Somehow I dropped a blog yesterday. But I did get a weekend’s worth of newspapers read and we did some of our favourite walks in gorgeous sunshine. I spent some time in a second-hand book shop and kept my hand firmly in my pocket.

Second-hand book shops fill me with nostalgia. Had my parents lived until now they would be in their early nineties. An age when people naturally downsize or naturally move to another realm. The books on their shelves finding their way to second hand book shops the world over.

In consequence,  preloved bookshop shelves look very similar to my parents beloved home library. As do the piles of discarded C.D’s.

I also love the smell of old books.

Better blog reliability from this point on.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have the kind of mind that wanders. Last night I should have been concentrating on the words and music for an upcoming performance.

I don’t read music so concentration is vital. But where was my head? Off on a completely pointless ponder.

Goodness me, doesn’t the vein in that marble tombstone look like an artery?

Odd anatomy, but it could just be a right coronary, circumflex artery.

Needs a stent though.

Now a sensible head that needed to concentrate would have stopped there. But no.

This could be a bespoke, graphic headstone for someone who died of  Right Coronary Heart Disease.

What animal would have a right coronary artery like this. Or any other artery for that matter.

Is there disease further down?

Then in a moment of bonkers serendipity we started singing about Postman’s Park.

A little bit of London obscurity to read in the link below.

Postman’s Park – City of London https://share.google/yTcDiivE7Dw41ZBG2

UNSUNG HEROES by Sian Jamison

And here’s to the memory of Thomas Simpson, Whose life was sacrificed, Rescuing skaters from High Gate Pond When they fell through the treacherous ice.

These are the heroes of everyday life, Their stories may not reach us all, But in Postman’s Park are the tales of their strife, Displayed on the plaques on the wall ‘neath the awning.

Now young Sarah Smith was just seventeen, When her inflammable dress caught fire, Rushing to help her friend in distress, She created her own funeral pyre.

At Battersea Sugar Refinery, Thomas Griffin met his fate, A boiler exploded and scalded him raw, When he went back to look for his mate.

Now William Drake was passing Hyde Park, When ladies he saw in distress, Their horses were bolting, he leapt to their aid, And that was the cause of his death.

Now William Donald, a railway clerk, Was drowned in the River Lee, He was trying to save his friend from the weeds, But created his own tragedy.

And last but not least is Percy Edwards, An officer of the law, He lost his life in a gaseous pit, Rescuing those who’d gone in before.

…

Postman’s Park is where I sat as a teenager, anxiously waiting to see if I had been accepted to train at Barts Hospital in London.

It is also the place I escaped to on occasion when a busy day in the Cath Labs at Barts allowed me five minutes in the sun with a sandwich. Cath ( Catheter) Labs treat and diagnose heart disease.

And where I sat as a woman on the cusp/precipice/adventure of retirement from Barts, wondering how on earth life had taken me on an unplanned full circle.

All this from a solid slab of marble with no heart at all… *

Unless of course you consider the long dead heart that lies beneath.