Leaning

There’s a quiet drama playing out in churchyards across the country – a slow-motion exodus so subtle you’d miss it unless you looked twice. Gravestones. Leaning. Always backwards. Always away from the grave. It’s as if, having stood loyally guard for a couple of centuries, they’ve finally had enough and are shuffling off backwards, muttering "Not my circus, not my skeleton."

You’ll find them in every village – great slabs of gritstone, sandstone, or whatever some Georgian mason thought looked suitably eternal, now leaning at such precarious angles they look like they’ve just remembered they left the oven on in 1794.

And the direction of the lean is never random. Few gravestones have ever flopped forward in an enthusiastic embrace of the corpse beneath. No, they lean away – discreetly horrified, like they’ve overheard something unspeakable going on down below. One can’t help but imagine the grave whispering "I'm still here…" and the stone edging back, hissing, "Yes, and that’s your problem, not mine."

The real reason, of course, is less spiritual and more structural – which is deeply disappointing. Turns out, when you dig a big hole in the ground, fill it with wood and person, then mound a bit of earth over the top, the soil doesn’t settle like concrete. No. It sinks, it shifts, it wobbles. It becomes, in geotechnical terms, 'a bit squishy'. And while you and I might take the hint and build a decent foundation, the Victorians – great at solemn inscriptions, less great at civil engineering – just shoved the headstone into the soil behind the grave like a pub signpost and called it a day.

Then you add in centuries of frost heave, where water in the soil freezes and expands like it's trying to pop the world’s largest champagne cork. Plus tree roots, badgers, vicars driving over the lawn in Nissan Qashqais, and the odd bout of ecclesiastical indifference. The result? Every headstone begins a slow, dignified retreat from the scene of the crime, like a valet backing out of a room where something unseemly has just happened in the coffin.

If gravestones were sentient, they’d be the most British of objects – unfailingly polite, stoically enduring centuries of weather and lichen, but ever so gently distancing themselves from awkwardness. A sort of geological "well… I mustn’t keep you."

It’s comforting, in a bleak sort of way. Because while modern life speeds up, melts down, and downloads itself into oblivion, these old stones are still out there – leaning back in slow horror, like all of us watching the news. And perhaps one day, long after the WiFi’s gone, we’ll join them – not in the grave, but just outside it, craning over the edge, muttering "on second thoughts…"