cremation process? Was the Hawaiian shirt too much? Should I have worn pants?

Mind you, if you could keep a straight face then it would be a great little business, almost a license to print money. If business was a bit slow you’d just pop on a balaclava and go and scare the old folks. Perhaps you could just ring them up pretending to be from Lotto and saying they had just won $15 million. If the shock of winning didn’t give them a heart attack then the anger at finding out they’d been duped sure would.

At the end of the day, I suppose it doesn’t really matter what they do to your body since you have no real need for it any more. Let them have their fun with my corpse I say, I had fun with it while I was alive.

Besides, the dead don’t seem to mind. They talk to me all the time. I see them - always so nicely dressed with make-up and all. Mind you, I wish Bruce Willis would leave me alone. He just doesn’t get it, move on mate, you may not be dead but your movies died a long time ago.