Vicar and Woman Holding Hands

When I've found a grave I usually return to the car and reward myself with a coffee and a chunk of chocolate (sometimes it's a consolation having failed to find the target.) Normally I park strategically so I can observe visitors. I've seen people hugging and kissing headstones, weeping, meditating, doing a chicken impression (with the flapping arms) and someone even pouring a can of beer over the body of a grave. Some people sit on benches they've bought and positioned right next to the grave. Once I saw a woman was sat on one of these benches shelling some kind of vegetables into a colander.

Once I was driving around churchyards on The Wirral and at one was disappointed at not finding a certain grave (someone who'd been on the Lusitania.) The place was sprawling and I didn't have a plot number. The sun's heat made me put the car on a shady patch under some trees by a sort of timbered scout hut. I gobbled some cheese sandwiches while listening to a play on the radio. I was surprised when a door opened and a middle-aged woman emerged from the hut. She flicked a glance my way but perhaps the sun's reflection across the windscreen meant she didn't see me. A vicar appeared and the couple made a fuss over a fitting chunky padlock on the door. They split up, each one walking down each side of the hut. However a few minutes later I spotted them at the far side of the hut where they linked hands and then continued to walk away down a dirt path. I'm sure it was all innocent but it stuck in my mind. Here is a small painting showing the couple.

This painting was completed in two or three sessions. Firstly I drew the couple walking away looking at one another but was not sure what to put around them on the white canvas. To give some dimension I put them on a narrowing path with some foliage flanking them. I dotted in a few flowers and some trees on the horizon. Being such a small canvas it was quickly completed. The cassock proved to be a nuisance. I painted it varying blacks about four times with the odd crease to show walking legs. If you look closely the vicar has some kind of awful mullet and the woman has a hooked nose. Oh dear.

Perhaps you could buy it for £4,462. You may have been watching something on television and took against it so much you threw a three-cheese slice of pizza at it. It may have missed and splattered against the wall leaving a stain which has turned green with age. This painting would hide that stain nicely.