New eco funerals that leave me cold

SINCE time literally immemorial man has had a problem on a virtually hourly basis – what to do with the bodies. Let us be brutally frank – people die and leave behind a consignment of meat and bone. What to do with all these cadavers has been a problem tackled in a variety of ways.

Ancient man, the hunter-gatherers of yore, probably left the wild animals they also hunted to do what came naturally, but long ago a certain solemnity entered into the custom. It is sometimes thought the ancient Egyptians got embalming and a sarcophagus but that was only the nobs. Hoi polloi were just shovelled into the sands of the Nile.

Some Asian societies put the departed on a high flat roof to let the vultures do what nature intended. The sea has been a favoured disposal mechanism, not only for those who drowned in sinking ships but also those consigned to it from a seaworthy deck. The Vikings combined the ocean with fire, sending a brave warrior toward the horizon on a small ship laden with pitch-soaked firewood and a slow match. Whatever floats your boat.

Pre-Empire India favoured the burning ghats along the Ganges but also the awful practice of suttee in which wives were supposed to hurl themselves alive on to their husband’s funeral pyre. Under the now demonised British Empire we abolished that, along with slavery and thuggee – the strangler cult. Even the daft Lily Allen might perhaps approve of this.

BUT fire and sea apart, it is old Mother Earth that has consumed most of us, with or without due ceremony. A few oddballs have had themselves deepfrozen in order to be resuscitated in 100 years. The way the world is going I think I’d prefer not.

Virgil tells us that Dido, queen of Carthage, seeing the sails of her heart-throb Aeneas sailing past the palace window as he left without saying goodbye, ordered a huge funeral pyre and threw herself on to it. It seems that back then ladies could become very upset when not being interfered with.

I mention all this because it seems that the Swedes (who else?) have come up with a new and ultra eco-friendly way of disposing of the aftermath of perch-dropping. It is called cryomation and involves the cadaver being immersed in a bath of pure liquid nitrogen until it is down to minus 200C. This rock-hard block can then be ground to powder before being filtered to extract any last morsels of metal such as tooth fillings or pins in once-broken bones.

I recall hearing of a clergyman at a crematorium complaining to a surgeon that stainless steel spheres used in early hip-replacements tended to go off like musket balls mid-service. It must have been distracting for the family to have a morsel of grandpa whistle straight through a stainedglass window during Abide With Me.

Anyway, this eco-friendly powder can presumably be scattered on the lawn to improve the rural environment. A planning application is lodged to have our first freezing plant in Sevenoaks. Or you can just have a chat with the vicar.