'Families need someone to look to – I need to be there for them'

We take a look behind the scenes at funeral directors

- BY GRETA SIMPSON

THE year was 1988, and Paul Green had just been made redundant.

The born-and-bred Middletonian, then in his early 20s, had a young family to support. So he did what anyone might: go to the job centre.

"They had two cards on the display," he remembers, nearly 40 years later.

"One was for a delivery driver, and the other was for a limousine driver. I like driving, so I went for the second one."

Little did Paul know then that this stopgap job would become his career - for it turned out he would not be driving limousines, but hearses.

Paul had taken a job at a funeral directors, where he would work for almost 35 years, before establishing his own business in the heart of Middleton earlier this year.

Speaking in his office, Paul - softly spoken and immaculately suited - reflects that he 'didn't realise' what he was getting into at first.

"When I started, it was surreal," he said. "My first reaction to seeing a deceased person was, what have I done? But now I feel privileged to look after that person."

His job is to walk families through planning a funeral 'from start to finish'. It is a mixture of pastoral care - dealing gently with grieving people and rigorous organisation, as funerals, it turns out, take a lot of organising.

As well as the practical side, there is a mountain of administrative work: booking the chapel or crematorium, booking the vehicles, and preparing obituary notices, which he used to type up on a typewriter and send to the local papers by fax machine.

Paul would also arrange the music, first on tape ("It took ages fast-forwarding and stopping at the right part") and then on CDs borrowed from the library. It's a labour of love that he does to this day, though one that has got easier as technology has progressed.

It’s also a changing industry, that shifts as traditions loosen.