There’s a rusty old bicycle propped up against the gate of Saint Margaret’s churchyard at Burnham Norton on the north Norfolk coast. Inside, I find its owner, Derek Woodhouse, in his shirtsleeves and braces, sitting contentedly on a bench in the shadow of the round, flinted tower, watching the sun set in the August sky over the marshes, creeks and sand dunes beyond.
For the past 35 years, this weather-beaten local man has been the gravedigger here, as well as in neighbouring parishes. He’s the only one on this part of the coast, he points out. Perhaps that’s because it is a profession with a ghoulish reputation, not unlike graveyards themselves. But this particular gravedigger effortlessly shakes off the Hammer Horror stereotype. Long association with the dead has not left him morose, creepy or even translucent, as the legend suggests, but warm, rosy and engaging.
He knows what lies beneath every tuft of lumpy grass in the consecrated ground that surrounds us, which dates back to before the Norman Conquest. And he talks easily of those who lie around him, including several generations of his own family, as if they are friends that he’s dropped in to see. Which is how he regards these early evening vigils, and how he starts to make me see things as we chat companionably while darkness gathers. He takes the sting out of death just by doing what so many now avoid – talking about it – and so makes it everyday.
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