Highgate Cemetery

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways.
The point, however, is to change it.

Yesterday I went to Highgate Cemetery to see the grave of Karl Marx. I'd always wanted to go after seeing Mike Leigh's High Hopes. The film is about a couple called Cyril and Shirley. Shirley wants kids, but Cyril can't reconcile himself with the world in which he lives, and feels he doesn't want to create a new life when some have too much and some have so little. They visit Karl Marx's grave. It's a beautiful scene because Cyril says so little. He doesn't need to because Leigh knows the viewer can imagine what he's thinking for themselves. The scene really stuck with me even though I saw the film a number of years ago.

The cemetery also contains the grave of Douglas Adams, where visitors had left pens in the ground in tribute...


And the painter Patrick Caulfield, whose headstone (designed by himself) gets straight to the point...


It was a lovely day, and made me feel quite emotional, not least because I had Cemetery Gates by the Smiths stuck in my head all the way round..


So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
all those people all those lives
where are they now?
with loves and hates
and passions just like mine
they were born
and then they lived
and then they died
seems so unfair
I want to cry