Hilltops and Headstones

Glasgow Necropolis: not just a Taggart location

The graveyard was divisive.

It sat directly outside our university Halls of Residence, in the oldest part of the city. Many students found it eerie. Distasteful. Downright terrifying: “what if they come IN my window?”. Some A & B Block residents even tried to swap rooms with those of us on the other side of the corridor (view: carrier bags hung out of windows keeping milk cold, and Type As playing Ultimate Frisbee) with varying degrees of success. One girl took up with a guy whose principle attraction appeared to be his F Block address (view: Seaton tower blocks, and Lidl).

The med student across the corridor from me, though, loved her deceased neighbours. “I find the view peaceful,” she’d say. “It’s kind of nice to know that none of this will really matter in the end.” By ‘this’ she meant, if I recall correctly, the pile of books on her desk, the rammed-full academic timetable putting my MA programme to shame, and probably the Invernesian stoner in room 105.

I still remember her words whenever I spend time in graveyards, which mystifyingly is something that seems to happen with increasing regularity as I get older. She was right. They are peaceful places.

I know this is not always the case. Death, while inevitable, is often a painful process for those in its vicinity, and if there is one common denominator in a graveyard, death is it. The sight of a headstone with too few days between the…