Things fall apart, Ozymandias crumbles to bits, and the level of disorder in a system always increases unless some force intervenes to put it back into shape. In recent weeks, fortunately, such a force has been at work ? and it is the police force of Croydon. Having recovered a haul of around 450 memorial plaques that were stolen from cemeteries, broken into fragments and sold to a scrap metal yard, they are now painstakingly reassembling the memorials as a giant jigsaw on the floor.

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