winchester 4

It’s mid-afternoon. I’m walking beside the graveyard with James, who is sometimes known as Muppet. The graveyard is where people go to smoke or drink or get freaked out. We’ve done none of these things. We’re just walking.

I climb onto the wall. The wall’s more than head height. It’s made of flint coloured stones. The view’s good from up there.

A man comes up behind us. He’s not that old. Maybe mid twenties. Ten years older than us. The man asks what we think we’re doing. We don’t know what to answer. We’re walking. Walking on the wall. The man tells me to get down. I don’t see why I should. The man says:

Stop desecrating the cemetery.

We’ve never heard that word used before. It makes us laugh. The man repeats himself, twice. The word sounds absurd.

It’s also powerful enough to get me down off the wall.

The man walks on. It’s only later that it will strike me as irregular that someone should be so bothered by a kid walking along the wall of the graveyard.