Ashes To Admin: Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer
(By Evie King)
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| Author | Evie King |
Imagine having that sentence said to you. And then imagine it actually being pertinent. Welcome to Evie King’s world.
What happens if you die without family or money? The answer to this very three-in-the-morning question is that Evie, or someone like her, will step in and arrange your funeral.
Evie is a local council worker charged with carrying out Section 46 funerals under the Public Health Act. Or to put it in less cold, legislative language; funerals for those with nobody around, willing or able to bury or cremate them.
Ashes to Admin lifts the coffin lid on some moving and unexpected personal life stories. Sometimes tragic, as with the case of an unidentified woman found on a beach buried without even a name, but often uplifting and occasionally hilarious.
Ultimately, Evie discovers that her job is more about life than it is about death, funerals being for the living and death being merely a trigger to rediscover a life and celebrate it against the odds.
'Evie's memoir of a life spent organising what were until recently still known as 'pauper's funerals' is by turns hilarious and heartfelt. It lifts the lid on the lives, and more importantly the deaths, of our country's forgotten people, dignifying them, and shaming our nation. It's a cliché, but I laughed and I cried and I realised I have wasted my life. A kind of campaigning journalism written in the witty and waspish tone of the funniest woman in the workplace, it should be essential reading for policy makers. I can't recommend this book enough. A Road To Wigan Pier for post-Brexit Britain. Poverty Porn in reverse, raising the spirits, dignifying the human experience, and demanding action'
– Stewart Lee”
