Highgate Cemetery. John Betjamen wrote a poem about some form of deaf paternal figure having his fingers eaten by worms there; Marx is buried there (why?) and one side of it is filled with more famous people than the other (other than Marx who is on the non-famous side - go figure). Clearly we went to the cheaper, less famous side mostly because have you noticed the cost of living in London but also because we were busy eating ice cream when the daily tour departed and were actually more interested in gossiping in a peaceful setting performing hanami at our own pace than actually filling our minds with fascinating learning. Some days are just like that.
Hanami:
Death cat:
Range of spring memorial flowers with accompanying birds and insects. I don't think admiration of these flowers counts as hanami.
I love my sister. Most especially because we wandered around to this humble tomb...
... And she, with no qualms at all, sniffed slightly nonchalantly and asked me, 'Who's this Marx guy and why is he important?' We spent some time agreeing that his gravestone was like, way ostentatious and vulgar and then I tried to smoosh 150 years of communist philosophy, politics and struggle into the walk home with all the Dr. Zhivago and JFK sexy bits in it (and Chairman Mao - it was, after all a Great Leap Forward and can't really be left out - it was just so great) before we got distracted by the first Shaolon Shi Temple to be built outside of China ever (tediously linked to Marx, for sure).
Oh. And posing like rock stars against urban art. As high a cultural art form as the Socialist Revolution, I feel.
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