This Must Mean Something But I'm Not Sure What

I dreamed was lying in bed and an animal came and woke me up. I thought it was one of the cats but it was actually a strange dog. In fact there were two dogs in the house that didn't belong there. Also a young girl who was the dogs' owner. She was as puzzled as we were to account for her presence.

We drove her back home- a house on a council estate where she lived with an enormous extended family. Her mother had prepared a feast for us- even though it was the middle of the night. I was worried that the food might not be vegetarian- but enough of it was for me to be able to fill my plate. We then had the problem of how to leave- because the family seemed to want to detain us against our will. This problem was compounded by our no longer being fully dressed. There was a moment when I was simultaneously wearing my trousers and not wearing them. "Where are my trousers?" I wondered, as I felt in my trouser pockets to make sure my wallet was safe....

Richard Crutcher Fecit

This is the monument that Richard Crutcher signed. It commemorates Sir Robert Clayton, his wife Martha and their infant son, also called Robert. It occupies the south wall of the east transept of St Mary, Bletchingley, Surrey.





It's a tremendous thing- suiting the pocket of the man who commissioned it- the financier, MP and Lord Mayor of London whom the diarist John Evelyn called "this prince of citizens" adding, "there never having been any who, for stateliness of his palace, prodigious feasting, and magnificence, exceeded him." History- popular history, anyway- tends to forget such people- and he was probably no better and no worse than any other monster of that primeval sea. Through his wife he held a large estate in Bermuda, which must mean he was a slave-owner. His epitaph is fulsome, calls him Good and Great and avers that "the Welfare of his Country was the only Aim of his Publick actions."

Did the man who made this tour de force- with its passages of real beauty and feeling- also make the touching and relatively modest monument in West Peckham? I don't see why not.