The Smiths: Cemetry Gates

Track of the Week - 17 July 2016

I spent Friday morning touring some villages in the Forest of Dean.

I'd dropped Mrs Tea at Johnny's off to help her mum prepare the flowers for her cousin's wedding the following day and took the opportunity to visit some places that had popped up on my family tree.

My mum's dad's side of the family had come from the likes of Lassington, Rudford and Hartpury (I didn't make it to Tirley) so I took a trip to the churches there to see what I could see.

Lassington church is now just a tower and a graveyard while the Rudford and Hartpury churches were very quiet and closed. I was left wandering around the stones looking for familiar names from the family tree.

I didn't expect to find any (we're talking about labourers from the mid-19th century and earlier so no money for showy burials) and I didn't find any. That's not to say they weren't there. Years of weather and nature have eaten into the older headstones.

Still, it was a peaceful morning's walking about and I can at least say I've more than likely walked in the footsteps of my ancestors.

An appropriate track therefore is Cemetry* Gates from The Smiths' magnificent 1986 album The Queen is Dead. It's cheerier than you might imagine as Morrissey and an unnamed friend meet in a graveyard and quote poetry at each other. The line "all those people, all those lives, where are they now?"** was running through my head a fair bit.

Rolling Stone magazine have it at number 38 in their best summer songs list.


* An unintentional typo from Morrissey apparently
**  Although this and much of the following verse appears to have been 'borrowed' from the 1942 film The Man Who Came To Dinner which is amusing considering Moz sings that we shouldn't 'plagiarise or take on loan'.