30th April 2010

A Chaplain’s Diary

 

Down Under

 

A bit small

Brace positions please. I have just got back from a week’s cruise and sadly dear reader I haven’t really got anything to moan about. There – I’ve said it, so there is no going back on it….but yes on arrival I never realised we could go down so many decks. As we were escorted down the staircases, by the steward showing us to our cabin …..the windows stopped, then the portholes stopped, then the portholes with covers stopped and then we were on our deck. Deck 1. It was so low down I fully expected to find a periscope in our cabin. In fact I wondered whether the carpets would get wet when the tide came in. OK it was a bit small, in fact at first I thought it was the safe deposit box but no it was our cabin. just 12 feet by 10 feet in the bowels of the ship with probably Nemo as our cabin steward.

 

Six foot down

 If you’re aged 55 or under, read those rough cabin measurements as 4 metres by 3 metres. I know I’m just too old to make the jump from imperial measurements to the metric system, My children don’t have a clue what I’m on about when I talk in terms of yards, feet and inches. Now believe me when I say the next thing has nothing to do with our cabin….honest! But being a clergyman I always judge the depth of holes by comparing them to a six-foot deep grave. We all have our little peculiarities – that’s one of mine and I think it must be an occupational quirk. The average double grave is six-foot deep, the average coffin is fifteen inches high so it means that you can get two coffins into a typical grave and still have the regulation amount of soil cover without the Home Office getting on your back. Occasionally one of their officials will surreptiously go around a churchyard or cemetery, if there has been a complaint, checking for correct depths. I suppose it’s a health thing and is in our own interests. They prod down and if they hit wood within three foot then there are problems. When I was a young assistant priest Liverpool Parish Church owned a very badly run churchyard – it had got larger and larger over the years, it was unkempt and not properly maintained because of a lack of finance. Years previously in an attempt to be helpful to the City Council they had agreed to take pauper burials but by trying to be helpful and provide a decent resting place for the deceased poor and homeless of the city they had made a rod for their own back because there was no income for general care and maintenance. People were always phoning up and complaining and there were regular letters to the local newspaper. It was a nightmare scenario with no obvious solution.

 

Not down far enough

One day we got a phone call in the church office to say “the man with the rod” had been to pay a visit and had found a pauper coffin which had not been buried deeply enough. They said that the grave would need to be opened up and the coffin re-interred to the correct depth. A Home Office license was applied for and issued which in legalise specified that it had to be carried out during the hours of darkness with adequate screening and privacy. A priest would need to be in attendance and the parish would have to pick up the bill. There were five of us on the staff but I have always been a bit slow on the uptake. I couldn’t work out why at that point on the agenda at the staff meeting, everyone was scrabbling for their diaries or finding something of great interest happening either outside in the street or on the ceiling. I got the job! So at 5.00 am on a wet November morning I was standing in a replica of a horror movie churchyard. The eerie lights of the 24-hour security system from the next door H.M. Prison Walton cast strange shadows as the screening and arc lights were erected around the grave and the grim task started. Somehow that morning my breakfast didn’t go down quite as easily as it normally does.

 

Ten acres for the dead

I hadn’t been back to the area for over thirty years until last summer. The problem has been solved. A government scheme has provided finance for the area to be landscaped to provide a city recreational area and an urban farm. Children now play happily in what was once a jungle of brambles, old gravestones, dangerous metal work, chippings and headstones. The only reminder of its previous role is the odd memorial scattered around where it has obviously not been possible to landscape properly. Ten acres for the dead has now become ten acres for the living. The church had managed to get itself out of a hole, which was not of its own making.

 

Laid at rest

Two miles away up the road Anfield Cemetery is check by jowl with the famous Anfield ground of Liverpool Football Club. It’s one of the few cemeteries I know of in the UK where they still allowed funerals on a Saturday afternoon. Clutching their caps the gravediggers stood to one side as the funeral procession arrived. The undertakers gravely laid the synthetic grass matting over the huge mound of soil from the hole in the ground and the bereaved family and mourners solemnly and sadly gathered around the grave. When everyone was in place I indicated to the bearers that they could lower the coffin into the grave. They carefully placed the tapes in place and gently lowered it down. But as it slowly came to rest on the bottom Liverpool scored and a huge roar went up from the crowd on the Kop. I didn’t know where to put myself, whether to smile or look embarrassed. The family never flinched and I stoically soldiered on with the solemn words of the funeral service. Afterwards one of the mourners sidled up to me with a grin on his face, “Don’t look so worried Father, it wouldn’t have worried “him”, he was a Liverpool supporter.” 

 

Fell in the grave

It was years later when I was a Church of England press officer that holes caused me problems once again. My job was to portray the church in the best possible light to the media without telling lies. A vicar in Shropshire was having drink problems. He had been in the army and was a huge bear of a man who called a spade a spade – or something vaguely similar. The Bishop and the man’s family had tried on a couple of occasions to help and got him into rehab for drying out. But still the demons kept returning and because he had the freehold of the living it was difficult to suspend him. It had to be done by mutual consent, preferably when he was sober, and those opportunities were becoming increasingly less frequent. But thank God for a hole, because a hole got us out of one. He fell into a grave during a funeral ceremony much to the obvious anguish of the family but it was the final straw and action was taken. Actually on this occasion everything turned out well because he was eventually dried out, accepted he was an alcoholic and since then has coped with it accordingly; “one day at a time” with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. He’s back on course and doing a good job.

 

Existing graves

The local builder also acted as the village gravedigger in one village where I was the vicar. I’m not sure whether he bought the small transportable JCB for his building work and then discovered it could make grave digging quicker or vice versa but from then on he did the job in half the time. The only problem was that he obviously could not drive over the existing graves to dig a new one so the grave at the end of each row by the wall still had to be dug out by hand but I shall never forget the proud look on his face the first day he arrived on his little JCB coming down the churchyard, he was like a child with a new toy.

 

 

Grave digging

Don’t be fooled – digging a grave is no fool’s job. It is difficult and requires real skill. Care has to be taken to ensure that the walls don’t collapse because six-foot is a long way to dig down, and on a few occasions in the past gravediggers have been killed when the walls have collapsed on them. That can be a real problem with certain types of soil particularly if they’re sandy. Yet there are other problems if you’re digging into clay. Go below the water line and the equivalent of a burial at sea becomes a real possibility. The grave fills up with water so that when the coffin is lowered in it bobs merrily along. It has to be the right length and width because the sight of an embarrassed funeral director "heeling in" a coffin is not very undignified. Of course if it is a reopening of a grave then it is very important that the existing occupant and their remains are not disturbed. It’s an art form and don’t mock it. In many villages the job is handed down from father to son with great pride unless of course they buy a JCB.

So our Thought for the Day if you would like one is “when you’re in a hole don’t dig deeper” – here endeth the sermon!

 

Robert Ellis is the Anglican Chaplain of Majorca

St Philip & St James Church

Nunez de Balboa, 6

Son Armadans

Palma

Tel: 971 737279

e-mail: anglicanpalma@gmail.com

www.anglican-mallorca.org