Easter Holidays

Above: The top of a post box. 

I took Q to swimming--he asked if we could sign him up for more lessons. No tears this time. 

Then we headed to Highgate--a lovely neighborhood. And stopped in a used book store where Francisco's friend works to say hello. 

 

Above: A home of Coleridge's and J. B. Priestley's!

Francisco is right--I loved these weird sculptures, especially the heads, at the roof. 

A loved these little plots of birches in the yard of this modernist house. 

The real aim of our adventures was one of the "Magnificent Seven" cemeteries in London--Highgate Cemetery. I was skeptical, but it was a good adventure. The tour guide was amazing and we learned so much--about London's exploding Victorian population, which led to terrible situations in the churchyards, which led to these seven cemeteries being built around London. We learned a lot about Victorian ideas around death. 

Above--two broken columns, symbolizing a life cut short. 

Egyptian alley. 

Upside down torches on the doors--even the key holes were upside down--that is their symbolism about death. 

The guy buried under this monument ran a petting zoo. The guide told us great stories of his life. 

We went inside the mausoleum, where you could see some of the old, beautiful, decaying, triple coffins. 

The skylights.

I learned that these are primroses. 

Q barely complained--a huge accomplishment; I think he liked it. And Blaze straight up thought that he and the tour guide were best friends. He galloped along at her side, the whole time. 

We heard stories of the boxer buried under the dog, whose name was Lion. 

Above at the end is Michael Faraday, who I learned was a Sandemanian, a sect I'd never heard of!

I love this door, especially its colors. (Built in like 2018.)

The architect of this cemetery said that the stairway leads from the land of the living to the land of the dead. 

The most famous guy in the cemetery--Karl Marx. 

Other communists seem to want to be buried right around him. 

One of his books on his tomb. 

My absolutely favorite tombstone, at the tomb of a pop artists. I'm thinking of stealing this. 

Not infrequently, I see flowers on benches. They are lovely memorials. 

More California lilacs--these look different from the ones I saw the other day. 

Oh--at the end of the day we watched 1931 Dracula, a nice continuity with the cemetery tour.