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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

WIBU?- Roadside shrines

442 replies

Arnoldthecat · 03/03/2019 08:13

This is more of a ..would i be unreasonable....to not want a roadside shrine directly outside my house/garden gate/in close proximity..?

OP posts:
Arnoldthecat · 03/03/2019 11:54

Not something I could get worked up about. People putting them up lost a loved one. For me that's more important than if my house doesn't look perfect.

Would you be ok with them drilling and screwing a big plastic printed banner to your wall?

OP posts:
DontCallMeCharlotte · 03/03/2019 11:56

but they always seem to be a pile of rubbish: plastic, balloons - as environmentally unfriendly as possible. Just why.

I agree but I imagine the last thing on people's minds at such a time is the environment.

I've also noticed a proliferation of memorial decals on cars which is a bit weird.

Topseyt · 03/03/2019 11:58

I am certainly not keen on these, although I certainly wouldn't be comfortable saying anything to grieving friends and family.

I think that flowers with the cellophane wrappers removed are better because at worst they will compost down. The cellophane wrappers, ribbons, mouldy teddies etc are a catastrophe for wildlife.

There is one near to us on a fast stretch of road. It appeared just before Christmas when someone died there in a drink driving related incident (l don't know the full details). It is piled up against the front wall and gate post of the only house on that stretch of road. It is smaller now than when it first appeared but is now very tattered.

I have been driving myself a couple of times past the spot when a car in front has pulled onto the grass verge there. I have also driven past and noticed cars pulled in across the property owners driveway with people out putting down flowers!! If I was the owner of the house I think I would be pretty pissed off with them, especially now, almost three months on. It would feel like rather an imposition, and very presumptuous. It is also on a fast and dangerous part of the road, just as other cars have emerged from negotiating a chicane of bends.

OftenHangry · 03/03/2019 11:59

@Arnoldthecat come on. He deserves all that. He was just misunderstood lad who wouldn't hurt a fly. He was getting his nan's shopping in!
(sarcasm)

These shrines are shit. Problem is no one can say anything, because no one wants their windiws smashed.

limitedperiodonly · 03/03/2019 12:00

We all ought to move to the Cotswolds where, this thread has assured me, there is no underclass, nothing tacky or crass, everything is done in the best of all possible taste, and the likelihood is that bunches of flowers have been banned - unless you can prove ownership of a cut glass vase to put them in.

WatcherintheRye. My parents aren't buried in the Cotswolds. They are working class people buried in Essex. Believe it or not, not all of us who grew up in council houses like plastic tat.

Fresh flowers removed from their cellophane wrapping and put in water work. There are special pots which can be built into headstones, you know, but if you don't have one of those, a jam jar will do. The point is that they can be removed when they wilt and fade, which is a reminder of what we all do when we die.

Bulbs planted on the grave are beautiful too, especially at this time of year when snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils push themselves above the earth in an expression of hope and joy and then die to be reborn next spring.

But maybe I'm just getting above myself and working class people should just embrace plastic shit because that's what what everyone expects of us.

buzzbobbly · 03/03/2019 12:01

I once went outside to find a mini shrine on a road name post outside my house (actually on my land).

I eventually worked out that it was to do with a high profile murder, because my road name is vaguely similar to the place the victim worked at Confused

(It was really tenuous - along the lines of marking the death of George W Bush because I live on Oak Tree Lane or something.)

Piggywaspushed · 03/03/2019 12:04

The council remove any memorials on dangerous bends/blackspots. This is why they often aren't in the 'right place'. They would also remove any banners screwed into walls etc on planing grounds unless owners of the house had sought permission. So, I think there is a fair amount of dissembling, misapprehension and hyperbole on this thread.

GregoryPeckingDuck · 03/03/2019 12:05

Screwing banners into other people’s walls is going too far. Surely the council could remove that forvfly tipping or something. I can imagine that if I were in the position I would be frightened of retribution.

Piggywaspushed · 03/03/2019 12:07

OP, you do not have to attend the vigil and balloon release. It does not affect you , other than to hoick up your judgy pants.

Interesting how every single example you cite blames the dead people. You haven't responded to my examples of people who have perished in accidents which are absolutely not their faults.

Rumbletum2 · 03/03/2019 12:11

I like the idea of planting flowers in the verge 😁

Mountains of teddy bears, tat and mouldering flowers with “Wid da angles now” type messages - ugh.

YouBumder · 03/03/2019 12:11

At risk of sounding really heartless I don’t get why “they’re grieving” excuses this form of antisocial behaviour and eyesores cluttering up the public highway for months and years on end. People die, sometimes tragically. Life is shit. The grief for those families will be ongoing. But while I think flowers, football scarves etc within the immediate aftermath of an incident are fine, or a bunch of flowers on an anniversary, there really should be a time limit on the public shrines.

Piggywaspushed · 03/03/2019 12:12

I am actually fairly sure there is.

derxa · 03/03/2019 12:18

I think they're a reminder of untimely death and people don't like to be reminded of death. Some of the posts on here are so snobbish and insensitive.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 03/03/2019 12:21

YANBU

They are awful things and can be distracting for drivers.

People place toys and flowers etc therein then they're left to rot - not renewed more than once a year if that.

If the people who start these things came and prayed by them every week and kept them tidy I would find them slightly less offensive, as they would at least then have meaning.

As it is, it is just a matter of wanting to ne part of the drama of someone's death.

They're awful.

Biancadelrioisback · 03/03/2019 12:21

How exactly are they distracting to drivers? Surely if you're distracted by flowers then driving really isn't for you. If, however, the cellophane or balloon came loose and blew in front of your car then yes, that would be distracting, but otherwise it's no different to anything else.

I have laid a roadside shrine. It helped with my grief. Fuck you if my grief wasn't pretty enough for you.

Marcipex · 03/03/2019 12:21

One was built i my friends road, where a boy was stabbed in a gang fight. His mother hung up his school uniform in the street with flowers, teddies etc. After a while it was stolen and she bought a replica uniform and hung that up in the rain with the mouldy flowers etc. Eventually council workers cleared it all away
. I understand a team scarf etc, but an entire school uniform? Is that a thing?

Piggywaspushed · 03/03/2019 12:21

Worth reading and reflecting :

www.brake.org.uk/help-for-victims/8-services-for-carers/239-memorialadvice

kenandbarbie · 03/03/2019 12:22

Local councils should work with the beteaved to make sure they enhance and area rather than look ugly. Maybe there should be rules that items left have to be biodegradable unless the family sponsor a planter with bulbs of an approved design. Like getting planning permission.

Piggywaspushed · 03/03/2019 12:23

I agree bianca : the multiple roadside signs and street furniture these days are a greater distracion and the huge potholes in roads are a greater danger.

Sorry for your loss.

Piggywaspushed · 03/03/2019 12:24

ken please do read the link I posted.

CuriousaboutSamphire · 03/03/2019 12:29

If I saw a ped on a busy dual carriageway without a pavement I'd be extra alert for them doing something daft like stepping back into the road Yes! That's how/why I missed him as he stepped out from under a tree! I had seen him and did anticipate his move. That's why he doesn't have his own shrine next to his son! My actions, not his, saved his life!

But what if I hadn't been as observant, if the tree had been full of leaves and had totally obscured him? What if I had hit him?

MarieIVanArkleStinks · 03/03/2019 12:30

Beachy Head is the really strange one. I visited, not out of morbid curiosity, but as a nature-lover who fancied a walk around the cliffs. About every 3 feet there's a cross, or flowers with cellophane, or piles of tributes, marking the location where some poor, desperate soul breathed their last moments before hurling themselves into oblivion over the edge. Incidentally, whoever placed the tributes there will have been in grave danger themselves. Those cliffs are porous and are crumbling back to a distance of several feet from the edge.

Even for a casual bystander this stuff is distressing (albeit, I accept, nowhere near as devastating as it is for relatives who lost loved ones in this appalling way). But I didn't feel like a tourist visiting a well-renowned beauty spot. I felt like a voyeur, and the whole place felt like a macabre, bizarre tourist attraction for suicide.

Incidentally, one of the UK's other most notorious suicide spots is not 3 miles from where I live. There's none of this stuff in sight there.

CuriousaboutSamphire · 03/03/2019 12:32

Whilst I am sorry for your oss Bianca I don't like the roadside shrines. I don't think they are safe for drivers or the people who tend them.

The places they are are usually accident blackspots... dangerous spots on a road. Why make them more so?

That and I simply do not understand why a cemetary plot and a quiet place to contemplate the life of a loved one is no longer adequate!

NunoGoncalves · 03/03/2019 12:33

Would you be ok with them drilling and screwing a big plastic printed banner to your wall?

Yeah as long as it didn't cause any damage why not

Boom76 · 03/03/2019 12:37

Wow. There are a lot of snobs on this thread