Graveyards

Wherever in the world I travel I try and make the time to go for a run, I use the RunKeeper app which helps me remember the place and scenery and I add photos of the locations. When in cities I often find myself coming to the local cemetery. I always take the time to go in and explore these magical places that have so much history and tales to tell.

I wander gently between the vine covered headstones, sunken graves, towering pillars overtaken by nature and read their epitaphs, pondering the ever constant thought of how ephemeral we are.

It also teaches me that we all have a story to share.

Today I was running through Bath, in the south of England when I came across one such graveyard but today it was even more memorable, for several reasons. Firstly the mother of the founder of Brisbane, Australia was buried there, two there is a sunken Roman sarcophagus from circa 200BC and lastly there was Ophelia.

She was wondering in her flowing skirt, summer hat and sketch pad in hand, looking for the perfect view of the abandoned church spire so as to capture it with her pastels. Not knowing I was an avid painter and lover off art she randomly asked me to assist and find that spot where the sun shone on the leaves, the sky was bright and blue (not often in England) and the shape of the old building could be appreciated. We walked and looked together until finally agreeing on the perfect location. You see Ophelia wasn’t a spring chicken and could no longer carry her chair the 20 minutes to the cemetery and finding a spot to sit in a cemetery isn’t always easy.

We sat together and I listened to her story, she was an artist who used to live in the same street as Galileo in Florence, she was instrumental in the Save Venice movement that started in the 70’s and she was a philosopher and existentialist. I learnt on that bench about how I was pronoucing Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus incorrectly and why they didn’t get on and how I should be reading Henry de Montherlant, she also randomly quoted Plato.

I’ve been invited to call her on her phone (land line only) she has no current technology and she will walk me through the stunning Bath Botanical Gardens and eat high tea with the ladies from the church on Sunday. I bid her farewell with the promise of a call as I left she asked me my name for the third time, because I don’t seem to make an impression like she does it seems.

I run to clear my head, I run to keep fit, but this day I felt much more rewarded than any run I’ve ever done, thanks to Ophelia.

Moral of the story -you should talk to strangers.