Cemetery squabble is the very stuff of fiction

AUTHOR Audrey Niffeneggers' use of scene-setting in Highgate Cemetery in her novel Her Fearful Cemetery - sorry that should read Her Fearful Symmetry - is not a biog of the chairlady there.

Perhaps the next work will be set in a derelict graveyard set on a hill and run by a macabre sect, where dissenters are cast out, rather as in the Church of Science Fiction or such like.

Having a strange fascination for decaying cadavers, their days, maybe even nights, are spent among the overgrown graves - the 'names' have their graves kept in good order. ''Suddenly people were disappearing never to be found, indeed fresh mounds of earth were noted atop and betwixt graves... was there a connection?'' could run the spine chiller. They know where the bodies are buried.

Enough of such speculation. Reality is of more interest, as last week's report of the AGM shows, where ''the grey-haired crowd shouted abuse at anyone raising questions'' and how the chairlady used proxy votes to extend her term of office into the distant ad infinitum. On and on and on.

Hilarious indeed and no wonder those visiting graves meet rudeness, nay callousness, at the gates from these busybodies.

The Charity Commission must address this and English Heritage should refuse any further grants until the ongoing situation there is sorted. Such 'volunteers' must be kept away from people grave-visiting.

It is the remains of Karl Marx which are interred there, not Stalin. Rumours of the transfer to Highgate of that cadaver, being deemed more in line with his policies when terrorising the USSR, are baseless, surely.

Hopefully the Editor will publish a frequent cemetery update - ridicule and laughter at antics may help to resolve the problems. To avoid hassle when buying a burial space, go to St Marylebone or Kensal Green.

SKIP MURPHY

Prince of Wales Road, NW1

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