Epitaph

Back down to London for another meeting today. The venue was the excellent Castle Climbing Centre in Stoke Newington, a fantastical use of the old water pumping works on Green Lane. the 7am train, Euston, taxi's and the centre - Blipping opportunities abounded. Leaving at the end of the day - I hobbled out to the taxi and was stopped by the simple slate memorial in the foyer - some of my favourite ever words inscribed for a lost friend - someone I never knew but immediately felt a connection to, it was a powerful moment.
Sat on the train back it made me quite melancholic and contemplative; we spent a long time coming up with the words for my mothers gravestone and following that I spent a couple of years trying to escape the words I thought would come to define me. Words, our own and others, shape us and mould us, but its up to us if we let those words define us. I hope I've gone far enough along my chosen path to be in control of that myself now.
My paternal grandfather is buried next to a fellow farmer who has "life's work, done well" engraved on a plaque by a tree; it always stops me in my tracks to pause and think what sort of a man he must have been to be remembered so.

For these chaps it was obvious these words were chosen with care and with love, they're good words and they reflect on them well. To me at least anyway.