Mind if I borrow your grave for a moment?

Every now and then, for no real reason that could be justified to normal people, I find myself standing or sitting on someone's grave.

It's my penchant for wandering through graveyards, you see. If you don't do the boring thing and stick to the paths, eventually you're going to be traipsing through the graves. And, of course, if there isn't a chair to sit on when the need arises...

You have to be careful about which graves you choose for impromptu seats, though, as some of them aren't as stable as you'd expect a huge, ostentatious slab of stone-like stuff to be. Fortunately, I've yet to actually fall into someone's final resting place, although I have been known to occasionally jump into a plot to rearrange the pieces of a fallen tombstone. It freaked the heck out of the Wiccan who was with me at the time, what with it being the Southern Hemisphere's version of Samhain and all.

Anyway, it turns out that the friend I'm staying with in Canberra lives just down the street from a lovely cemetery. And I mean lovely. The Woden Cemetery is like a charming formal garden with dead people in it. It's beautiful, restive, full of colourful trees and flower beds... I went for a nice relaxing walk through the cemetery this afternoon and was taken by just how pretty it all was. Even the mausoleum was beautiful, framed by trees and lit by the afternoon sun.

At some point I decided I wanted to draw a picture of something that caught my eye - A contrast in graves with a hug black slab of granite (half filled - the other half still waiting for it's owner to die) right next to a grave so plane it was marked by a single white cross. It didn't even manage to have a mound of earth. In order to draw this contrast I, ah, "borrowed" the edge of another edifice for a seat. Maria someone or other. I suppose I should have apologised to her for taking up her time working on such a dodgy drawing. I've never claimed to be a good artist, which is probably just as well in the grand scheme of things.

I was on the verge of sitting on a closer grave (another Maria) when I decided the fact that the top slab was missing and the edges looked like they were about to collapse into the gaping hole at any moment was a bit discouraging.

It's a lovely cemetery, but some of the graves could do with a bit of repair work. They make things a bit too easy for the zombies, if you know what I mean.