The Bromiges' Neighbors

This is one of the charity shops on our high street. Somehow their front door got broken, and for a while there's been a plain piece of plywood covering up the gap. But I noticed yesterday that someone's given the wood a cheerful paint job. ("Save Teenhood is a campaign being run by the charity to improve the experiences of teenagers in Britain, said to be the "unhappiest in Europe.")

Bailey and I found more freshly fallen leaves on our morning walk...

...and in the afternoon we went to the cemetery, where she drank from a puddle of rainwater in the base of a headstone (not sure where the stone itself went), rolled wildly in the grass and found the remains of a skinned football that she brutalized as if it were prey. It was entertaining to watch. Just the other day, I was telling Dave that Bailey didn't seem as excited about footballs as Olga used to be -- maybe she heard me and wanted to prove me wrong.

(Don't worry -- she didn't ingest any of the stringy bits, and I took it away from her after making the video.)

Here's one of the headstones in the cemetery, for William G. (died 1939) and Ada H. Fraser (1963). It's a modest grave marker, interesting only because it's now in the middle of a footpath. In fact it's very close to the grave of the Bromiges, which I've blogged before.

I can't quite remember if this path existed before Covid, but it certainly became more worn during the pandemic. The cemetery got a lot of use during that period, and around that time some paths were cleared around the perimeter in the rear section. Those are the paths I almost always walk with the dog, through the woods, rather than the paved roads in the center. (The front half of the cemetery is not as woodsy so there we use the pavements.)

Here are some other interesting graves. This is the marker of Elizabeth and John Creemer (died 1881 and 1894, respectively). The figure on the top looks like she's giving the Black Power salute ("Power to the People!") but I think she's perhaps meant to be holding something aloft -- a lantern, lighting the way? Just a guess.

This is a relatively modern grave for someone who died in 1998, just after his 16th birthday. It caught my eye because of the guitar, recently left behind with a note: "Happy 44th birthday, me old mate. You're still truly missed. Love from all the Crayford boys."

And here's a headstone for Charles Henry Webster Millar, a tenor who performed in the early 20th Century under the stage name Webster Millar. His son was also a famous singer. Both the quote at the top of the stone and the musical lyric come from Longfellow's poem "Hiawatha," the basis for a trilogy of cantatas written by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and perhaps performed by Millar. Apparently it was a popular work in that time period, performed regularly at Royal Albert Hall with a cast of hundreds.

You can learn a lot, traipsing around the cemetery with a demented dog.