Pebbles

There’s a man on the beach that’s just shouted ‘Fuck off!’ to his dog which was scurrying and barking around his legs.

Do dogs respond to expletives I wonder? Maybe only Scottish ones..

The rain spots on this paper as I write and blurs the ink.

Cyclists scare the shit out of me when they whizz past me from behind. One step to the side to avoid a puddle and I could have handle-bars up my arse; perhaps a first for A&E but rather humiliating all the same.

Who let them back on the Prom?

Which cunt invented the wheel anyway?

I stand in the rain for five minutes waiting to cross a road while cunts in their comfortable, warm cars roll past insouciantly giving me nary a thought or a glance.

Cars made the world a very selfish place. Give them only to those that really need them I say – doctors, the disabled, getaway drivers – and stop them guzzling all the oil.

The thoughts of a man - often happy sometimes sad - off to visit his favourite graveyard in the rain; kicking pebbles as he goes.  

You know sometimes when you just can’t afford to think about certain things? Some things you almost physically have to shake out of your head? That’s a good time to visit a graveyard and commune with the dead who don’t even care anymore.

Seeing how neat graveyards are and how well tended the graves can lead you to think that more respect is paid to the dead than to the living. All the flowers and mementos (I even saw grave cleaning fluid advertised in one of those wee pamphlets that come with The Sunday Post and the like offering cheap prices for incontinence equipment and bendy shoes) and the Gardens of Remembrance all kept spick and span.

Not sure about photos of dead folk on the gravestones though. Wee bit spooky for some reason. Probably because there’s no way they look like that now. Mind you, in the States I hear you can have a pre-recorded voice of the deceased at the grave (well, obviously it’s pre-recorded!). It’ll say ‘Hi!’ and ‘Welcome..!’ Maybe it’ll even ask ‘How are you today?’ and ‘Have a nice day..!’ when you leave. Only in America.

Did you know that there’s an ‘open day’ at Seafield Crematorium every year during the Leith Festival? You didn’t did you? (I will persist in writing as if anyone ever reads this pish – and while we’re in parenthesis, it’s Seafield Graveyard I’m currently in). I went one year and it really is a sparkling day out for all the family. Bring Granddad, he’ll be particularly thrilled.

I steal names from gravestones and use them as characters in daft little stories – a sort of semi-literate Burke or Hare, that’s me!

‘Arthur Zebedee Brake’ – couldn’t resist that one.

‘Raymond ‘Wizzo’ Wisdom’

‘Euphemia B Short’

All of these people lived at one time or another and are now immortalised in this epic work. The cliché now is to ask…

“I wonder what their lives were like?”

On that we can merely ponder.

I’d suggest that old Arthur Z may have been a lay-preacher with the Temperance Movement who fell for a woman who betrayed him with an Indian Lascar on Leith Links. This turned him to drink and he lost his life chasing the electric hare at Powderhall.

Only joking Arty boy, I bet you were a top guy.

Visiting Piershill Cemetery is a more poignant affair. It has a large section which holds Jewish graves which were desecrated by anti-Semites as recently as 1995. The Jewish graves there, again, throw up some great names – Lazarus Goldstone; Israel Brodie and Hyman Zoltie. The last name gives us an illustration of the plight of the Jews throughout history. As with most others the stones have a Hebrew name and a Gentile. Hyman felt the need to go through life known as Howard Denton in an attempt to hide his Jewish identity. Sad that this is illustrated in death as in life.

Piershill Cemetery is also the resting place of The Great Lafayette, a world famous magician and illusionist of the early twentieth century who died in a fire in a theatre he was performing in in 1911. Many thousands lined the streets to Piershill on the day of his funeral. He is buried there with his dog ‘Beauty’ which he adored and had been given to him by Harry Houdini. On the centenary of his death Paul Daniels visited his grave to pay his respects to the great performer.

It is said you can still here The Great Lafayette spinning in his grave to this day.