Doughnuts, Dolls and The Dead

I don’t usually have doughnuts for breakfast, but the on the other hand I have never, ever seen a doughnut that looks anything like this.

Doughnut Breakfast

The topping contained more sugar than I usually eat in a week. But it was nice.
I didn’t buy it, it was brought by a young relative who came to supper last night. I filled us up with ribollita until neither of us could face pudding, though true to form I picked at the bunch of grapes in the fruit bowl. I eat grapes as though I’m in a competition.
It was a good evening. MasterB took to the YR immediately, striding forward with his tail hoisted like a flag. I’ve already got her marked down as a potential cat sitter.
Apart from the unexpected doughnut it has been the week of the unexpected visit to one of the magnificent seven cemeteries, in my case Kensal Green. It was a fine cold morning when I set off rather later than I’d intended as MasterB had brought up a hairball on the bed which necessitated some unplanned and urgent washing before I could leave home. I met Badger the Staffie on my way to the tube. He held up his paw. I expressed sympathy and his owner laughed, saying Badger had been milking the sore paw for days.
My visit to the cemetery came about by accident rather than design. Lindy Lou took me to Kensal Green.
Here she is, newly unwrapped from the towel in which she travelled the tube for (I’m fairly certain) the first time in her existence.

Lindy Lou

She is one of very few toys that have survived from my childhood and Mother’s decluttering, a practice she favoured long before the term became current. Last week Lindy Lou’s leg fell off. I looked at her insides and found an elaborate system of hooks and strong rubber. Some of the rubber had perished. I’m no surgeon, and I realised pretty quickly that the repair was beyond my capabilities. A ‘phone call to Pollock’s Toy Museum put me in touch with a doll repairer called Pauline who lives in Kensal Green.
She told me the work would cost £20 and take an hour, so once I had handed Lindy Lou over, the cemetery was (to me) the obvious destination, though Pauline had suggested I have a coffee.
Kensal Green cemetery is huge. I barely scratched the surface. There are artists buried there, royalty, authors, members of the military, Blondin. The chapel is grandiose beyond belief and in a parlous state of repair. It seems English Heritage is involved in restoration plans. There are old tombs, modern tombs, guides to wild flowers and butterflies. I prefer the real flowers to the fake ones, the Victorian mausoleums to the C21 ones. The grave of a poet who loved animals caught my eye.

Animal Loving Poet

Colourful

I Will Arise

Victorian Mausoleum

Twenty-First century Mausoleum

I shall return.

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