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I know I've never done a decent day's work in my life (apart from two weekends in 1989 where I worked a machine that bent pieces for farm machinery into shape) but this month's secret work (not farm machinery based) has absolutely destroyed me. It was five days straight work (six if you include interviewing Richard Ayoade - which to be fair didn't feel like work) and 12 hour days, but you wouldn't necessarily expect to feel quite so destroyed.
I was actually dizzy today, but tried to take it relatively easy - signing some plastic hands for kickstarter rewards (my life! We should get you all your stuff before Christmas) and doing my admin. Also catching up on my dad duties, doing three school drop offs and pick ups (Phoebe had after school activities), making dinner and walking the dog three times.
Even with a little bit of a dizzy swagger the dog walks are joyful and I have missed them (and doing any exercise) over the last week. It was great to see all my dead Victorian and 20th Century pals in Hitchin cemetery again. And I just about managed to stop Wolfie shitting on their graves. My dead friends are really chill though. They understand that dogs don't know what graves are and so they don't even complain when the shit comes near them (so far wee and poos have only been in the proximity of the deceased though - I try to make sure she goes on unhallowed ground if at all possible- they might be more annoyed if the poop is on their actual plot).
Today I exited through a side entrance and discovered there's a whole other part of the graveyard across the road. I went to make some new dead friends, but quickly noticed that the dates on these graves were much more recent. Many of the people here died in the last ten years, some in the last few months. I don't know exactly why that is such a different prospect, but it is. It's fun looking at the graves of people whop died 80-150 years ago, but walking among the recently living is heart-breaking and terrible.
What's the cut off point?
There are a few graves in the old part of the cemetery with people who died this century, usually they've chosen to be buried with a loved one - though as a sidebar sometimes that seems like a weird decision. I understand why life partners might want to be together forever, but would you, as a grown adult (usually an 88 year old adult) want to be buried with your parents? I like my mum and dad. I might even love them in a way. But spending the rest of eternity with them? Come on. No one wants that.
Maybe it's a decision based more on economics than personal concerns, but where will it end? If you have to be buried with your parents, then your elderly kids also have to be buried with you and their elderly kids with them and soon you have a big family soup with leg bones sticking out the ground. Same rules should apply to the living and the dead. If your kids are over 30 they should have left home by now. Get your own place.
I don't feel as uncomfortable with the recently dead in the old part of the cemetery, but I just felt bereft at the loss of my Hitchin peers. I would have been walking around the town at the same time as them, but as strange as that is, is it really sadder than the deaths of the people on the other side of the road? I didn't personally know any of them. Their deaths are all sad. Why is one side of the road slightly whimsical and fun and the other side unbearably horrible?
What year of death is acceptably long ago for me not to feel too emotionally attached? Or is the age of the person who has died a factor too. Someone born in 1898 who died in 1989 I can feel OK about. Someone born in 1967, who died the same year.... obviously I have some connection with that as that's my generation and it's awful to think of someone going so young and impossible not to imagine it might have happened to you. But it's undeniable that a 22 year old dying in 1954 doesn't feel as bad to me.
I would not dream of taking a photo of any of the newer graves or of posting them on line- but have enjoyed the feedback and facts on the graves that I've put up on here recently and felt no shame in doing so.
Perhaps it's understandable that a more recent death hits us harder, but it doesn't really make any logical sense when everyone is a stranger to you. The graves of children are always hollow you out, but I had to leave the new cemetery when I saw the graves of the little ones there. Unbearable.
I suppose we expect the people from the past to be dead, so we can process it a little bit, but the deaths of our contemporaries, of those who shared the world with us, even if they are old, seems wrong. Because we can't accept that one day we will be with them. We also, I suppose, are aware that with the recent graves there are people out there still mourning the deaths, still hurting from the loss. Maybe hurting enough to insist that when there own time comes, even if it's 70 years away, they want to be back here with the person they have lost.
It's your choice.
Please do not bury me with my mum and dad though.
If I lay down in a graveyard now and a dog did a shit near me, I'd be furious. But one day I won't give a flying fuck about it. I won't even get up to move away. The dead have much to teach us, but the main lesson might be to chill the fuck out about stuff that doesn't really matter.
RHLSTP with Rhys James went up today - a fun studio based one from a few months back. I totally forgot that we'd discussed the Richard Osman urinal dilemma in that. So there you go.
Listen here. 
