Moon Struck, Non-Stick.

Warming Up

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My predictions of a World Warry 2026 seem to be taking shape nice and early. You’re welcome.

Sadly my phone could not capture the true magnificence/terrible portents

And I didn’t think I was the kind of wise man who would look to the skies for predictions of the future, but the moon has been doing some spectacular stuff this year. It’s been hanging around in the day time like it doesn’t understand it’s fucking job, full and looking crystal clear. And tonight as I walked the dog the moon was rising above the horizon, had grown to twice its usual size (there is no other explanation) like and shining bright. As bright as day. Boys and girls were coming out to play. Stewart Lee was walking around with a big stick, licking his lips.

My son didn’t go out to play. He was freaked out and asked what the big light in the sky is.

Surely the only reason the moon can be acting so out of character is that God or the people running this simulation or Paddington or whoever is in charge of the after life these days is trying to tell us that 2026 is going to be a fucked up year. Be nice if they could give more specifics and perhaps a plan of how to get out of the jam we’re in. But I suppose it’s better to do something slightly weird that can be interpreted in any way the observer chooses to do so, with the get out clause that if things don’t turn out as predicted I can just say that the weird moon was actually a sign that nothing would go wrong. Thanks Paddington.

John Shepherd added this comment to yesterday’s Substack

“It was very probably on the site of the current number 47 --
The Old Bakery that you saw. (Yes, that gravestone just influenced _my_
life too!).

Reasoning: A membership list of the institute of mechanical engineers shows a Thomas Ekins Daintree living at Alma Villa.

...and a later document shows the Daintrees living at number 47 Old Park Road

...the current building at number 47 is: The Old Bakery

(The google maps view suggests a suitably villa-ish plot of land to me ... perhaps the villa was the building you get to by going through the Old Bakery, which is clearly some kind of rebuilt gatehouse)I’d like to believe I was clever enough to figure this all out for myself. But I might’ve had help from an AI research assistant.”

That had been my guess too, based on sizes of property and which houses are still there and which aren’t. I’d found the first Daintree document on my search but not the second.

Simon C also commented regarding Ally’s claim to be the oldest, still working dummy in the world

Look at the pretender prick - even ripped off Ally’s droopy eye-lid

“Oldest ventriloquist dummy still in use (based on available evidence)

The strongest documented candidate: “George” — approx. 128 years old

A ventriloquist dummy named George, made in the 1890s, is one of the oldest known dummies still being actively used and maintained today. He appeared on The Repair Shop in 2023, where his owner described performing with him since childhood.

Age: ~128 years old

Origin: London music halls, 1890s

Status: Still owned, maintained, and used by his performer

Evidence: Featured on BBC’s The Repair Shop after restoration

This is the oldest clearly documented dummy still in active use that appears in current media.”

Ally is, at least based on the newspapers stuffed into his legs, 134 years old this month. Of course you could argue that all the newspapers mean is that he was built AFTER January 1892 - my great-grandad could have had those papers lying around for years. I think you’d have to conclude that it’s likely he was using current newspapers from just days before the build. I guess there’s no way to prove it (though George’s age is also approximate and I bet he doesn’t have evidence that is as strongly suggestive as the newspaper dates). So I reckon Ally is still the winner. And I bet he’s a lot funnier than George. Almost certainly ruder. Plus his lifting hair-piece is a 134 year old joke that (possibly) still gets laughs.

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I am not going to write about Hitchin Cemetery every day of 2026, but I could do. And as my own life draws (hopefully very slowly) towards its inevitable end and becomes more boring, it’s interesting to write about the entirely finished lives of others. It feels like every grave is the start of a potential adventure (if you can call failing to find a Victorian villa because it’s been turned into modern flats an adventure) and certainly contains a myriad of stories.

Plus every now and again you remember that you are walking above the skellingtons and corpses of hundreds of people, most of whom probably walked through this very cemetery themselves, never quite believing that one day they would join the potential zombies beneath. It’s history, philosophy, mystery and mysticism all in one short walk.

It feels like there might be a book or a podcast or a graveyard based gameshow (like a Treasure Hunt for the dead - maybe a job for Anneka Rice after she dies) or something in this, but maybe just the occasional blog will do the job,

The graves that grabbed my attention today didn’t take me off my usual route home, but they did both raise some questions or at leat one question. What the fuck was going on here?

The first one is not really about the people buried there but the grave itself. There are plenty of damaged and almost destroyed graves in the graveyard of course, but mostly they are fairly old ones. This one is 60 years old, though includes someone who died just 40 years ago. It is cleft in twain in quite a Biblical manner, as if lightening has struck from above or some dark force has come from below. Most likely, I suppose, is it got hit by a falling tree. It’s quite a solid bit of stone to get smashed like this, so cleanly. One hopes it isn’t vandalism or some kind of revenge from the living against the dead. You would hope with such a modern grave that someone would be around to repair the damage, but maybe there is no one left around.

There is no sign of where the blow that destroyed this headstone. It just lies smashed like a 10 Commandment stone, thrown down by a furious Moses.

It acts as quite a simplistic jigsaw puzzle to recreate the epitaphs (and even with just a 2 part jigsaw, at least from this photo, you can’t completely manage it)

But it’s the grave of Ernest (J)ames Bray who died in (Ma)rch 1966 aged (?0) years and his wife Rosa Bray who dies in Ap(ri)l 1986 aged (?)6 years. I reckon maybe 96 but as you can see I am not allowing any assumptions. Maybe he was Ernest (W)ames Bray and he died in (Marble A)rch

The pair are “Together Again” which is slightly ironic now given that the words Together and again are no longer together. If you wanted to get supernatural on this you might wonder if some secret was revealed in death that infuriated one half of the couple to smash their stone in anger. Though surely you’d have gone for a horizontal fracture rather than a vertical one. But I don’t know how much power corpses have to make stone break in the direction you would like.

I don’t know what provision the Cemetery has to mend broken graves, but it feels like a shame that noone has got the Prit Stick out for this one. There may be reasons.

I love the graves which employ pictures or extra features to give a hint of the lives of those who are now gone. Or at least to put a face to a name (and a skull). I am slightly intrigued and bamboozled by the headstone for Joe and Bridget Smith, which rather than showing a photo of either or both of them, has a picture of a red car instead. The significance of the car will be known to some, but in a few decades will be lost to the ages. Perhaps Joe and Bridget worked in the motor trade or perhaps one of them just really liked the car. More than their spouse or themself. It doesn’t really matter. It’s fun to imagine the husband prizing his car above all else and insisting on that being on the joint grave. But Joe went first and Bridget will likely have chosen the picture or certainly had 14 years to veto it if she didn’t want it on her grave too. The heart shape and the fresh flowers and the stone not being split in two by Zeus certainly attests to the fact that these two loved each other and are still loved. Why the car though?

It would be interesting to know what this was about, but it’s more intriguing not to know. My hope is that some future archaeologist will dig up that grave and discover the couple in an embrace, sitting in the front seats of the car they were buried in.