Some of my family are funeral directors,
and I have filled in as a driver the odd time, and one thing that always bugged us was the lack of any stereo systems in the cars... it was all well and good having that last "peaceful journey" but it did not half make a boring one for us (especially on the return trip) One day, faced with the daunting task of taking one deceased person to the only crematorium over here (rose lawn in Belfast) a nice round trip of almost 100 miles - we thought, sod it and took one of those "ghetto blasters" that were all the rage back in the 80's, and hid it behind the front seats.
So the journey up was not so peaceful after all for the recently departed but I am sure they would have enjoyed the wondrous sounds that was a mixture of 80's & 90’s Electronic stuff.

Now.. We used C90 tapes, and you know that sometimes there is a bit of a gap at the end, (not enough for a full song) but we would just leave it running as the auto reverse thingy usually kicked in.. (There was some tape gap sensor as well..)
Anyway... we dropped off the coffin and parked the hearse around the side, and as usual on a hot day left the windows open.
Cue the tape player kicking in David bowies “ashes to ashes” just as the people were walking back to their cars with their loved one in a little jar.. Lucky enough there were quite a few cars there, and they could not quite work out where it was coming from.. although the sight of a funeral directors assistant running at full pelt towards the hearse may have gave the game away…
There are plenty of other stories, like the time my uncle drove back from the morgue with the wrong coffin, and nobody realised until they had carried the damn thing up 3 flights of stairs for the wake. And another when the new driver discovered he was allergic to moss (the stuff they put in the rings of wreaths) and the one time the gravedigger had not dug the grave wide enough, and everybody had to wait 30 minutes while they franticly re-dug the hole with shovels…. I could fill a book me.
:-)
( TBL I posted this on, Thu 11 May 2006, 14:32, Reply)