Twa Corbies*

Readers with exceptionally long and accurate memories may recall me mentioning more than twelve months ago that I have long wished to explore the cemetery on Smithdown Road. (I now know that its official name is the Toxteth Park cemetery.)



Now that I am (relatively) as fit as a flea - i.e. all the acupuncture I have had has got me back to approximately where I was four years ago: a point, I should add, at which I thought I was as impaired as it was tolerable to be - I decided to take advantage of the good weather this morning and finally make good on my promise to myself.



It is rather unfortunate that I didn't see the sign which said no photographs were to be taken without permission until after I had taken more than fifty photographs. Having said that, I did encounter various members of groundskeeping staff, none of whom seemed to be remotely perturbed by the sight of my camera. And I did take great care to avoid taking pictures of any of the modern graves, particularly those which are still well-tended.



A selection of the photographs I took is in my Flickr stream, which you can access via the rather flashy gadget to the left of the page. (If you hadn't already noticed that it had recently started to flash up photographs of things other than superlambananas, you may now understand why I haven't been keeping up with my blog very well of late. I may be fit as a flea, but I don't have enough spoons to wander about, camera in hand, and blog.) But I digress.



So, anyway, I've decided there's a lot to be said for cremation. Because, apparently, if you choose burial, and your nearest and dearest cobble together the money for a fine headstone for your grave, that headstone will eventually fall over and become a birdbath for some pretty sinister-looking carrion crows. Which is probably not what you or your grieving family had in mind, really...

* It's a Scottish song.

The Editor