West Ham Cemetery, epiphanies, James Joyce and the haggard, inconstant,splashes of beauty ...

I can remember, when I was a bookish innocent, taking to walking in St Anne's Cemetery, off Forton Road, in Gosport - I was drawn to the broken angels, the shuttered Chapel of Rest, the orderly white gravestones of servicemen - my soul was full of a melancholy yearning I could not define or measure -

We'd just started reading Portrait of the Artist - it was a revelation - I'd never read anything that spoke so directly to me - I can picture our shy young teacher, pacing around the steamy classroom - 

I still have the foxed Penguin Modern Classic - I started reading Ulysses that summer, sitting upon the warm rattling pebbles of Stokes Bay - 

All of this came back to me, when Paul showed us West Ham Cemetery - we'd just looked over the flat in Forest Gate - 

There, before us, were the poignant headstones, the sad trees, the headless seraph - rain chilled our faces - I sheltered under a Yew tree - 

I thought of all my epiphanies, of a phrase which now haunted me - the haggard, inconstant, splashes of beauty -