Day 5 - Highgate Cemetery

My post lunch ambling turns me in the direction of Highgate Cemetery. Heading down a narrow curving lane, I poke my head into Waterlow Park, adjacent to the Cemetery. These grounds were formed from three estates and one of them happened to owned by the metaphysical and anti-establishment poet, Andrew Marvell.

People are playing tennis on derelict concrete courts with deflated balls, which explains why no Englishman has won at Wimbledon since 700AD.

Proceeding to Highgate Cemetery I peer through a gate on the western side. The western side is steeped in legend, with its monuments, crypts and grave robbers. It is only open in the summer unfortunately.
 
But in the eastern quarters I find the final resting place and monument to Karl Marx, bearded philosopher who pointedly changed the world. I assist two European girls in getting their photo taken atop Marx’s tomb and they return the favour. My socialist-leaning friends will be jealous that I, political cynic but not indifferent centrist, has stood athwart Marx. I look a little uncertain in the photo, as if old Karl’s bust is about to glare down and lecture me on dialectical materialism.

There are many other memorials to lives long and short. A man killed at the Somme – 20 years of age. A stillborn child who “flew straight to heaven”, his grave littered with toys never used. A muslim who struggled for himself and others, the writing on his stone says the struggle continues.















 



There are slabs inscribed with the names of three generations, and tombstones whose inscriptions have long since weathered away, now half reclaimed by moss.

On a bench I stare at the flowing branches. Perhaps a tear wells in my right eye for young Howard Smellie, who ceased to breath after 6 months of life. The tranquil moment ends with the arrival of a delivery truck for some residents opposite the cemetery.