A HORNCHURCH man has spoken of his “disgust” at heartless thieves who pinched bespoke flowers from his father’s grave.

Clive Tomlinson laid silk bouquets – including a Christmas wreath of carnations and roses spelling out ‘Dad’ – around the headstone in Upminster Cemetery, in Corbet’s Tey Road, Upminster, last month.

However, when he returned this week the flowers, which had been secured with wire, had been ripped up and taken.

Clive, 40, said: “I left the flowers for Dad for his birthday. I had gone to a lot of effort and they looked beautiful.

“I thought maybe they had been taken by the groundsmen because there are so many rules and regulations about what you can and can’t lay, but they said it wasn’t them.”

The posies had been specially made in Liverpool and cost the bar manger more than �100.

Clive added: “It makes me absolutely sick and disgusted to think that someone could take flowers intended for someone else – especially the one saying ‘dad’.

“What is going to happen to them – will the thieves sink so low as to lay them round another person’s grave?”

Clive’s dad, Bill Tomlinson, died 16 years ago after suffering a stroke.