Trouble Down Below

I said to our curate the other day that I was increasingly worried about the Garden of Remembrance and the measuring of plots for the burial of ashes which seemed to make no sense to me. 'We're going to be digging through ashes to bury more ashes if we're not careful'. The following afternoon the man from the undertakers' called to deliver a pot of remains and, brushing the dirt off his hands, asked me where I'd put the guide marker for the hole. 'In the middle of the plot', I said. 'I nearly cut straight through the tube in the previous plot', he said. 'I've smeared a bit of dirt up the side so you can't see it.'

So today I tried to sort the business out by measuring the whole area and working out how big the plots are supposed to be, and comparing that with the plan. 18" by a foot, I make it. According to the original plans the plots look about 8" square and there's a border a foot wide at the edge of the grassy area. That's not the plan we use, however. The plan we use is a copy of that one, with a completely different layout pasted over the top, showing no border and half as many plots, tacked on the office wall. How we've never had 'ash-clash' before is a minor miracle.