London

Doug's post about Amelia has prompted me to share a certain morbid love that I have for cemeteries. I don't find it particularly morbid, but I have been told that it is wierd to enjoy taking walks and spending hours and hours in cemeteries. Amelia's headstone being overwhelmed by the tree reminded me of my favorite cemetery in London. I found it while in search of my great-grandfather's pub, which had actually been bombed out during the war. The site was still there, as was the church he was married in to my great-grandmother. I found neither, but did stumble across Tower Hamlet Cemetery. Much of it (in fact, the vast majority of it) was overtaken by vines and heather and bracken and all manner of undergrowth. Tower Hamlet is way out in Mile End, which is a rather shady side of London, but as soon as I stepped out of the alley and into the shady and overgrown pathways of the cemetery, there was a certain quietness, due in great part to the mysterious engulfment of the memorials by the surrounding natural life.