Highgate and Back

I'm in 'Finding Work With a Vengeance' mode and have been re-registering with agencies like mad and talking with their reps. I'm amazed at the time it takes just to chat with one agency, then send them my cv with covering note. Add a little research and the hours just fly by.

We spent the weekend in London to collect our daughters belongings from the flat she is vacating. So as a last outing in the capital what did we choose to do? We visited Highgate Cemetery of course. What else? We took the guided tour of the West Cemetery (Karl Marx is buried in the East one) and found it really fascinating. In the 1830's the normal way to get buried was to pay for a church plot but the body would be dug up after 6 months and put in a lime pit in order to make way for another body in the overcrowded churchyards..

So an act of Parliament created 5 super graveyards round north London to ease the situation and the churches got upset at the revenue they were being deprived of so insisted the paupers were buried there as well for free, and they were. They are buried under all the walkways. Well, why not? With the advent of cremations revenue dropped off for everybody and Highgate offered a mausoleum for Urns which surprisingly was hardly used, the main residents being funeral directors.

You really wanted to know all this didn't you? Do yourself a favour and take a tour if you get the chance. It was bloody cold on Sunday.

The trip back up the motorways to Manchester was less fun than the cemetery though. The Volvo estate I have was filled to capacity and then some. I can't remember taking all that stuff down there. If I'd braked hard the windscreen would have been bombarded with books, files, coat hangers and all sorts of stuff but we did make it back in one piece in 4 hours including a stop for coffee. Crazy or what?