Fading away...

It's nice sometimes to find only good words to say about people or organisations.
Yesterday I was looking at the war memorial in a village. It was a cut above the average; a statue of Peace with an olive branch above a rather grand red marble plinth, the whole thing set about with an ornate set of wrought iron railings.
It's only a small village and, back in 1923 when the memorial was put up, it must have meant a lot. As it should, given that 13 men from that small village were killed in the Great War.
As the UK's National Inventory of War Memorials has it:
"TWO-STEPPED BASE SURMOUNTED BY PLINTH, SQUARE PEDESTAL AND FIGURE OF PEACE. INSCRIPTION ON THREE SIDES OF THE PEDESTAL. WHOLE IS ENCLOSED BY ORNATE WROUGHT IRON RAILINGS ON A LOW BRICK WALL. FIGURE OF PEACE STANDS WITH HER LEFT ARM OUT-STRETCHED HOLDING A BRANCH IN HER HAND"
It also describes the condition as "GOOD". Which it isn't.
In truth, the memorial is looking rather sad. The olive branch has crumbled away, Peace herself is streaked and grimy, the marble is dull and the railings are corroding and splitting.
Surely something could be done to help, I thought. I could find some money from grants, but it would need to be matched. And how, in a depressed rural area, is one to come up with match funding?
Enter the War Memorials Trust, a charity which does what it says on the collecting tin. The trust is able to give grants towards the restoration and reinstatement of memorials. Not huge grants, but enough to make a difference.
The trust doesn't make a fuss, like the RSPCA, and I imagine that very few people make bequests to it or offset chunks of their hedge fund for gift-aid tax relief. But it chugs on, doing invaluable work. Bloody good it is, too.