Donna Wiggins, 55, her daughters Nicole Tilley, 34, Jade Tilley, 26, and daughter-in-law Sara Woodcraft, 31, paid £800 for a black ornamental fence to go around the edge of their grandparents’ grave.
However, they were horrified when at the end of August, they found a note on the grave telling them the railings, artificial rose and decorative stones breached the rules of St Katherine’s churchyard, in Long Road, Canvey and needed to be removed.
Ding! Ding! Ding! All aboard the chav's Outrage Bus!
“We should have been given rules when we bought the headstone but we weren’t aware that we couldn’t have the railings.”
Did you enquire before buying them? No?
7 comments:
The obvious thought is that before doing anything we should be fully aware of the consequences of those actions. That we strictly adhere to the laws of nature and man when making decisions and performing tasks. So it could be said people who do things as these people have deserve no sympathy. In a perfect world that would be true but the world is not perfect. The laws of both nature and man are complex and are sometime incomprehensible because they defy logic and understanding without a study in depth and even then sometime defy the abilities of the most intellectually gifted. Coupled with the difficulties of not always arriving at consensual interpretation of the meaning of those laws it is not surprising that we all at some point do the wrong even stupid thing.
"He who is without sin can cast the first stone" and "do not mock the afflicted" are sayings we should give credence to but we rarely do. Perhaps we should ponder on another saying "there but for the grace of god go I" as it depends how nature has endowed us as to how many mistakes or not we make. Over the millenniums of time man has accumulated much wisdom which we have translated into useful pithy sayings. It is a pity that we do not use them very much as no doubt doing so would only lead to our betterment. It would also lead to us not laughing at the misdeeds and misfortunes of others and that would be a sad loss to our propensity for humour. It would also deprive us of one method of teaching others how to behave in a better way that benefits them and society. Life is very contradictory and it is a complex web it weaves. Dichotomies abound. How we survive them all is up to now another one of those unfathomable mysteries.
I would have thought it a common courtesy to ask first as it is someone else's property.
You're wrong here. That grave looks very neat and tidy. It just shows that you can't escape jobsworth gibberish even when you're dead.
-richard
We had an outbreak of Chav "decorations" in our local graveyard in West Kent. Horrible gaudy figurines, weatherproofed photographs of the deceased with horses, miniature horses, fairy lights, etc. Thankfully the local council acted swiftly and firmly and serenity has been restored.
Gaudy and weatherproofed indeed, Tutankhamun built his pyramid to stop Giza Council from binning his outrageous bling. What's wrong with a hole in the ground, rather than the most resilient and impressive structure ever made?
Let kings and chavs do what they must, their dead are their business. Maybe it's a dead child who used to like horses and fairy lights, eh?
-richard
richard,
Regardless of the merits or otherwise this particular instance you and I know that, given half a chance, some people would fill graveyards with craptastic edifices visible from the far side of the universe. Allow one family to break the rules and the next family wanting to erect a 12 foot pink plastic unicorn with a tramp stamp and flashing eyes will cite the previous bending of the rules and start screaming discrimination and hate crime until they get their way.
"...the difficulties of not always arriving at consensual interpretation of the meaning of those laws..."
I'm not sure people like this even try to do so.
"I would have thought it a common courtesy to ask first as it is someone else's property."
They probably think the plot is 'their' property, since the corpse was a recently departed family member!
"That grave looks very neat and tidy."
It does indeed. But it undoubtedly breaches the regulations. That's the point.
"Maybe it's a dead child who used to like horses and fairy lights, eh? "
The dead have no further use for such things. Graves, and the decoration of them, are for the living.
"Allow one family to break the rules and the next family wanting to erect a 12 foot pink plastic unicorn with a tramp stamp and flashing eyes will cite the previous bending of the rules and start screaming discrimination and hate crime until they get their way."
Spot on!
And when such an edifice is built, it'll surely be Essex!
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