Remember when...

[the snooper]

I used to drive a V6 Granada hearse: on warm days the idle hunting got so bad the car would creep forward as the revs rose... when I say creep, I mean leap; a few times I almost ran over the Director walking in front of the cortege

at least you had some where to stick him

 

[Wedg1e]

at least you had some where to stick him

Quite true: like most hearses the Granada was a 'double-decker', you could stash the coffin for the next job under the deck, out of sight, and jack up the air suspension to compensate.
I would imagine that a lot of people aren't aware that their dearly departed actually attended more than one funeral

 

[brewdexta]

Me and a mate bought a damaged repairable white Carlton estate over the phone from the exchange and mart, easy repair, came with spare panels. It did turn out to be easy but was obviously not originally white but black. Once we got the docs it turned out to be ex-funeral parlour., probably the one used to pick up new "clients"

It was a good cheap run around for a couple of years but there was a stain on the carpet in the load area that the dog used to growl at and my mate reckoned that if you opened the glove box at night when driving on your own that fog used to fall out of it...........

 

[Wedg1e]

Me and a mate bought a damaged repairable white Carlton estate over the phone from the exchange and mart, easy repair, came with spare panels. It did turn out to be easy but was obviously not originally white but black. Once we got the docs it turned out to be ex-funeral parlour., probably the one used to pick up new "clients"

It was a good cheap run around for a couple of years but there was a stain on the carpet in the load area that the dog used to growl at and my mate reckoned that if you opened the glove box at night when driving on your own that fog used to fall out of it...........

We certainly had a Carlton estate for the on-call Director, it was a metallic dark grey rather than black though.
The giveaway was that all the internal panels (rear doors, tailgate, back of the seats etc. ) were scuffed to hell from where the stretchers had rubbed. You couldn't actually get a body in lengthways, it had to go in diagonally... hardly decorous.

Stains on the carpet would be a poor show; bodies were usually wrapped in plastic sheeting to contain leakages.

 

[Cobbler]

My wife's boss some years ago family ran an undertakers, his estate car was on the undertakers company as he did "collections" when required. Whenever he looked for a new car, he would go into the dealers, fold down the seats & lie down in the back to check for the fit, much to the amusement of the salesman. He was also a member of the funny handshake lot, & apparently more than once he got the call in the middle of a function & had to go wearing bow tie & dinner suit.

We ended up buying the car off him, who knows what it had carried, we had it for about 8 years, no ghosts.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

I was riding my bike round a large roundabout when I noticed a hearse tanking along one of the entry roads to join the roundabout, I readied myself to take avoiding action as he obviously hadn't seen me but at the last minute he noticed me and slammed the anchors on, skidding out over the white lines before stopping. I gave the obligatory hand gesture to the sheepish looking driver and that was when I noticed he had a coffin in the back!
I only hope that the body was good and stuff otherwise it would have been all scrunched down one end!

 

[Wedg1e]

I was riding my bike round a large roundabout when I noticed a hearse tanking along one of the entry roads to join the roundabout, I readied myself to take avoiding action as he obviously hadn't seen me but at the last minute he noticed me and slammed the anchors on, skidding out over the white lines before stopping. I gave the obligatory hand gesture to the sheepish looking driver and that was when I noticed he had a coffin in the back!
I only hope that the body was good and stuff otherwise it would have been all scrunched down one end!

Trying to make up time en route to collecting a family, one of our guys lost a hearse on a sharp bend and ended up in a field: the coffin overcame the screw-down stop at the back and went out through a side window.

Some people have the coffined body delivered to the house the night before the funeral for a wake; in old two-up, two-downs this usually means going in through the front door and immediate left or right into a front room. Most coffins are too big to make the angle so you have to take it a few steps up the stairs, stand the coffin on end, shut the front door, swing the coffin round and lower it into the front room... and getting it back out for the funeral is a reverse of the above only now you usually have an audience ( a canny Director will have the immediate relatives in their cars before the coffin is moved so they don't see grandad being up-ended).
The whole ritual is usually accompanied by shuffling, sliding noises from inside the box

 

[brewdexta]

A friend of mine in Doncaster, his father-in-law was an undertaker. He was very surprised that neighbours objected to a sign in his garden advertising said Funeral Directors. He lived opposite an old-folks home...........

 

[brightspark]

A friend of mine in Doncaster, his father-in-law was an undertaker. He was very surprised that neighbours objected to a sign in his garden advertising said Funeral Directors. He lived opposite an old-folks home...........

he definately capitalised on that one then

 

[graffian]

I almost bought an early 80s V6 granada hearse....I say buy....as in extract from a garden where it had been for several years...decided in the end that 400 miles was a bit too far for a rustbucket

80's that's new;-) I used to see a bloke from the local chop shop around and about, we were at
Blackbushe, probably the meeting slick willy rolled, he was there with about ten people and the ant hill mob was there in his 40's Humber Pulman hearse. You couldn't miss them all stood on the roof of the
hearse;-)

A friend of mine in Doncaster, his father-in-law was an undertaker. He was very surprised that neighbours objected to a sign in his garden advertising said Funeral Directors. He lived opposite an old-folks home...........

I bought a 700cc royal enfield and it burst into flames in walton on the hill, bloke with me said a mate of
his lived around the corner and I could leave the bike at[I forget his name] house, we pushed the bike
into a shed in someone garden.
Next day I went along to collect the bike and it's in a shed full of coffins! The blokes dad is a builder and
funeral director.

 

[Cobbler]

Someone I used to talk to in the pub, years ago was a greengrocer & florist. He used to drop the wreaths in at the undertakers on the way to the pub. He had a key to the chapel of rest, popped in there, dropped the wreath on the coffin & go & get a pint. One night he came in in a bit of a state, normal thing, unlocked door, walk in in the half light, with out turning on the lights, about to drop the wreath, to be confronted by a stiff, lying there. Frightened him to death, still he would have been in the right place I suppose.