The Final Small Economy

Recently, in an after lunch conversation, I heard of a man who was taken ill on a flight from Australia. The plane refuelled at Singapore, our man was offloaded and taken to hospital, where he died. Some time later the body was returned to the U.K., and, as one of the family observed, it was in a beautiful coffin.

It then occurred to me that there was, in the tale, a possible means of changing our burial habits.

Today very few of us can afford a family mausoleum, indeed you might have difficulty in persuading your vicar to give you permission to build one even if he can find the necessary space for the structure. There is also the modern trend today of having a cardboard “ecological” coffin. So instead of a mausoleum why not have a reusable family coffin? This could be a truly magnificent device, if the deceased were to be interred or cremated in a cardboard coffin this could be placed in the ‘family coffin’ for the religious service but removed for the final act. The ‘family coffin’ could then be set aside for use when the next member departs.

Of course there might be some difficulty in persuading someone to store the coffin until it was next required, it might be taken to mean that they were thought to be the most likely person to need its use. Our inventive funeral directors could no doubt arrange for storage in their premises for a modest fee to overcome this difficulty.

I thought that the suggestion that if a clock were mounted in the coffin lid it could be stood upright and serve as a long case clock would lead to too much levity.

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