Many years ago, I did something that I did not think through – and would never ever do again now that I have had this experience.
So, what did I do to cause such a reaction?
I visited a cemetery. A very old cemetery. Some of the graves were ancient. It is not in Australia.
And why was I visiting this cemetery?
Because I was on a trip, researching my family tree. I shall explain myself.
In my 20s, I traveled to the UK for a working holiday. In fact, we flew out on my 24th birthday. In those days, I still drank alcohol – just a tiny bit. Purely social drinking and more than one glass of anything didn’t do me the world of good. For some reason I was sitting on a window seat – for the life of me, I cannot think how I was because that’s not what I was allocated. I was given a seat right in the middle of the plane. But there I was, watching out of the window as we were flying into Singapore. And my gosh – I had never seen so many lights. What an amazing sight. I didn’t realise that Singapore is so big.
I was reassured later that Singapore is not that big – my eyes were deceiving me. Or should I say, the one drink of champagne that I had been given for my 24th birthday made it seem that the lights in Singapore had trebled or more.
While in the UK, I decided to make the most of some ‘spare’ time and travel up to Stirling in Scotland. Stirling being my paternal family seat. My late father had already done quite a lot of research into the family tree and I thought that I would like to do my bit and spend some time up in Stirling. So off I went. I stayed in a lovely old B&B for about a week and spent much of my time just wandering, taking in all the history that I could find. I visited the old castle, which I absolutely loved and I would have given almost anything to visit many of the ruins that I could see in the distance, but couldn’t.
I was there to go to the cemetery. And go to the cemetery I did. With note pad and pen in hand, it was mid-afternoon on a sunny day when I wandered through the entrance and started looking at these ancient headstones. I found some of them to be absolutely fascinating – and for the first time ever, I really began to appreciate history. After wandering aimlessly for about half an hour, I suddenly found myself among some with my family name on them – our ancestors. So I settled in and started making notes.
Gradually working my way from headstone to headstone, writing notes of my ancestors and looking at others that were just as interesting, some much older, I did not notice the time at all. I was enjoying myself too much.
What happened from then on should be filmed in fast motion – except that I will never do it again. As I said, I was not noticing the time – nor the weather, until that first flash of lightning scared the living daylights out of me. That was when I looked at the time and realised the jolly sun (what I could see of it) was gradually going down – and a thunderstorm was rolling in. Where did that come from? There had been no sign of it earlier.
I cannot remember standing up and packing my things up, but I must have – and then looked around and realised I had no idea where the entrance was – nor did there seem to be any other means of escape. There were a lot of trees around and I figured I could shelter under one if needed – but it was getting darker very quickly. And my imagination was really going into overdrive – I also remembered that getting under trees is one of the most dangerous places to be when lightning is around.
I would not recommend doing this to anyone – particularly if you have an over-active imagination like I do at times. I know I began to walk in a hurry – not actually running but not taking my time. And I also know that I went in all directions, having no idea where that entrance was and not having a torch or anything sensible like that, to light my way. I had nothing – except an imagination that was going into overdrive increasingly as I tried to find my way out. It really was the stuff horror movies are made of – with the lightning being my only means of seeing anything and my imagination quickly taking care of any sensible thing that might have been there, I was not in a good way. The rain wasn’t helping – I grew up in drought conditions and used to dance in what rain we got but there was no way I was dancing this time. It was getting heavier too, with the thunder and lightning increasing.
Somehow I did finally stumble onto the entry in what seemed to be hours later, but I think it was only about half an hour or so. Trust me, I wasted no time on escaping that cemetery and walking very, very fast back to my B&B.
As I say, never ever again. I remain fascinated by history and the older the better. This includes cemeteries with headstones being as old as possible – but if ever I do venture into another one (and I am sure there will be) I would love to say I will make sure it is broad daylight and that the sun is shining – but that’s exactly how it was this time…things change.
THAT would have been a great time to have that champagne!
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