Fun and friends mclean: Fun & Friends Child Development Center

Bury me in a donut: “jolly” coffins have become popular in New Zealand.

The funeral of Phil McLean of Wellington was unexpected. When the coffin with the deceased was brought into the chapel, a wave of laughter went through the hall. Children openly giggled, adults restrained smirked. Phil was always original and funny, and even after his death, he decided to amuse his family: his coffin looked like a giant cream donut – like it was fresh from the oven. “It helped overcome the sadness and heaviness of the last few weeks of his life,” says McLean’s widow, Debra, “the last memory of him will be a donut, a manifestation of Phil’s sense of humor. ”

The donut coffin was the first creation of its kind, but new “fun” coffins followed. Phil asked his cousin Ross, an undertaker who runs a Dying Art firm in Auckland, New Zealand, for this service. News of the strange funeral swept the county, and Ross soon began receiving orders for even more extravagant coffins. Business took off.

Hall’s other creations include a coffin in the form of a sailboat, fire truck, chocolate bar and Lego blocks. In his practice, there were already sparkling coffins, coffins covered with rhinestones, a coffin in the form of a box, coffins decorated in the spirit of the film “The Matrix”. And also a whole galaxy of coffins with images of the beaches and sights beloved by the dead. The coffins are made from biodegradable materials and cost between $2,100 and $5,400, depending on the complexity of the design.

“There are those who like the simple mahogany domino, which is great too,” says undertaker Ross, “but many people now believe that funerals are a celebration of life, not a mourning for death. ”

The same Phil McLean, from whom this story began, for example, saw the true joy of life in donuts. He was a donut connoisseur and was a true expert. It was his cheerful hobby. Even at the funeral, he asked to order one and a half hundred donuts in his favorite cafe in order to treat his relatives and friends for the last time. And it’s great! The last note of his life was a major one.

Undertaker Ross himself admits that at first he dreamed of a bright red coffin with painted flames, like on some kind of racing car. But recently he decided it was too easy. In his will, he asks to be buried in a transparent coffin, and he himself was dressed in nothing but a leopard print thong. “The kids say they won’t come to the funeral then,” he says with a laugh. But where will they go?

(c)

More details

,s**l3iN3
Carpe Diem I í I 1 / /

■to WJ! ЩШ \ / И / i ■ 1 1 1
■£?n-.%e i шв
funeral, coffin, fun

More on the topic

Kim Philby: “A spy among friends”

Alexander Genis: The return of Cold War rhetoric to big politics and popular culture has brought back a keen interest in its heroes – and anti-heroes. One of the latter is described in a book presented by Marina Efimova.

Marina Efimova: The story of Kim Philby, an English aristocrat who became a Soviet spy, has been researched and described up and down. In addition to the natural interest of historians and political scientists, he has received the attention of novelists, including Graham Greene (who made him one of the characters in the script for the film The Third Man) and John LeCarre (who used his character in the novel Get Out Spy). Even the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote about him in his essay “Collector’s copy”. Historical works, novels, essays, a book of memoirs by one of the four wives (titled “The Spy I Loved”), and several documentaries and feature films have been written about Philby.

However, a new and very interesting book by historian Ben McIntyre, A Spy Among Friends. About Kim Philby and the big betrayal. The book focuses not so much on Philby himself, but on people from his environment – that very “circle of friends” that is mentioned in the title.

Philby belonged to high society and his father was in the Foreign Office. And in London in the 1930s, people who could be trusted were determined not by questionnaires, but by the method of Professor Higgins – that is, by the richness of the dictionary, by the style of speech and by kinship. Therefore, when Philby decided to enter the Secret Service, he simply hinted about it to his friends from Cambridge.

Announcer: “Soon, in the train car that Philby was traveling to London, a journalist (also with a rich dictionary) sat down next to him and, after chatting with him for half an hour, said that she would try to help him. After some time, Philby was invited to tea by another lady – an employee of the Department of Defense – and also talked with him about this and that. Then his name went to the check in MI 5 (uh ai 5) – the British equivalent of the FBI, from which came the laconic conclusion: “there are no contraindications.” And, finally, the deputy director of MI 6 (British intelligence service), who remembered Philby’s father in India, gave his “go-ahead”, briefly answering a request about Philby: “I knew his family. ”

Marina Efimova: Kim Philby was a man of extraordinary charm: impeccable manners, good-natured irony, a slight, touching stutter and the legendary ability to drink without getting drunk. Once in intelligence, he easily made drinking companions, and the director of the archive, who loved, but did not know how to drink, soldered himself to insensibility and calmly examined secret documents. As for close friends, they were James Engelton – the future head of American counterintelligence – and the rising star of the British secret service, Nicholas Elliot. Philby knew how to have fun and work, so he was appreciated by his superiors, and very soon he was appointed head of the “Soviet Section” of MI6. Philby’s rapid promotion is understandable, according to the notes of historian Hugh Trevor-Roper:

Announcer: “I met the staff of MI 6: retired Indian cops, former stockbrokers, the sweetest epicureans from the White and Boodle bars, cheerful retired naval officers and energetic adventurers. All were like literary characters. The real one was Philby. I decided that he would become the head of the entire Service.”

Marina Efimova: He almost became. But in 1951, two of his close friends, Guy Burgess and Donald McLean, fled to Moscow when they were suspected of being spies. Philby was forced to resign, although all his colleagues spoke out in his defense. He went to Beirut as a correspondent for reputable magazines and lived there until the second investigation began. Without waiting for it to end, Philby disappeared. January 1963, leaving a bar in the center of Beirut, he got into a car with a diplomatic number. An hour later he was on board a Soviet merchant ship bound for Odessa.

Philby became a Soviet spy almost immediately after graduating from Cambridge and smuggled all state secrets obtained from the MI6 archive and through colleagues and friends to the NKVD-KGB. Assessing the damage done by Philby and his Cambridge associates, CIA officer Miles Copland (also a friend of Philby) wrote:

Announcer: “In the period from 1944 to 1951, all the enormous work of Western intelligence was brought to naught. It would be better if we didn’t do anything at all.”

Marina Efimova: How could it happen that in England not one, but several highly qualified spies at once penetrated the intelligence service?

Announcer: “Filby’s boss, Sir Stuart Menzies, who was related to the royal family, was an amateur scout. He attended races in the town of Ascot every day, devoted a lot of time to women and horses (preferring horses), drank heavily and was said to “keep all secrets under the cover of only his stiff mustache.” Donald McLean (another Soviet spy in his office) once broke into the room of two secretaries in Cairo, tore off their clothes and a mirror from the wall and split the bathtub in two. Menzies sent him to the departmental psychiatrist and then made him head of the “American Section” of the foreign department.

Marina Yefimova: Guy Burges, already suspected of being a spy, was put under surveillance by Menzies’s office, but still just in case. Therefore, the detectives did not follow Burges on weekends or evenings, and never followed him if he left London.

Announcer: “Surveillance was carried out by retired police officers chosen for their sharp eyesight and hearing. They were dressed in the same raincoats and hats and exchanged gestures. In a word, they looked exactly like people conducting surveillance.

Marina Efimova: In the book “A Spy Among Friends” the author often connects the fate of Philby with the fate of his closest friend and main victim – also an employee of the Secret Service, its rising star – Nicholas Elliot. McIntyre writes:

Announcer: “Elliot loved Philby. He admired everything in this man: the skill of a scout, the aura of good-natured irony, even his cane with a bone head. And Philby seemed to reciprocate with the young colleague. They were the closest friends two heterosexual English aristocrats of the mid-20th century could be. ”

Marina Efimova: Elliot fought fervently for Philby’s reputation when he was under suspicion. And it was Elliot who was sent to Beirut to investigate when suspicions became almost irrefutable. Already on the road, Elliot realized that all these years he had told Philby his secrets, but he had not told him. In Beirut, Elliot had several conversations with Philby in an empty departmental apartment. Philby was being followed, but “those who followed were amateur, and Philby was a professional.”

The subtitle of MacIntyre’s book, “About Philby and the Great Betrayal,” I think, refers not to Philby’s betrayal, but to the unintentional but unforgivable betrayal of frivolous, charming, irresponsible snobs, then horrified by the consequences of their irresponsibility. Depressed, Nicholas Elliot confided to a friend on the way to Beirut: “I’m afraid I have blood on my hands.” At the end of World War II, Philby gave Moscow the names entrusted to him by Elliot of the leaders of the Catholic underground in Germany, which was preparing to take power so that the country would not fall into the hands of the Communists.