FEATURE: A job to die for

By Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
March 5, 2009

IT was a cold, dark winter's night when gravedigger Ian MacGregor downed his shovel at the end of his shift and headed out of the cemetery, pulling the creaky gate behind him. As he fumbled in the failing light with his keys, something made him look up and into the darkening cemetery he had just left behind.

There he saw a ghostly white face staring back at him. For a second he froze with horror... and then the face said: "Woo-hoo-ooo".

"It was a barn owl," laughs the veteran gravedigger.

That, he insists, is the closest he's ever come to encountering a spook in a cemetery.

"We've never dug up any skeletons or had hands popping up out of the ground," he says. "About the most gruesome scene we've ever dealt with was the vandalism at Greyfriars Cemetery, when vandals broke into the Mackenzie Mausoleum and cut off the corpse's head [in June 2003]."

Recalling the incident, he adds: "The bodies inside the mausoleum were amazingly well preserved. It was all down to the dry, airtight conditions."

Ian is one of 28 gravediggers responsible for tending the council's 40 cemeteries throughout the city - including the latest at Craigmillar Castle Park, which opened last month with the first plots ready later this year.

"The most important part of our job is making sure everything is right for the families and there is zero margin for error," says Belfast-born Ian, 53, who took his first gravedigging job aged 21 following his discharge from the Merchant Navy.

Ian says that his job digging holes for the deceased has introduced him to just as many different cultures as he encountered during his travels around the world.

"There's a dedicated Muslim burial site at Portobello where all of the graves point to Mecca, plus several other graves around the city that are aligned the same way," adds Ian, who commutes to Edinburgh every morning from his home in the Borders' village of St Boswells.

"A lot of the time the Muslim families don't want us to intervene. It's part of their culture to prepare the body and dig the grave themselves, so we're only on hand to ensure everything complies with health and safety.

"Some of the Chinese religions also have interesting practices, like placing food on the grave and burning specially made paper money that they call 'heavenly dollars'. They'll sometimes give us an envelope with sweets, coins or a needle and thread as they say it will bring them luck."

Despite mechanical diggers replacing much, although not all, of the spadework, grave digging remains physically a tough job. It involves spending hours outdoors in the driving rain, freezing snow and blazing sun. Edinburgh's gravediggers get by with a mixture of solidarity and private moments of "gallows humour".

"When a funeral is taking place you have to be completely professional, but every job has its moments," says Ian. "We've had a couple of funerals conducted by a particularly unfortunate Greek Orthodox priest who hasn't quite got the hang of his incense burners.

"One day the priest lit the incense in the car and by the time we got to the plot the car was full of smoke and the driver couldn't see.

A couple of years later the same poor guy was swinging his incense burner and the end came off and went straight into the hole.

"It sat there smouldering away on top of the coffin, and he had to ask us if we wouldn't mind jumping down there to get it."

Ian's colleague Paul Veitch adds: "Some of the parties on Corstorphine Hill are good fun too.

"There's a wooded area where you can plant a tree in place of a headstone where most of the hippies bury their friends. They all join together to sing and play guitars, and I've even seen them cart massive amplifiers up the hill to play by the grave.

"We also get all the usual jokes when we tell people what we do. People will say we're lucky to work in the 'dead centre' of town, or ask if the 'coffin' has ever given us the flu."

Paul, 32, who lives in Ferniehall, has worked for the council since leaving Liberton High aged 16. He dug his first grave when he was moved from park maintenance to cemeteries in 1998.

"I didn't have any expectations when I took on the job, and arrived with a totally open mind. I'd never even been to a cemetery before I started working in them so I didn't really know what to expect.

"There was a funeral taking place on my first day, and I just stood back and watched, and after a while I learned which families to approach and which to leave be.

"Some people are too upset and don't want to talk, while others will give you their loved one's whole life story.

"I was only 22 when I started and you don't have a great deal of life experience at that age, but this job has made me more responsible and allowed me to grow as a person. Sometimes it's like being a counsellor, and it's important to listen and assure them that their loved ones are in safe hands."

Paul's work has also brought him close to a number of famous people over the years during their most vulnerable times.

He dug the grave where former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who died of a heart attack in 2005, now rests at Grange Cemetery.

He has also had the heartbreaking task of digging graves for some of the city's most tragic child deaths, including Olivia Donachie who was killed aged just four by a hit-and-run driver in May 2007, and ten-year-old Jack Anderson, who died in similar circumstances the previous October.

"I've lost a child myself so I can identify with these families' feelings," says Paul. "I lost my first son Kyle after he was born with cystic fibrosis. The illness meant his bowel was practically non-existent and he died after nine days."

Kyle died in January 2007 but more recently there has been baby joy for Paul and his wife Diane, 33, with the birth nearly five months ago of little Dale.

When they lost Kyle, Paul says his work provided no escape for his grief.

"On my first day back to work after Kyle's death I had to dig a grave for another child," says Paul.

"It was a stillborn, if I remember correctly, but I was able to switch off my own feelings.

"You just have to remember that it's not your family, it's not your grief, and you have a job to do."

WORK TO DIE FOR

"I'VE never been made redundant working as a gravedigger," Ian McGregor points out.

"The only thing certain in this world is death and taxes and the council always has room for both."

As nearly every sector in Britain looks to identify cuts in the face of a deepening recession, Edinburgh City Council's cemeteries department will soon be hiring staff to help the running of the new Craigmillar Castle Park Cemetery, which has space for 500 graves

Edinburgh's first new cemetery for 50 years was officially opened on January 12 but the plots won't be ready until later this year, by which time the council will be on the lookout for one, or perhaps two new gravediggers.