Ashes To Admin: Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer

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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. Imagine having that sentence said to you. And then imagine it actually being pertinent. Welcome to Evie King's world. 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. About This Edition ISBN: Evie King is the pen name of Christina Martin. She is a former stand up comedian and a part-time writer. She has always written short form pieces, in the margins of her various day jobs, contributing to New Humanist, Guardian Comment is Free, BBC Comedy and Viz Comic. Since moving to the seaside and going part-time she has had more time for writing which has accumulated in Ashes to Admin. Ashes to Admin shows how precarious life and death can be. In a gentle and funny tone Evie King highlights both the bureaucracy and the humanity that is behind funerals organised under Section 46.

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In this talk, Evie lifts the coffin lid on the world of a council funeral officer, a job that lurches from the legislative and administrative, via the workaday and practical, right through to the emotional and existential. Her stories are 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. 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'

I thus experienced first-hand the magic of the work that Evie King does. Evie King works for her local council and part of her job is to carry out funerals under Section 46. It is not a given that there are people available to organise a funeral after someone dies, but legally in the UK councils are responsible when no-one is available. People are not just thrown in a ditch and forgotten. The Top 25 Christmas Cookbooks for 2023: A Smorgasbord of Inspiration for a Happy Foodie This Christmas

Ultimately, she will not only explain her role but she will seek to reframe how we view those who end up with what was once called a pauper's funeral, and in turn reframe how we think about our own endings. She also keenly wants to impart the need for preparation and expression of wishes. Hopefully you will leave ready to write your will and live your life out from under the weighty shadow of legacy. Knowing absolutely zero about council funerals aside from the negative term 'a paupers funeral' the subject matter of this book caught my eye. Its not often people talk about a good death, planning your funeral or what happens when you cant afford to pay for a loved ones funeral. Evie King goes to great lengths to dispel any negative view points over what a section 46 funeral looks like and she goes even further to give the people handed into her care the kind of funeral we might all wish for. For further proof of the nature of the book, consider the reviewers chosen and whose comments are printed on the covers and inside the book: Every effort to admit latecomers will be made at a suitable break in the event, but admission cannot always be guaranteed.

The promoter, venue management and DesignMyNight accept no responsibility for any personal property. It is incredibly uplifting to read the stories of people who, on the outset, look like they have nobody left in the world to care about them, transform into people with well-attended funerals which many might envy. That transformation is often the result of the work of a council worker like Evie in really caring about those who land in her work in-tray; researching, making phone calls, trawling social media and the deceased's home for clues as to who they are and the people who filled their universe in life.I found the author's attitude to dying to be positively infectious, so the book has probably had a lasting impact on the ways in which I think about death and dying, as well as making the most out of living. King talks about her early days in the job, and with each case, we see her expertise and knowledge developing and growing. She learns how to become immune to the "smell of death" to maggots in months'-old food and, in the process, realises that she possesses a talent for organising respectful funerals for the dispossessed dead.