In Winwick Churchyard
From our UK edition
The gravestones are laughing. They tilt at each other’s shoulders, droll tears of lichen blotching their honourable faces. Seated in uneven rows in their auditorium they note church-goers squinch the gravel path to the embossed door. Some lean backwards in mock amazement, others forward, study the half-mown grass or slap their thighs, whisper behind their hands — only one stares in vertical — at man that is born of woman, a joke they refuse to explain. But the upright rectangle between the medlar and the lych-gate, marbled in its twenty-first century is excluded from the pleasantries, is bullied after lights-out by the listing seniors, its jar of wilting pansies the butt of scorn. A much missed mum and nan? Don’t make them lurch. Get real: become obscure.