Coonoor III

All Saints Church, Coonoor


I walked to the church, next door to the hotel. Buff-coloured stucco and a red-tiled roof. A monkey sat on the churchyard wall:

Its mouth turns up, but it is not smiling


I had just begun to draw a whole line of monkeys sitting on another wall, when the church sexton rode up on a motorcycle and introduced himself. He told me that he and his father had recently cleaned all the graves, which I had already noticed: all the pretty moss and lichen were gone.


SACRED TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF
GEORGE HODSON
WHO FELL ASLEEP ON THE 26 OF OCTOBER 1866
AGED 32 YEARS. . .


The cemetery is so quiet, green and brown, built on uneven, sloped ground, the stones not in neat rows. The trees are not willows -- they are some kind of fir - but they 'weep,' drooping over the graves.

At dinner, from the next table: "He knows which side of the bread to butter properly."

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