According to a Facebook pop-up my friend Kristy has just shared, ‘A funeral home in Britain is attaching tiny digital codes to headstones, giving visitors the chance to see, hear, even experience the lives of the dead’.
Well, this is hardly news to some of us. The late great Jeffrey Bernard had something to say on a related topic way back in 1982:
Before your missus pegs out she records a message on to tape and then, when you visit her grave on a Sunday afternoon to put a vase of dandelions on it, you press a button and hear the same old story again. ‘Hallo, is that you, Jeff? I’m amazed you managed to tear yourself away from the pub to come and visit me. Your dinner’s in the oven. Honestly, I thought you’d change and settle down. Don’t you ever think of the future. Christ, this headache is killing me. I suppose you lost it all at the betting shop. Stop staring at that woman at the next grave. You’re drunk again. You make me sick. Don’t bother to come next Sunday. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me. I don’t suppose you ever have anyway. Always thinking about yourself. Me, me, me. I told you you make me sick didn’t I? Yes, of course I did. Well, good bloody bye.’
Jeffrey Bernard, The Spectator, 23 April 1992
O'Gorman's Unfamiliar Quotations 