Necropolis

I've been trying desperately for weeks now to return a set of CDs to one of the music group gang who lives up the road, but any time I've had the CDs with me he hasn't been there, and when he is there, naturally I haven't brought along the CDs. So I decided today to drop them back in person.

He lives at Northern Cross, on the dreadful Malahide Road, so it really shows how determined I was when I was prepared to face what is always a frustrating driving experience. I left the car at his place afterwards and went for a walk along the Malahide Road past Campion's pub and back down again to Balgriffin cemetery, where I saw a group of women, flowers in hand, stepping in to pay their respects at one of the graves. Noticing in passing that this is no longer called either a 'cemetery' or a 'graveyard', but is now referred to as a 'burial ground', I continued my walk by strolling up and down the many pathways which separate the many, many plots.

Old cemeteries can be fascinating places, full of gracefully carved gravestones and traces of history. Newer ones like this are ugly places, packed with ugly gravestones in the worst possible taste. It was strangely reassuring to find one or two which still preferred the good old-fashioned Celtic cross to the all-too-common tackier alternatives. I was particularly surprised to see several graves where people had left cards and balloons on Valentine's Day -- very strange!