Final days

The coroner has at last (March 6th) signed the forms that release my father to the undertaker. My father died instantly of a pulmonary embolism on February 14th, the death certificate finally became available to my mother on March 4th and the undertaker had still heard nothing. After, I suspect, several angry phone calls, the coroner remembered to do his job and signed the release forms.

So, there is no real prospect of an open casket funeral because the undertaker has not been able to embalm him. My mother wanted to say one last goodbye, but thanks to the utter ineptitude of the South Wales coroner, that is unlikely to be possible. The entire family is now at the point where if this coroner shows his face he’s really not likely to get to keep it. Don’t show up to apologise, Coroner. No apology can or will be accepted. Just fuck off.

This is not an exceptional case. More and more are coming forward from the area covered by this coroner’s office. The local MP will be getting letters, as will whoever is medically in charge of that shitshow.

I wonder if he would dare do this to a Muslim family? Islam requires the time between death and internment to be no more than three days. This coroner thinks nothing of taking three weeks or more to sign a damn form. If they jihaded him, they’d have the full support of me and my entire family. Heck, we’d give them alibis.

I have been uncommunicative for a while because of this. We cannot move on until it is over. My mother could not arrange bank accounts, insurances, property, pensions, council tax, anything at all without the death certificate so we have all been in limbo until the coroner finally managed to shift his arse. Fortunately my brother has been on hand to help our mother and CStM and I will be there in a couple of days for the funeral.

And don’t blame this on ‘Tory cuts’. This is NHS Wales. It’s Labour controlled. God help you all in Wales if (when) coronavirus hits. It has an incubation period of at least two weeks and it’ll be three weeks before you know if someone died of it. NHS Wales will go under with cases in a month, all because the coroner just does not care.

The remainers and the climate cult have dropped their masks now, gleefully delighting in hte deaths of ‘old Brexiteers’ and ‘old Climate Heretics’ and not realising that coronavirus does not care how you vote, nor does it care for your religion. I actually don’t know how my father voted on Brexit, nor his opinions on climate change. We didn’t discuss politics. I don’t know how any of my family voted on anything, nor how they feel about climate change, for that matter. In my family, family is first. We do not split over trivia.

I think they will listen to me over the new coronavirus, since I’m the only one with a doctorate in microbiology. So I will be advising on this one. It’s not ‘flu. That ‘it’s only flu’ mindset is what makes those required to self-quarantine think ‘It’s been three days, I’m fine, I’ll go to that concert/business meeting/football match’ and spread it all around. Its principal danger is not even in its death rate, which is amateurish compared to the likes of Ebola. Its danger is in its asymptomatic spread which will lead to a total collapse of the health service. They don’t only deal with coronavirus, you know, and when hospitals are full of people on respirators, what about all the other illnesses?

As for me, I only have one gathering to attend. My father’s funeral. It will be big, there are a lot of us on all three sides of the family (long story, another time maybe) from all over the country. Infection rates are not yet at dangerous levels as far as anyone knows (although ‘confirmed cases’ are only the ones so far showing symptoms and the real current cases could well be ten times that) so I’ll risk it.

Confirmed cases are doubling every two days in the UK. Don’t imagine this one is just going to disappear. This is not the necrotising fasciitis scare that killed about eight people and caused mass panic, this one will run and run.

We’re not flying to Wales. I had already decided to drive because that gives more flexibility over coming back. If we have to stay a few more days, no problem. Just as well really since the operator of flights from Aberdeen to Cardiff was Flybe, and they’ve now gone bust. I’d have been driving anyway and with no chance of ticket refunds.

Still, the eleventh Underdog Anthology will go ahead. Submissions will close on March 31st although publication isn’t likely to be until mid to late April and you might not get an email response until mid March at the earliest. That’s not your fault, it’s the fault of an idiot in a coroner’s job.

This one will be dedicated to my father. He loved to read these books.