Literature & Spoken Word Community | Southbank Centre

Comedian Markus Birdman brings his show A Stroke of Luck to Southbank Centre as part of Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living.

They say life begins at 40. But then you have a stroke. Oh goodie. Markus talks to us about life, love and death, and laughing in the face of it all….

What effect do you think your stroke had on your life?

Physically the effects have been quite minor. It has only damaged my eyesight. So I’m able to be grateful. It was a warning shot which made me realise I should enjoy life while it lasts and not to take it too seriously. A ‘don’t sweat the little stuff’ lesson.

Why did you feel you could, and wanted to, turn your experience into a comedy show?

Well, firstly I am comedian with quite a dark sense of humour. So I’m playing to my strengths. But it was probably very therapeutic for me. All I seemed to be doing for six months was attend hospital and self obsess, so talk about what you know, right? Plus doing jokes about X Factor seemed trivial under the circumstances.

Do you think comedy is important in dealing with matters of life and death?

Absolutely crucial. Because it’s an environment to be really candid and an opportunity to make taboo subjects palatable. Laughter is the best medicine. Well in my case it’s actually a blood thinner called chlopedodril, but the point stands. However it’s something that too many comedians currently avoid which is a real pity.

One of the installations forming part of Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living is a blackboard on which people can write what they would like to do before they die. What three things do you want to do before you die?

Wow, I’d like to be in a gangster film, with a shooter swearing loudly, whilst Johnny Depp does something louche. I’d like to try and return an Andy Murray serve on centre court. And I’d like to see peace on earth for all the children. Actually never mind the last one.

Markus Birdman – A Stroke of Luck is at Southbank Centre on Sunday 29 January at 6pm.

For more information see the webpage here.

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As part of Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living, Sue Gill and John Fox, authors of The Dead Good Funerals Book, will be hosting a ‘Design Your Own Dead Good Funeral’  workshop on Sunday 29 January.  They will guide you through a process to create a personal ceremony that is truthful and distinctive, yet still legal and dignified.

Here they describe in beautiful detail two funeral services that struck them as particularly unusual and inspirational…

Wilf was a free spirit, a likeable rogue and scrounger – 50+, who died suddenly of a heart condition he had kept quiet about. He always  wore a checked work shirt, winter and summer, although he was pretty work shy,  and went everywhere on his bike. You always knew where Wilf was by seeing his bike leaning against a pub wall. His cardboard coffin was carried into the crem, which was packed to overflowing, all the men wearing checked workshirts, some with the courage to come with paint splodges on them, some with brand new ones at their wives’ insistence. His bike was wheeled in behind the coffin and leant up against it during the service. Everyone filed past the coffin to make their farewells and placed a beer mat on the top where they had written their memories. Mostly “You owe me a pint!”  Back at the pub a special barrel had been brewed for the day in Wilf’s honour.

Val was a newly retired teacher after 30 years service. Incredibly busy and fit – jogging over the Pennine hills, long distance cycle touring, singing in a choir. From diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in January, she had 7 months. Her summer funeral was an extended gathering in their steep garden, which her partner had been terracing and landscaping for a decade.

In the circular lavender garden she lay in her open coffin, wrapped in a felt shroud that had been made over the last couple of weeks by her women friends and daughters – violet, soft greens and apricot pink. Embedded in the felt were tiny mementoes, secret messages and blessings. The coffin was plain pine, painted by a younger artist/ friend, who only recently sat with Val at the kitchen table and discussed the imagery she would like. Alongside the coffin, her beloved touring bike was parked, with flowers in its panniers. Photographs of Val filled the house.

Her choir came and sang, all the cycling club rode up the steep hill and arrived sweaty for afternoon tea and cakes, laid on by neighbours.  Cleaners from the school came to say their goodbye’s.

Small children played hide and seek in the grottoes. It was a perfect mixture of reverence and mirth.

Early evening musicians arrived, lanterns and a sculptural fire was lit. Some people kept her company outside all night before she was carried off in the back of her partner’s pick-up truck first thing to the crematorium. The ashes were delivered that afternoon, when close family held their own service of farewell and the casket was buried in the garden.

Design Your Own Dead Good Funeral, with Sue Gill and John Fox   Sunday 29 January, 11.45am – 1.15pm

For more information see the Sunday Festival Day Pass listing here.

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Miranda Hutton’s ‘The Rooms Project’ is a series of photographs of bedrooms belonging to children who have died. At Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living, Miranda will be speaking about loss and remembering and the relationship between absence and presence in her photography.

Here she recounts how she came to the project and how this intimate and challenging work has affected her and her wider audience.

20 years ago a very dear friend died of cancer; a few years later my Mum died and I started thinking about the physical spaces that have been left ‘empty’ by loved ones who had passed away. I was put in touch with parents who had lost a child and in talking to them I realised that, for many, their child’s bedroom held particular importance; they were special places of remembering. The parents allowed me to photograph their son or daughter’s room and this led to the beginning of ‘The Rooms Project’.

It is a challenging body of work where the content often stops onlookers from thinking about wider issues surrounding death and loss. Parents not only have to suffer loss but they also have to suffer a kind of isolation that comes with people not knowing how to approach them or their grief.

Died 21 months ago (2011)

Died 4 years ago (2005)

To see more photos, please visit The Rooms Project at 
http://www.mirandahutton.co.uk/photography/projects/theroomsproject.html

Miranda will be speaking as part of Death Bites: More About Mortality, Sunday 29 January, 2pm – 3pm

For more information about Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival of the Living please see here 
http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/festivals-series/death-southbank-centres-festival-for-the-living

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Sue Gill and John Fox are conducting a workshop as part of Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living.

Design Your Own Dead Good Funeral’ is a workshop aiming to dispel common myths, demonstrate the nuts and bolts of planning a funeral, inspire you and give you confidence. They talk about what got them thinking about funerals and offer some advice…

Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living aims to tackle the taboo of death –The Dead Good Funerals Book obviously helps to do this in a very practical way. What made you both feel you needed to write the book?

We’d been to some truly awful funerals.

As you get older your friends start to die. Sometimes the ceremonies were healing, but more often they were formulaic and irrelevant. We felt we must publish a book to offer a no-nonsense yet respectful view of what an inspiring funeral ceremony might be to guide someone faced with arranging a funeral for the first time. So, in The Dead Good Funerals Book, we unpick a traditional funeral and show how it is stuck in the Victorian mode. We spell out how much we can do away with and still be legal and dignified, to leave space to create a funeral that is personal and distinctive.

Obviously you recognise the challenges of organising a funeral – do you both have detailed plans for your own? Has writing the book given you inspiration?

Sue: I don’t feel I am at the prescriptive stage yet, but now we live in the Beach House – a wooden house on stilts directly above the shoreline of Morecambe Bay – I have become increasingly aware of the weather and tides, the extensive horizon, and this has had a major effect on me. I would like my ashes to be dispersed into the vast expanse of this bay, probably using an urn that dissolves in sea water, which could be placed way out on the bed of the sea at low tide.

John: Ditto – after donating my organs.

What five pieces of advice would you give to someone planning a funeral?

• Bring your own homegrown flowers, or pick some from the hedgerow – they mean so much more. If there are shop bought bouquets remember to take them out of the cellophane.

• If it is a burial, maybe ask in advance for 3 or 4 shovels so you can backfill the grave yourselves if you wish – a very satisfying completion. Don’t let them put you off with health and safety issues.

• If it is to be a cremation, and 70% of us opt for this, go and have a look at the crematorium beforehand and talk to them about what you want to achieve.  Ask them to remove anything you’re not happy with  – silk flowers, crucifix …. – bring in your own stuff from home: photographs, candles, lanterns, special cloths. Book a second slot of 20 minutes to give yourselves plenty of time – you may get it free.  Crematorium staff are usually flexible and delighted to help. Once the cortege arrives on the day, it is too late to make changes.

• You are not obliged to have a minister of religion involved. A secular celebrant or a suitable friend or colleague may lead the service. There are excellent sources of poetry and readings.

• Live music is powerful – solo cellist, granddaughter on flute, guitar and vocals. Friends and relatives find it a huge privilege to be asked to contribute. Acoustic is best. Complex sound systems take time to set up.

Advice no 6 !!

• Bring photos and albums of pictures to the gathering afterwards. A great ice-breaker, gets people talking, sharing memories across the generations. Can even heal family rifts.

Design Your Own Dead Good Funeral, with Sue Gill and John Fox   Sunday 29 January, 11.45am – 1.15pm

For more information see the Sunday Festival Day Pass listing here.

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