Sunday 31 May 2009

Get your headstone, 2 for a dozen

One of the odd things about my delightful afternoon in Bridgnorth was the market. It's got it's hoity-toity olives-rolled-on-the-thighs-of-organic-peasants aspect, but it's a brilliant generalist market - tomatoes to mop heads.

And grave stones.

You did read that right. On a household good stall, there was a range of headstones with examples of engraving. Now it's possible that Bridgnorth isn't big enough to support a monumental mason (or even a thin one), but I can't every imagine waking up and popping out to the market for some spuds and a memorial, for me or anyone else. Other considerations aside, you just know that the apostrophe's are going to be in the wrong place (mine is there as a joke, by the way).

My favourite grave is Ludwig Boltzmann's, a physicist who was so certain of his Constant (the equation S = k \cdot \log W describes entropy) despite the mockery of his fellow scientists that it's carved on his grave. Though he did kill himself. What will be on my grave? Perhaps an extract from a marking feedback sheet, such as 'Your meaning is unclear' or 'AFRICA IS A MASSIVE CONTINENT NOT A SMALL UNPOPULAR COUNTRY'.

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