7 Questions for Punk Undertaker Ru Callender

A quick intro to our upcoming Drink with the Idler guest Ru Callender

Green funeral director and author of What Remains? Ru Callender will be our guest on A Drink with the Idler, Thursday 29 September, 6pm London time. Buy your ticket here. Free for subscribers.

Tell us about your new book in a few words.

RU CALLENDER: My book is, embarrassing though this is to say because it sounds a bit fogey, a memoir about my weird life which led me, through a series of bereavements, misfortunes and fortunes to set up as what I have always described as a “radical undertaker”. I’ve been earning my living from doing this for the past 23 years – 21 of them with my ex-wife and partner Claire. The book encompasses death, drugs, crop circles, magick with a ‘k’, and the KLF. And lots of funerals.

What was your worst job ever?

RC: My worst job was when I was 15, a mercifully brief but brutal job plucking turkeys that my mother made me do in order to toughen me up. It failed. Their feet would be bound, then their necks would be broken by putting their head through an old-fashioned clothes mangle, then their still-flapping bodies would be hung on a hook at head level. Their pinion feathers, the big ones, had to be extracted before they started to stiffen. Their wings beat my teenage face in the opposite manner to which an angel’s wings are meant to caress you. And it was done in a freezing barn at about seven in the morning.

What was your best job ever?

RC: My undertaking job. People think it must be dreadful, and there is a huge amount of grief and sadness I’ve absorbed over the past two decades to the sometimes detriment of my mental health, not to mention the physical toll that comes with heaving the dead around for 23 years, but paradoxically you get to see people at their best, in what are the worst moments of their lives. It keeps my faith in humanity ever fresh.

How many hours do you work a day?

RC: It varies hugely, because death is erratic. Some days I don’t work at all. Other days I work well into the night. I am naturally lazy, and have created a specific niche to work in, so probably much less than most people. A thousand times less than my academic girlfriend.

Do you believe in the nap?

RC: No, I have ADHD, so the nap is a no-no. It’s hard enough to sleep at night. I barely sat down until I was around 40, never felt tired until my late 30s, never fell asleep on a sofa until I was 51. I hum like an electricity substation, though luckily for those around me less so these days. I love to sit on a sofa though, doing shite like Twitter, which I rate highly.

Stoic or Epicurean?

RC: Epicurean without a doubt, though I wish I were a Stoic. I am greedy for pleasure and sensation, probably exasperated by my time spent furiously raving. As Comic Book Guy says in The Simpsons, “Life well spent.”

Advice to your younger self?

RC: Don’t let the older people you’re hanging out with get to you just because they’re five or ten years older than you. Most of them aren’t as cool as you, or as smart, and they’ll fall by the wayside of life. Things will get much, much better. You knew it was going to be a shitshow until at least your 30s.

Hear Ru talk on A Drink with the Idler, 29 September. Find out more here.

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