This is not trivial nor is it funny.

You can find this memorial to the stillborn children in the Dunfermline Eastern Cemetery. The stone lists the names of the children and their date of birth / death.

This is the kind of thing every parent dreads, spare a thought for the parents.

You can find the memorial to the right after crossing the railway bridge.

For all our babies briefly known forever loved.

The memorial to the babies

A quick glance over my shoulder and I knew that something was out of place. It turned out to be a house much older than the ones surrounding it. However painted on the wall were two civil defence symbols from WWII still there fifty years on.

Civil defence symbols - 50 years on

The date 1838 appears on a small stone set into the wall to the left of the "FP" sign.

A year or so ago this headstone caught my eye, it commemorates the memory of William Hunter, 17, who died while attempting to save a Dunfermline lad from drowning in Townhill Loch, Sunday 23rd July 1886. The scene is depicted on a bronze panel on the memorial with three onlookers and a lone body in the water (the dot in the centre.

There is a quote from Andrew Carnegie, "False heroes of barbarous men are those who can only boast the destruction of their fellows. The true heroes of our civilisation are those alone who serve or greatly serve them. Young HUNTER was one of those and greatly deserves and enduring monument."

When I returned to the cemetery to take these photographs I was shocked at the condition of the cemetery. Fife Council must have done a risk assessment on the condition of the cemetery and decided that the headstones were in such a dangerous condition and that the only way to protect the public and save themselves from litigation was to fence off the oldest section of the cemetery.

It seems to me that Fife Council are very happy to take a lot of money for an interment then wash their hands of the matter once no one is around to get upset at the state of the graves. The morons that push over the headstones are another matter....

Hunter memorial

The drowning