I have always been drawn to the macabre and to quote Lydia Deetz of Beetlejuice “I myself am strange and unusual” and the Victorian era has always held a special fascination for me.
Recently I found myself with some extended downtime which is not something I am used to and following a job interview I found myself taking a walk through Candie Cemetery, and this rekindled my love for exploring cemeteries and taking photos of interesting and unique headstones and epitaphs, something I started during the first COVID lockdown and never managed to get back to when life went back to “normal”.
I was on the phone with Joel at the time and told him that I was planning on taking a stroll through the cemetery and take some photos, he was supportive as ever (albeit a bit bewildered as to why someone would want to do this!) and when I later showed him my photographs and a rambling Instagram post he suggested creating me a website so I could upload my pictures and my “streams of consciousness”.
Cemeteries to me are more than just places of remembrance or in the case of some of the older portions forgotten memories, which I am specifically interested in and hence the focus of this blog, but they are stories and memories of forgotten lives and loves carved in stone. Echos of the past and a glimpse into the darkness, as Edgar Alan Poe wrote “There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in the proportion.”
This blog aims to provide me with a place to document my random streams of consciousness, whilst staving off the cabin fever of not working for 2 months has given me and to give Joel a break from having to listen to me wax lyrical about long rotting graves and being dragged around cemeteries on his day off!
I was thrilled when Matilda, my daughter, took an interest in my little hobby after seeing a barrage of grave photos on my phone whilst she was taking a rare break from kids Youtube and I was even more excited when she not only asked to see the various photos but to come with me on my next trip! Which long suffering Joel ended up attending too, the poor guy was only trying to test drive a car! Matilda and I have made plans to visit some cemeteries I haven’t discovered yet on the weekend and I have promised to find her an old iPhone so she can take some photos too, as she has now decided she wants to be a photographer.
I am not sure that this blog will ever see the light of day other than for my own personal thoughts and photos but I am happy to have a creative outlet which not only lets me indulge in my morbid fascination but also my love of writing and gets me out into the fresh air, the fact that Matilda is interested too (at least for the time being) makes it even more special.
My plan is to explore the many victorian era cemeteries our island has and to discover the meanings behind the symbols, interesting and unique epitaphs, the mourning customs and beauty of the funerary art and history of this fascinating period of time, dust of the cobwebs of some long forgotten graves and bring some light to the darkest corners.
So if you are bored and or strange enough, or being forced (Joel) to read this blog I invite you to walk these paths with me, one grave at a time.