The Brompton Cemetery, Part 1 (picture heavy)

I love cemeteries. Not a "Perpetual Care Memorial Gardens" with uniform bronze plaques in the ground with plastic sun-resistant bouquets on them, but a bona fide old cemetery where cracked and leaning headstones, with long, drawn out descriptions of birth, family, occupations, death, etc are scattered.  I especially love it when, in the same graveyard, you can find a grave of a woman born in 1715, the grave of a soldier killed in 1917, and the grave of someone's grandmother who died in 1999. I don't mean to be flippant about death and grief, but I find these places to be beautiful and (pardon the pun) haunting.

 A cemetery is macabre playground for the imagination.  For those of us with a flair for the dramatic (or should I say melodramatic), there is basically no better place to find a good story.  When I was 16, while on a six weeks tour of Canada in a camper with my family, I wrote a long, tragic family saga set in Trois Pistoles, Quebec after wandering through a churchyard cemetery in Trois Pistoles, Quebec (imagine that) and noticing how many babies and children were buried there.  I took particular inspiration from a little stone from 1850-something for an 18 month old little girl named Bethlehem, and the inscription "Budded on earth to bloom in heaven." It's funny how sorrow can transcend time so vividly in a graveyard.

There are a million little church graveyards in London, where you can find all of the above, and in many cases, all the cool people were buried in the church, literally under the floorboards.  But I'd classify most of them as historical spots, because they've been "at capacity" for the last fifty years or more.  But London also has what is called "The Magnificent Seven:" seven large public (i.e. not affiliated with a specific church) cemeteries built in the early 19th century to accommodate the dearly departed of the rapidly increasing population of London during the Industrial Revolution.  Most of them are still in use (for a very large sum of money) today.

So yesterday, I went to the Brompton Cemetery, located out on the Fulham Road near the Chelsea Football Club.  It was built in 1839 by the architect Benjamin Baud, and is about 39 acres, and has everything from creepy family mausoleums to huge statues and war memorials to mass pauper graves to simple wooden crosses.

According to The Wikipedia,"The cemetery is today a cruising ground popular with West London's gay men scene," (a fine specimen of wikipedia scholarship), though I think "The cemetery is today ground popular with recreational walkers and their small unleashed dogs" would be more accurate. That being said, I wouldn't want to hang out there at nightfall for reasons other than gay cruisers: 1) ghosts 2) it is the place where the villain in the first Robert Downy Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie breaks out of his tomb and 3) drug users.


It was actually very quiet for a Sunday afternoon. So quiet that a fox came out to play, which basically made my entire month!

It is really rare to see a fox in London (or anywhere or that matter).  I thought he was a big orange tabby at first, but then I tiptoed around and we just stared at each other for a long two minutes. There was a woman walking down the lane and I crooked my finger at her like a crazy person.  "There's a fox!" I whispered, like a crazy person.  It took her a good while to realize that I was not a (that) crazy person.  And we both took pictures of this little guy.

No shortage of pretty stone crosses, but this was the prettiest.

A heartbreaking toddler grave.

A kit of pigeons.

One of many beheaded statue people

A whole Mess-O-Graves.

The whole place was covered in weeds but smelled delightfully of sweet peas, most of which have recently sprouted their pods.

This grave has a really interesting story.  Read the whole thing here: http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-28/news/mn-63097_1_sioux-chief.  Basically, a Sioux Chief (probably not an actual chief, but hard to find out now), Schoongamoneta Hoska AKA Long Wolf, after having been wounded in the glorious Battle of Little Bighorn, was recruited by Col. William Cody (Buffalo Bill) to perform in his Wild West Show.  He died of pneumonia in 1892 while touring with the show at Earl's Court and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, along with an 18-month old Sioux baby (child of a cast member) named Star that fell off a horse in a show.  Then a hundred years later, an English housewife came across a mention of the grave in a book and started investigating it, and he was eventually exhumed and taken back to tribal land in South Dakota in 1997.  And then they planted this lovely lavender bush.  I wonder if they exhumed the baby as well, but I can't find any mention of her.   

Butterfly and Bee love

This is where Lord Blackwood busted up out of his grave!

Watcher

"Oh, snap! Where'd my hand go?"

I'm forever fascinated by "died on accident" war memorials.  If you're spending all that money or a giant headstone, I'd put something a bit more glamorous on the inscription.  

A beautiful grave in the more recent sections.  

The cemetery holds almost 300 Commonwealth soldiers from WWI maintained by the government (which is why they look so much tidier).  

Who needs a headstone when you can have a garden instead.

A very recent (and very precarious) grave dug into the bank.  The dirt had all sorts of scraps of metal in it.  

Another garden grave.

And what graveyard is complete without the requisite creepy ravens perched on a wooden cross.
Quoth the Raven: Nevermore!

There will possibly be a Part II since I took so many pictures that my camera died half way through.

What I Miss the Most About the US when I'm in the UK.

Here it is, my outpouring of patriotism.

1.  Evelyn Puddingface Capps.  Because America has her and the rest of the world doesn't.  And because I am not in America.  (Gratuitous pictures of Eblum being sweet and sleepy)

2. Air Conditioning in all public buildings and most private ones.

I understand why this is, but I still don't like it.  For 10.5 to 11 months out of the year, it rarely gets over 80 degrees F in the middle of the day.  But it is still warm and 99% humidity.  A/C cools air, but most importantly it dehumidifies it.  There has been a heatwave across Europe for the last few weeks, and there is nowhere to go to escape it except for The British Library (which I've sworn off for the time being) or the refrigerated aisle of the grocery store.  The inside is worse that the outside here.  The temperature is the same, but at least outside you get a bit of a breeze and sunlight to dry up the sweat, instead of the chronic clammy skin you get inside.  During this heatwave, I worked for a week at the Senate House Library (which had one of the first primitive models of central air in the country and now has Zero climate control) and, most recently, I've been working at the British Museum of Natural History in South Kensington.  The main reading room in the library and archives got so miserable (evidently the staff revolted), that they moved us into the marginally cooler Geological Survey wing. It may be cooler, but it overlooks the loading dock of the museum restaurant and from around 11:30 to 2, delicious smells (steak and ale pie mixed with freshly baked cookies) waft in the open windows, which would be fine if my budget didn't require me to have brought a peanut butter sandwich and a bruised apple for lunch.  I digress.

In America, we're all like this.

In the UK, we're all like this.

3. Elbow room while shopping.  The American chaplain at the place I'm staying was saying today how she missed Target.  I just miss being able to walk down an aisle at the grocery store without having to say excuse me 10 times because it is physically impossible for two people with small shopping baskets to pass one another.  People in London basically shop every day (or close to it). They really don't pile into the car once a week and head to Costco or the Winn-Dixie with their coupons and grocery lists, load up their cart full of the week's scoff, and cart it all home.  Most people don't drive on a daily basis, so you're limited to what you can carry.  And all the grocery stores in the city are crammed into the ground floors of what used to be 18th century townhouses.  The line to check out is always long, no matter what time of day, mostly with tourists buying packaged sandwiches and Diet Coke, and there is usually a man at the end of the line barking at people to use the self checkout and getting annoyed when you tell them you need to use the regular one.  They assume that you are buying cigarettes, but I have to use a swipe card (which always annoys the cashiers), so I don't fool with the machines. But, I digress.

Look at these pleasant looking people in nice wide aisles.

Whereas shopping in London is about as personal space friendly as rush hour on the Tube.

4. Cheap Laundry.   It costs me $12 to wash and dry two tiny washes in a STUDENT HALL OF RESIDENCE.  In my last apartment in Chicago (graduate housing), it cost me $6 to wash and dry two giant loads of laundry.

5. Decent tap water.  Now, I have a very high standard for tap water to be called good, but it should be acceptable. I don't really know the chemistry of water, and why some water is great and some water tastes like old toilet water, but I grew up with really clear, almost sweet-tasting water. Seriously, it won an award for best tasting water:  http://www.benzinga.com/press-releases/11/06/p1168797/greenville-sc-wins-best-of-the-best-water-taste-test.  I've experienced beach water (too much sodium), mountain water (too much everything), and city water (Chicago and New York, not great, but acceptable).  But here in London....People here drink a whole lot of bottled water here.  I think it is pretty damn ridiculous, generally speaking, to buy something that comes out of the tap for free.  I mean, you're just paying money for someone else's tap water, plus I think most bottled water tastes funny, but I don't drink the tap water here unless there is more ice in the cup than water and I have a little lemon juice.  Basically what happens is they take the water out of the Thames (where sewage, chemicals, and garbage have been), treat the shit out of it to kill all the nasties, and then let it run through old, rusty pipes to your sink and shower.  It tastes like someone tried to run a bunch of pond water through a Brita filter.  Maybe there are American places that have nastier water, but I haven't been there.  

6.  Ice.  I spend probably $5-6 a week on bagged ice.  I'm a Southerner.  I need ice.  When I go to a restaurant, I expect there to be a very large cup of ice, doused in tap water.  I am a connoisseur of good ice (Sonic, Zaxbies, most hospitals, the QT).  If you go to a McDonald's here, the most American place in the world, and order a Diet Coke, you will get a luke-warm, under-carbonated soda with one piece of ice in it.  Unacceptable!

Just look at this beautiful mountain of ice.  

7.  Customer Service.  This one is going to make me sound all Republican, I know.  Indulge me, if you will. Having worked in the private sector service industry (Starbucks, mainly), I can tell you that Americans take that whole "the customer is always right" thing pretty seriously.  Obviously, the customer is usually never right, but if your goal is to extract money from them, then you want to keep them happy.  More importantly, if you want to keep your job, you don't want a customer/client/guest to complain about anything.  You bite your tongue when someone is annoying, demanding, or treats you like shit.  We hire secret shoppers to "catch" you if you aren't representing the company the right way.  When I worked at Starbucks, we were required to read our Secret Shopper surveys. Customer service is especially important on an individual level in tip-based industries, but it isn't just service for tips or commission. Just go to a Cost-co or Trader Joes or Best Buy or even call the cable company.  Sure, you'll have a rude or indifferent person here and there, but mostly these are pleasant encounters.  The main time that you come into contact with people who treat you (the customer/inquirer) like shit is when you go to a government office (i.e. the Health Department, the DMV, and, god-forbid, the Post Office). You know, those places where you are at the mercy of the clerk and not the other way around. I would like to add here that my experiences with all these admirable institutions in South Carolina and small-town Hudson Valley has been vastly different than my experiences in Chicago and New York.  Basically, when I think about rude, disinterested, clerks/cashiers/etc, I'm thinking of my neighborhood U.S. Post Office on Cottage Grove in Chicago.  Now imagine if nearly every customer service interaction you had felt like you were at the Passport Office and had filled out the wrong form.  That's what it is like here, because:  

Nobody is going to get fired here for being rude or unhelpful or having a bunch of customer complaints.  You'd basically have to hit someone's baby to get fired.  And even then, you'd probably be put on paid administrative leave pending investigation.  Workers are protected here.  They don't anxiously look and see if their name pops up on the Secret Shopper report ("Barista named Maura failed to wish me a good rest of the day when she handed me my Venti double blended Frappucino"). Now, I'm all for worker's rights and job security and living wages.  I'm just a bit disappointed that it doesn't usually translate into more pleasant customer interactions.  

8.  Free, reasonably clean toilets.  Not unheard of here (I'm keeping a running list of clean places to pee for free), but harder to find.  

9. Big movie multiplexes.  A multiplex in London has, like, three theaters, which are usually cramped and outdated. So if you wanted to see Monsters University and Despicable Me 2, you might have to go to two different theaters.  And there are no movies that start after 8 pm.  And it costs $22 for one ticket.  And they get the latest Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy movie a month later than everyone else.  

10. Free Refills and condiments.

11.  Breakfast.

When you go all out for breakfast, it should look like this:

When you go all out for breakfast here, it looks like this.  

Unacceptable.