4353/17272
We're having a weekend off, like regular people (I see us as very much morlocks to their eloi in this equation - in that we are usually hidden away underground and are inferior in many ways, but ultimately make our living by consuming the regulars - it's a confused analogy, but I am both looking down and up at the rest of you in equal measure).
We went out on one of the walks from our excellent book of London walks, this one taking us from Archway through to Hampstead, via Highgate and the heath. It was a long walk and somehow halfway through I took a wrong turn and we somehow missed Kenwood House and found ourselves on the opposite end of the Heath. But we got some fresh air and exercise and we saw some local wildlife - by which I mean some rats - so all was well. On the early part of the walk we had passed Highgate cemetery and gone in for a quick look at the grave of Karl Marx. We saw the famous one with his big head plonked on top of it, but also went down a muddy little side-track to find his original grave, the stone all cracked and barely legible. I presume the bodies of him and his family are under the new gravestone, but who knows how these things work? It was surprising to see a few more recently deceased people in the graveyard, most notably Douglas Adams (who was partly responsible for me starting this blog, after I read "Salmon of Doubt" and thought about all the stuff that he had failed to write). His simple gravestone has a small pot in front of it where people have placed pens. It's a terrific tribute. I also enjoyed the grave of Patrick Caulfield, a pop artist who I was not aware of, but who gave me a laugh by having the word "DEAD" incorporated into his memorial. It's funny because it's true. It's nice to see one of the dead admitting what they are. Too many of them think they are resting or sleeping. You're fucking dead, you losers. "We might be dead one day too," I commented to my wife, though she didn't seem convinced. It doesn't feel very likely whilst you're alive, but then this cemetery is full of peopel who once felt confident that they would keep ploughing onwards. But ultimately they plough in the same furrow, unless like Marx someone moves you because you have become posthumously famous (ah, the worst kind of fame, posthumous fame).
I felt a bit sorry for the stiffs who have ended up being buried near to the toilets, but perhaps they are the lucky ones. Certainly most people will pass by their graves. Even if they will also piss by their graves. A graveyard is a strange place. So significant to those who knew the deceased, but in short time those people will die too and the pain passed on like a hot baton, as each individual ache eases, cools and disappears. The fact that most of the people who had placed these gravestones are now also dead and gone. We're scrabbling to leave a mark that we existed, but there's absolutely no point. Except to remind others yet to come that their lives are only significant in the moment.
Just as I wondered about future comedians seeing my picture on a theatre staircase, I considered the future people who might pass by my gravestone (in the unlikely event that I have one - I suspect my dust will just blow on the breeze), give it a glance, wonder who I was, laugh at my name, take in my epitaph (I thought of a cracker the other day, but forgot to write it down and now I can't remember what it was. All I remember is knowing it was the perfect epitaph. But maybe the perfect epitaph is, "He had the perfect epitaph, but forgot what it was." You've got to come up with something good to stand out. Fucking Patrick Caulfield has trumped us all. The lucky stiff. People are going to be looking and laughing and then feeling a bit weird and scared at that for decades and centuries to come. "I am dead. You will be soon."
