Pick Your Own Strawberries

Book excerpt: A PIONEERING FUNERAL COMPANY PUTS THE MIRTH INTO MOURNING:Unworldly middle-aged undertakers assistant Frank Eddowes is a man going nowhere. Still living at home with his mother, and possessor of a substantial drink problem, Frank's social life centres around a seedy station bar. Here he mixes with drunks, druggies and questionable young girls.Frank's world falls apart when he is dismissed by his fusty old employer for an embarrassing drunken indiscretion at work. But in a further fit of drunken inspiration, he retaliates by setting up a rival undertakers staffed by the no-hope losers of his favourite bar. They are to offer a service totally contrary to that of accepted tradition, with popular music as a theme and complete lack of deference to the remains of the departed as the central doctrine. Could Frank be onto something which would alter the mindset of one of the last taboos forever? Can funerals ever be fun? Or have Frank and his oddball little band taken things way too far?