PREFERRED LIES.

I suppose it`s inevitable that, as you get older, you start to think about the close of play, the 90th minute, the 18th green and the certainty that this wonderful life can`t go on forever.   On our recent visit to Cornwall, we went back to the Church of St. Just in Roseland, as it is a very special place.

First, Roseland has nothing to do with roses - but comes from the old Cornish word ros or roos, meaning promontory.   The 13th century Church and churchyard of St. Just are set amongst beautiful gardens alongside a tidal creek.  These photos I took (click on them for larger images) don`t really do it justice but they do show the gravestones set among the luxuriance of planting that abounds in this lovely setting overlooking the creek.   Indeed, as long ago as the 1920s, HV Morton in his book In Search of England wrote : "I have blundered into a Garden of Eden that cannot be described in pen or paint.  There is a degree of beauty that flies so high that no words or no snare of colour can hope to capture it and of this order is the beauty of St. Just in Roseland.   I would like to know if in the whole of England there is a churchyard more beautiful than this."

So, as I muse on when my ultimate fate might arrive, I also start to reflect on where my final resting place might be.   Behind the goal at the Northam End of St. Mary`s Stadium?   Under the old oak tree in the Grove Garden overlooking Southampton Water at Hythe?   Or even among the benign glades of Platt Woods, where Mrs. Snopper`s enticing charms and years of walking with our sons and our golden retrievers have brought comfort and contentment?   Well, it won`t happen, but the churchyard at St. Just in Roseland would do very nicely.