The good morning bench

News
Written By Rory Wilmer

Photo by @weird_place

On Cain, Vale Park, and what a town does when it loses a friend.

Eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning in Vale Park, and I have never seen so many dogs sitting so nearly still.

They'd come up the hill on their leads with their people — August the 8th, warm, the Mersey doing its best impression of the Mediterranean — and gathered around a bench that wasn't there a week before. A bench at the top of the hill, facing the water, with the best view in New Brighton behind it and half the town in front of it.

It's Cain's bench. If you live here, you don't need me to explain who Cain was. If you don't: Cain was an Australian Cattle Dog who walked this park every morning with his owner, Tracey, and somewhere along the way — through her Good morning posts on Cain's Cattle Dog Chronicles, through lockdown, through thousands of photographs — he became the whole town's dog. People who never met him started their day with him. He was, by common consent, the most photographed dog on the Wirral.

When we lost him in January, this place felt it in a way I have rarely seen. It was in the papers. It was all over social. People who had never once stood next to him were heartbroken — and I was one of them. That's not a normal reaction to a dog you've never met. It told you something about him. It told you more about this town.

So I got in touch with Tracey and asked a simple question. What can we do?

Cain by Brezaux

The first answer went up on a wall. Brezaux painted Cain into the OpenAIR Gallery earlier this year, and there's a detail about that mural most people walking past don't know: his ashes are mixed into the paint. He isn't just pictured on that wall. He's in it. Permanently part of the gallery, permanently part of the town.

The second answer took longer, and Saturday was the day it finally arrived.

Because a bench, it turns out, is not a quick thing. There were permissions to seek and positions to agree, a council to work with and a winter to wait out. Tracey and Jacqui Bancroft — who'd never met Tracey before any of this; Cain simply touched her heart and she refused to let the idea go — carried it the whole way, and we helped where a CIC can help. It took the best part of seven months to pull together. But we got there. And standing at the top of that hill on Saturday, watching Tracey unveil it, I'd say every one of those months was worth it.

Here's the part I'm proudest of, though, and it isn't the bench itself.

None of this was organised from the top. There was no grant, no sponsor, no budget line. There was a GoFundMe, and there was New Brighton. The target was £2,000. The town gave £3,213 — 161% of what was asked, across 178 separate donations. Fivers and tenners and quiet little contributions from people who just wanted Cain remembered, adding up to more than half as much again as anyone dared hope for.

Cain's owner, Tracey Rennie, pictured with supporters in Vale Park as Cain's memorial bench was unveiled(Image: Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo)

That money bought the bench and paid for its installation through Wirral Council — every penny documented, receipted and invoiced, because when a community trusts you with its generosity you account for all of it. And when the bench was bought and bolted down, there was money left over.

On Saturday, we handed it over properly. £1,475.56 has gone to the Friends of Birkenhead Kennels — the volunteers who care for the Wirral's stray dogs, the ones still waiting on their forever homes. It's what Tracey wanted from the very start: that Cain's send-off should give something back to dogs who never had his luck. The kennels team joined us in the park for the handover, and I can't think of a better final line for this story than that.

Some thank-yous, because this project belongs to a lot of people.

To everyone who gave — all 178 of you. This came from the town, and it shows what the town is. To Tracey, above all, for sharing Cain with us for all those years and for trusting us with his memory. To Jacqui, who started the ball rolling out of nothing but affection. To Brezaux, for the mural. To Ally, David, Andrew and Darran at the council — the parks teams have had their budgets cut year after year and still go above and beyond for our green spaces; that's not luck, that's graft. And to Cliff, who cares for Vale Park every single day — for the children who play there, the dogs who are walked there, and the whole small ecosystem that park holds. We are lucky to have him.

So that wraps it up. Mural painted, bench in place, donation delivered. Of all the things we've put our name to since the CIC was formed, this is one I'm most proud of — not because it was the biggest, but because it was the truest to why we exist. Community first. Listening, then helping. Turning shared feeling into something that lasts.

And the bench isn't really finished, of course, because a bench never is. It's for Cain — but it's also for anyone who has lost someone, or lost a pet, or just needs somewhere to sit for five minutes and look at the water. Vale Park is one of the most precious green spaces we have, and this seat has one of the finest views on our coast.

Tracey walks a new pup up there now — Scout, six months old, all ears and chaos — and Cain's bench watches them go by.

Go and sit on it. Take the dog. Say good morning.

Sources & further reading‍ ‍

Rory Wilmer
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