At Your Funeral

At the top of Aqueduct Street sits a funeral home. Now, like many businesses it has windows, but unlike most businesses it is hard to show what the company is offering. I think people would be spooked out by a funeral home that showed some of the coffins it was offering, unless it was near Halloween, in which case I think it would be kind of fun if they rigged up a mechanism that opened and closed the coffins every few minutes to show what was inside. I’ll leave it up to individual funeral homes to decide what would be in the coffin, but I’m thinking along the lines of somebody locally celebrated for their infamy.
Therefore, Gloucester could have a coffin containing a mannequin of Fred West; Manchester could have a Myra Hindley one, and so on.
I’m not sure who could be displayed in the Halloween coffins in Preston. Maybe they could rig up some CCTV cameras to spy on people walking towards the funeral home from further down the street. Then they could quickly dress a mannequin up in clothes and wigs to try and resemble that person. Maybe even photocopying a picture of their face on top of the dummy from the CCTV footage you’ve –illegally- obtained.
Can you imagine the surprise that person would get if they stopped at your window and the coffin opened revealing a mock-up of their own appearance. Maybe the passer-by would be confronted by their mortality and would nip inside to make sure their funeral was all taken care of. Or, maybe they’d drop dead with the shock and you’d be able to claim first dibs on any nearby corpses.
I may take this idea onto the next series of Dragon’s Den.
Anyway, that wasn’t what struck me whilst passing the window of Kirkham Funerals this morning. Their window display is not of coffins - they don’t even have a Grim Reaper beckoning people inside with his bony hand, no, what Kirkham Funerals has is an old leather couch and chair. To round it off, an old walking stick is hanging over the back of the leather chair.
So, what they are saying is, “Look at this leather chair and walking stick. Does it remind you of the chair your granddad used to sit in, you know, before he died? Remember granddad? Poor granddad. And look, there’s his walking stick! Poor dead granddad. This makes you sad doesn’t it; makes you think about the dead doesn’t it? Why don’t you nip inside? Our showroom is kitted out with mobility scooters, pictures of joyful old faces handing out presents to grandchildren, soiled underwear and glasses filled with false teeth – lots of things to remind you of your recent loss.”
The couch seems to be the sort you get in a counsellor’s office. I guess they’re trying to say with this, “Remember when cousin Bobby was sad. Poor Bobby. He tried to help himself didn’t he? He really tried with that therapy. But then it one day got too much and he screamed his pain out. He screamed and screamed so hard against an unfair world. Sadly his vocal cords ruptured and he drowned in his own blood. Poor sad cousin Bobby.”
Far better I think to put cheery things in the window; how about some flowers? How about Geoff Hurst scoring in the 1966 world cup? Mr. Blobby?
Hmm, maybe they could celebrate birth, what with it being the furthest away from death we can get. Surely that’d cheer people up, having a window full of pictures of young children? Hang on, that’s the worst fucking idea I’ve ever had.