Author: Gravedigger

Doorkins Magnificat

On March 27, 2022

Southwark is my favourite Cathedral, not least for the warmth of the welcome always extended by the volunteer guides. It was one of them who first introduced me to Doorkins Magnificat. Leading the way to the Bishop’s Chair he indicated a tabby cat comfortably asleep on the cushion. “I always have to check on her” he whispered, “the first thing my wife asks me when I get home is ‘how was Doorkins today?’” Doorkins, he explained, first appeared at the south-west door of the cathedral in 2008. Named by one of the vergers, she was timid at first but after a few weeks of being fed decided to make the cathedral her home, sleeping there by day and prowling Borough market by night. “At Christmas,” my guide continued, “she likes to sleep in the straw around the nativity scene.”

Doorkins lived at the cathedral for eleven years and if the vergers and clergy cast their bread upon the waters in offering her hospitality and sanctuary, they were more than repaid. For Doorkins not only brought joy to her carers and visitors, but she also developed her own successful line of merchandise in the gift shop, with cards, mugs, mouse mats, fridge magnets and her own book. She was a philanthropist too, donating the food and treats which her many admirers left, and which far exceeded her own needs, to Catcuddles, a cat rescue organisation pairing unwanted cats with loving homes.

Towards the end of 2019, as Doorkins grew old, suffering with kidney problems, failing sight and hearing, she retired to the home of Paul Timms, the head verger, where almost a year later she died peacefully in his arms .

Meanwhile the cathedral had been seeking another cat to keep its mouse population under control and on 30 September 2020, the very day that Doorkins died, a stray from Catcuddles arrived at Southwark. He was called after Dr. Johnson’s cat, Hodge, and in a short video Paul Timms recounts the story of how when Boswell remarked that Hodge was a fine cat, Johnson responded “yes, sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this” but seeing Hodge’s reproachful look, he added hastily “but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.”

A month after her death the clergy and vergers held a Thanksgiving service for Doorkins in the cathedral. It was live streamed because the pandemic lockdown meant that only thirty people were able to attend. A few voices were raised in criticism that a service should be held for a cat mid pandemic. The Dean, Andrew Nunn, responded gently in his eulogy, saying, “She arrived, she entered, and we made her welcome. People concluded that if this little cat is welcome, maybe I am too,” and he continued modestly “She did more to bring people to this place than I will ever do.”

Last time I visited Southwark I met Hodge proudly patrolling the cathedral aisles, and he is, like his namesake, a very fine cat indeed. And in the churchyard beneath a wall separating the cathedral garden from Borough market I found Doorkins in her final resting place.

Southwark will always be Doorkins’ Cathedral but Hodge, and the rest of us, are very welcome.

The Evacuees

By Gravedigger

On February 17, 2022

In Children, Happy Endings

The village of Mells in Somerset is a box of delights boasting a tythe barn, church and inn dating from the fifteenth century, an Elizabethan manor house, an eighteenth-century lockup, a war memorial designed by Lutyens, a sparkling brook and a community café. The terraced houses of medieval New Street lead to St. Andrew’s church which houses a fine collection of art by Gill, Burne-Jones, William Morris, Munnings and William Nicholson. The church yard plays host to a grand collection of memorials to famous people.

But the grave I always visit is a modest, unostentatious stone beside the north wall; a little bit overgrown, it bears the names of Bert and Amy Perry who died in the 1960s. Unlike most stones it was erected not by children or grandchildren but by six men whose names also appear on the stone: Alec McAllister, Fred Barnett, Eric Bounds, Colin Gilbert, Roy Bellion, and David Grey, and above their names a simple message:

“We thank them for their kindness and care during World War Two.
With love from the evacuees”

It has never surprised me that children evacuated from their homes during the London bombings often recount unhappy experiences: far from parents and familiar surroundings, sometimes foisted on host families who did not want them, on occasion subjected to harsh treatment. But this simple stone sings with happiness and I find it easy to imagine the six lads discovering the countryside, rambling through the fields, attending (perhaps reluctantly) the village school, exploring the Mells River and the ruins of Fussells’ Iron Works, and returning at the end of the day to the comforting care of the Perrys. They must have been an exceptional couple, welcoming not one but six boys into their home and lives. I found their story even more remarkable when I discovered that the evacuees were never destined for Mells. They were meant to go to Devizes and arrived in Mells due to an administrative miscalculation, their hosts then completely unprepared for their sudden arrival.

A few years ago, as I crossed the churchyard I spotted a new grave, but the name, Alec E. McAllister, was one I recognised. Erected by a loving family, the inscription explained the familiarity :

“Evacuated here as a London boy,
resting here as a true Mells man.”

I wondered if Alec McAllister had met his future wife in the village primary school all those years ago or on a visit in later years to the kindly Perrys. I had no need of the answer; the touching story told by the two graves was enough .

Cilla

By Gravedigger

On February 17, 2022

In Entertainers, Music Makers

Growing up in a provincial town in the northwest in the 1960s we felt about as far away from Swinging London as it was possible to be. A strictly enforced school uniform of navy-blue serge skirts, hemlines below the knee, and pudding basin hats above scraped back hair did not help. King’s Road and Carnaby Street, Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks existed in a parallel universe to which we did not have the key. Just a hop, skip and two short train rides away however was Liverpool, home of the Merseybeat, the city where our mothers occasionally took us shopping. We were familiar with the “ferry cross the Mersey” and the “statue exceedingly bare,” knew the whereabouts of Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane. The Cavern however remained as mysterious to us as Ronnie Scott’s or The Marquee, being a bit too young and our parents a bit too strict to allow us ever to penetrate its alluring, murky depths. Instead on Saturday afternoons my friends and I donned our miniskirts, carefully applied our white lipstick, matching white kinky boots if we were incredibly lucky, combed our long straight hair carefully, we imagined seductively, over one eye and congregated in someone’s bedroom to play the latest singles. We were loyal to the local sound and The Beatles featured heavily, indeed it was essential to have a favourite Beatle (mine was George), along with Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Searchers, but the one we all liked best was Cilla. We loved her for her talent, her smile, for being a girl standing up alone on stage confidently belting out her songs and most of all because we really could believe that she was the girl next door, someone’s older sister, a more sophisticated version of ourselves who might irritate us immensely by referring to us as kids but who would always be on hand to help out when the eyeliner went wonky.

So, on a recent visit to Liverpool, I took a bus to Allerton Cemetery and sought her out. Allerton is a large municipal cemetery, and it houses some imposing graves but true to form Cilla was tucked up, near her mam and dad, beneath a very ordinary black stone. Well, not quite ordinary for the gold script bore familiar lyrics: extracts from Step Inside Love, Alfie, and You’re My World

I read them, I smiled, I was transported back to those Saturday afternoons when my friends and I sang along with more enthusiasm than tunefulness – always careful not to let our emotions get the better of our mascara. And I have no doubt that when darkness falls and the cemetery gates are locked for the night Cilla’s voice rings out leading her fellow residents in a hearty chorus of “You’re my world, You’re every breath I take, You’re my world you’re every move I make” bringing smiles to their faces as she did to ours more than half a century ago. Thanks, Cilla.