Streaky the Pig

 Walking through the close by Lichfield Cathedral in June,  I noticed there was some restoration work being carried out on the Cathedral.  Stonemasons  were removing some perished sandstone high on the Western side of the Cathedral. There was a man in a high vis jacket pointing things out on the Cathedral to a group visitors. I asked him if he was with the restoration team he said yes, I then asked him if I could have one of the old pieces of sandstone so I could have a go at carving. He said no.  He said the stone was to perished and advised me to go and get a new piece from a quarry in Stafford.

About a week later I was in the close again and I saw one of the  masons having his dinner in his van. I asked him what he did with the old stone he removed from the Cathedral, he said the large pieces were redressed and the smaller ones thrown in to a skip. I offered to buy one of the old stones from him but he said he didn't want any money and climbed into the skip and took one out for me.

I took the  seven hundred year old pieces stone home with me and put it in the garden. After a few days I noticed the stone looked rather like a pig, so I knocked one or two lumps off it thats what it turned out to be. Who would have thought a pig would have been hiding inside that stone for the last seven or eight hundred years?