Deadend Hoxton

"He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong." Mark 12:27

The lid is replaced quite gingerly and screwed down with one of those battery-operated screwdrivers that sounds a bit like an electric tooth-brush. Then the coffin is pretty thoroughly blasted with holy smoke. In the olden days, before the introduction of modern embalmery, incense was used to mask “the smells”. Nowadays, of course, we can be so much more spiritual about the whole business of death.

There was nothing particularly spiritual about Bluey’s end. He had died, on his own, in Homerton Hospital, having been picked up in a delirious state wandering the streets of Hackney. He was not yet forty. He had spent much of his short life on these same streets, suffering from debilitating mental health problems. Having been born in Hoxton, he returned here in his last years. With his dreadlocked West Indian charm, he was known and beloved by all; the “original gentle giant” says Dot from the Florist Shop.

Linda from the Bakery kept an eye on Bluey too. She describes how he would come in everyday in order to pick up his egg mayonnaise sandwich: “he always insisted that it was made with brown bread, mind.” Reg, a fruit trader from Hoxton Market agrees: Bluey was very particular about his bananas. He didn’t like them unripe, that’s how the English ate them, he would say, “hard as potatoes”. Tracy from the Chemist tells me how he would come in every morning “for a chat and a squirt of Linx”.

The little team of undertakers wheel Bluey, feet first, from the chancel step, down the middle of the church and out to the hearse. The sixty or so people, who have come to the funeral shuffle out behind. Mourners always shuffle but today there is very little reason to rush.

The slot at the Manor Park crematorium had been booked when that was where the funeral service was going to take place. It had been down as a “contract funeral” - what used to be called a “pauper’s funeral”. Under such circumstances the Council doesn’t pay for a church service too. They say it doesn’t meet with Best Value: a hearse and a couple of limos don’t come cheap, even when they are sitting around, as they were now, just looking splendid.

It was only when the local shopkeepers and stall holders heard that they weren’t going to get a chance to pay their final respects that they clubbed together for the additional cost of church funeral. “What does the Council spend its money on anyway?” asks Reg, “what they do is they put in speed bumps and then they take them out again. It’s all money for someone. It’s all costing loads of money. Someone’s making it.”

There is a growing clamour for Bluey to take the route down Hoxton Market. “He would have loved that,” says Julie from the local betting shop. The undertaker, however, is all doom. “I’ll never get my car over the ramp in the road where the market begins,” he says, “The car has a very low base. The ramp is too high. It's effectively a deadend for us.”

There is a sudden animated discussion and the suggestion of re-routing the funeral procession behind the housing estates, round by the Britannia Swimming Pool and then turning up Hoxton Street from the other direction, the trendy end. That way Bluey will get to pass the bakery, the off-licence, the chemist, the pie and eel shop, the betting shop and the florist, before turning around again when he reaches to the ramp from the other side. An entire lap of honour.

“I may have to do a three point turn when we get to the ramp,” says the funeral director, still looking still for a way out, “I’m afraid that this is not going to be very dignified for the deceased.” Everyone laughs.