Jo Jones Remembered By The Writers’ Circle.

We recently learned of the passing of former HWC Secretary – Jo Jones.

Jo Jones was a member of the Writers Circle in Hay for many years, between 2014-2017 she was the group’s Secretary. She was much valued by all the members of the Circle.

She had been a warden of a mountainside hostel in an earlier incarnation. We rated her as tough and fearless, whilst always seeing the funny side of things, compassionately.

We so much appreciated her humorous and perceptive writing. Her characterization was vivid and we felt that we knew the people and the parties taking place in the stories.

Here are two examples – In her “School Nativity Play” we appreciated her Joyce Grenfell like gentle humour. In “Jane” we heard about her part in her aunt’s do-it-yourself alternative funeral. It was both hilarious and touching. Both pieces are in the Writers’ Circle publication “Pick and Mix” along with others by Jo.

In person, she had an inimitable way of presenting the stories. Her comic timing was wonderful and her delivery was both droll and moving, and we loved it. As did the audience at the Hay Festival events in which she took part.

Last of all, no-one will forget her marvellous scones, baked at her lovely cottage in Winforton where she hosted the Circle on many occasions.

Thank you to Ange Grunsell and Jean O’Donoghue for the above tribute to Jo.

Below is one of Jo’s short stories which appeared in HWC anthology, “Pick n’ Mix”.

JANE
by Jo Jones

A question that is rarely heard in an undertaker’s office is ‘Have you
anything cheaper?’ We have to be seen to be giving the dearly departed the
best that money can buy. Clients are shown glossy catalogues displaying
various coffins, ranging from basic pine to superb, ornate, glass topped,
luxuriously lined specimens. The better the coffin, the better the package.
Bewildered clients may be thinking how horrendously expensive it all looks
but never feel able to voice their opinion.

There are a few exceptions to this rule and my aunt Jane was a
shining example of someone who thought funerals were a complete rip-off.
She did not just think it; she voiced her opinion frequently and even wrote a
book about it.

Her lately departed husband, who was a conservation fanatic, made it
known that when he died he wanted to be thrown on the compost heap.
This is not a legal option. However, having him cremated and then his
ashes consigned to the compost could be arranged.

Although Jane’s husband, Nigel, was terminally ill, he and Jane
discussed how a Do-It-Yourself, inexpensive funeral could be accomplished.
Transporting the body to the crematorium some thirty miles away could be
done using their battered old Volvo. The coffin was a little more difficult.
Where do you go to buy a coffin?

Jane managed to acquire one from a small independent undertaker by
pretending she needed it for a play. They decided to use the old fashioned
custom of keeping the deceased in the parlour with the curtains closed until
the day of the funeral. If he died in hospital he could be left in the
mortuary.

It did not quite go to plan because he managed to die at home, on a
very warm bank holiday Saturday, so he was kept in cold storage at the Bala
police station for a few days. The route from Bala to Ruthin crematorium is
over a winding mountain road, which caused the coffin to slide about in the
Volvo. They had to stop and collect several large rocks from the roadside to
wedge the coffin in place.

Having successfully planned and executed such a funeral, Jane
started planning her own (as it happens, well in advance). With much
difficulty she eventually found someone to make her a chipboard coffin.
Apparently undertakers are not allowed to sell coffins to Jack Public. Most
undertakers are no longer small family businesses; they have been taken
over by large companies (although they keep the old family name so that
people think it is a small independent firm). The last thing undertakers
want is a rash of people doing their own funerals. They therefore endeavour
to make it almost impossible for anyone to even contemplate such a plan.

Having bought her coffin, Jane had it put up in her loft and there it
remained for the next twelve years. She then wrote a book about arranging
a funeral without the services of an undertaker (which made her very
unpopular with certain elements of the population). She appeared on many
radio and television programmes talking about her book Undertaken With
Love.

The result of all this publicity meant that when Jane eventually died I,
as her next of kin and executor, would simply have to give her a Do-It
Yourself job.

In March 2000 Jane had a stroke. It soon became obvious that she
would not be able to cope at home any longer so had to be moved to a care
home. Rather than leave her house unoccupied I put it up for sale. I now
had to find a new storage place for her coffin. The piggery in my daughter’s
garden became its new home. My daughter’s two young sons would bring
school friends home to play and one of their favourite games was hide and
seek. A much used hiding place would be inside the coffin. It also served as
a temporary home for several hamsters, a resting place for an assortment of
injured or dead birds and a container for windfall apples. By the time it was
needed it looked pretty shabby.

Sadly, my aunt Jane died in April 2002. She was in the top bedroom
on the fourth floor of an old Victorian mansion. The plan was to bring her
down to the ground floor standing up wedged between two carers as the lift
was only tiny. We would then manoeuvre her into my VW Campervan where
she would be taken to the local hospital mortuary. We needed a couple of
‘lookouts’ to make sure no other staff or patients tried to use the lift while
this descent was taking place. The management did not want several more
deaths due to patients having heart failure after seeing a corpse descending
to the ground floor via the lift.

When we reached the van we had to somehow post her into a dry
cleaner’s garment bag which was being used as a body bag. My next hurdle
was to drive through town to the local hospital. I dreaded stalling the van at
the many sets of traffic lights which littered our route from the care home to
the mortuary. The mere thought of some well-meaning policeman coming to
my assistance and discovering a body lying on the bed area filled me with
horror.

I need not have worried, the van performed wonderfully and we made
it to the mortuary without incident. However, the mortician was a real
jobsworth. Nothing had been done correctly; no identification label attached
to her toe, no paperwork and no proper body bag. It was amazing what a
couple of crisp twenty pound notes managed to put right.
It was not difficult to arrange two post mortems or to book the
crematorium. I had placed the obituaries (written in advance by Jane
herself) in the Telegraph and Observer and notified all her friends. Her
funeral was to be a very small affair since, at her request, I was to organise a
celebration of her life, in London, a couple of months after her death.

Since Jane was an atheist, the committal was to be along Humanist
lines. For the handful of people who were able to attend I told them her life
story; how she had been given away at birth, how she eventually traced her
real parents when she was in her forties, her life as an actress and, in later
years, a writer. She had chosen two pieces of music to be played during the
proceedings; one was Is That All There Is? sung by Peggy Lee and the other
(to be played as the coffin slid into the warm room) was The Best of Times is
Now.

A couple of months later, some friends and I bought a lilac tree, dug a
deep hole in my garden and attempted to tip her ashes into the hole before
planting the tree. Unfortunately a sudden gust of wind caught the ashes
and blew them all over us. Since our jackets were soaking wet due to out
digging in the pouring rain (well, we were in Wales) she stuck to us. We can
never forget her.

Thanks in no small part to Jane’s campaigning, things have now
improved. There is a large store, rather like a garden centre, where you can
buy everything you need for a burial. There are woven willow, cardboard,
and hand-decorated coffins – all easily found on internet sites.

The end.

R.I.P Jo xxx