Evie offers a fascinating and often amusing insight into an aspect of death that is universally feared. If the deceased has left behind documentation relating to their wishes concerning their committal, those wishes will be carried out: if there's no such information, or the deceased's identity is unknown, they will still receive a dignified send-off. Evie is an Environmental Health worker, whose job is ensuring funerals are carried out where the funds aren't available either due to the family not being able to afford it, or indeed where no family exists. Sometimes you just know that you are going to love a book from the first few sentences and that was absolutely the case with Ashes to Admin. I've learned a lot from this memoir (like, who knew you could bequeath your loyalty card points) and it's made me think a little more about my own inevitable demise.

Ashes To Admin by Evie King | Waterstones

It has made me rethink my own hazy death wishes (no pun intended) and reinvigorated me to properly sit down and document some things like the far distant seeming will/funeral instead of just winging it with my life insurance. During the book Evie reveals something of herself and how she got her peculiar but essential job, and we enter a twilight world hardly any of us knows anything about. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. It lifts the lid on the lives, and more importantly the deaths, of our country's forgotten people, dignifying them, and shaming our nation.In fact, the reassuring truth is that a Section 46 funeral may have fewer frills than other funerals, but it is still every bit as respectful and dignified. I picked this up on a whim after hearing the author on a podcast talking about the book and her job. Where care homes have agreements with funeral homes, where families are embarrassed because they can't pay for a loved one's funeral, and the care a council can give. This book brought both laughter and tears, and made me think that I really need to sort out a death-admin folder of my own.

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

A downside to longevity that people sometimes don’t consider, and something that is striven for blindly in our life-at-all-costs culture. Her book aims to tell the otherwise lost stories of those who have ended up in her care, smash that 3am anxiety about who will be there when we die and how many people will attend our funeral, encourage advanced planning, and invite us to rethink our ideas around life, death and legacy. Thanks to Evie King an inspiring local council worker in charge of carrying out Section 46 funerals under the Public Health Act, these individuals’ lives are not forgotten (and other Council Funeral Officers of course! As she learns on the job, her story is told through a series of case studies, from bodies discovered at home, to deaths in care homes, and on through to the outbreak of Covid, this is an insight into the way death is dealt with on a political and personal level.Some of Evie King's cases will make you cry, others will make you angry, and some will make you smile - or even *laugh*. I just finished the pages of Evie King’s Ashes To Admin: Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer for a second time this year. I love how she isn’t overt with her quite apparent political opinions, rather focuses on work and shows the banality of the system, and why all the common tropes about useless councils are ludicrous. Evie's commitment to her people is commendable and she's the kind of worker you'd want assigned to your case. Diane (Philomena Cunk) Morgan: "A fascinating, poignant, and funny insight into the slightly macabre world of a Council Funeral Officer.

Ashes to Admin — Dead Good Reading Ashes to Admin — Dead Good Reading

She does use a lot of English slang (never in a disrespectful way) and terms and names unfamiliar to most Americans, so you will find yourself consulting a dictionary and/or the Internet quite frequently. This really jumped out at me, as I often feel that people focus on lifespan and not the value and quality of life we have. There are a couple of deeply unsavoury characters for whom funerals are required, but the rest are a joy to read about - such as Edward (aka 'Adam'), Carl, Jean, and Alex; the unknown girl who brought strangers together in an outpouring of love and compassion; and the minister who conducted a funeral dressed as a Jedi, in a chapel decked out like a spaceship.

In lay terms, that means arranging funerals for people who die alone, without family or friends to arrange a funeral. In your book you said "there are so many death certificates out there with my name on and giving my relationship to the deceased as "causing the body to be burned/buried". How she does her job makes for very interesting reading, and the author takes great satisfaction in her work, in essence serving as a friend or relative for those without any. I've come across more than my fair share of faceless bureaucrats who have gone about their job with complete disdain for the people they are meant to help lately. I got a response from the person on the death cert and got a response with the exact location of the scattering, along with a full eulogy!