In recent months, my local cemetery has been livelier than ever. The usual dog-walkers and joggers have been joined by others needing somewhere to go—hipsters strolling abreast in groups of six along avenues lined with graves; couples on dates, perched on benches with takeaway meals in foil containers. There seem to be more visitors, too, intent on borrowing the mood of the place, with its crumbling, cockeyed headstones and tangled foliage. One Sunday morning I found a group of people reading a play aloud on the raised platform of the war memorial; 100 metres on, two women dressed in black were engaged in an ad hoc photo shoot with a teddy bear.
Through the months of Covid-19 regulations, for most city-dwellers parks have been the principal venue for leisure, meeting and exercising. As they grew crowded, other types of green space, and especially large urban cemeteries, naturally became overflow venues for a population that has been improvising new routines and social lives. Abney Park in east London, with its unfamiliar buzz, is no longer a “working cemetery”—that is to say, it is closed to further burials. It is run as a park by Hackney Council, with events, education and restoration programmes handled by a local charity, the Abney Park Trust.
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