Pretty things in Sunderland

I needed to do this post because of this.

Image swiped from my.ilstu.edu and modified by me.

After a day of feeling like everything was going wrong and walking down the road muttering about how much I hate this place, I decided to use the pictures I took of the cemetery before I went to bedford.

Here are pictures of the cemetery up the road. It's very pretty, and makes for a nice walk.

I was on the hunt for these, but I couldn't find any from much before 1800.

Huge group plot. I think it's for people affiliated with a church, like possibly a convent or monastery. 

All the stereotypes about cemeteries are true here. Huge crooked tombstones like jagged teeth... 

And then huge empty spaces.

Lots of the stones have broken; the pieces are all kept together.

A real, live holly tree. I think I was feeling a bit festive when I took this one. The tree was huge, by the way.

The ground here is really unstable. Almost all the headstones are tilted, and most of the monuments have sunk.

The "family burial ground" thing is kind of odd to me, somehow.

There are a lot of stones for people that were lost at sea or other far-away places.  Sunderlandians got around.

Marble: pristine. Stone: so worn you can't even tell there were letters there.

There are these huge old buildings scattered throughout the cemetery, with broken windows and fences around them.

Like so. I do like the little round bit off to the side of the main building, though.

Entrance? 

Fancy.

Lost at sea.

War graves always get me. "In memory of so-and-so, who failed to return"

Also, cat.

Our flat (now consisting only of Conor, Jessi, Flo, myself, and occasionally Adam) kind of adopted the Ginger Clanny House Cat, known alternately by us as Clanny, Kitty, Look Who Followed Me Home, Can We Keep Her, *tchk tchk*, and The Cat.

She follows us from further up the block, knows which flat is ours, knows which door inside the flat is ours, and also comes to the window to be let in. 

Jessi bought some ham for Kitty's consumption (because that made more sense than cat food?), and despite the inherent dietary flaws, Kitty's not sick and she keeps coming back and eating more ham, so... 

She's got a routine. Get into our flat, eat some ham, maybe have some milk (we have some spare containers of it, I don't know whose, and they're not bad yet, but they will be, so...), curl up on the chairs, and sleep until we put her out. 

I hate putting her out. I feel so cruel. Jessi hates putting her out more, though. She seems to be afraid of cats, which quite mystifies me, and flinches away whenever Kitty moves her paws, claiming that she never knows what cats are thinking.

Well, this is true. She's terrible about figuring out what mood the cat is in. But I blame the single claw attack she's suffered (at no physical damage to her person, I might add) on her not knowing the warning signs of sudden rage and repeating her offences.

So here's some more things that I liked in Sunderland, mostly to remind myself that I ever liked it.

British houses

That random door in the cool wall

Wall

Good flatmates

Cheese and onion pasties... Mmmm.

Old churches

Walls

Walls

More walls

Even more walls

I do not tire of these pictures

But I'll throw in a picture of nutella, only 99p for the small glass.

Brick walls in various states of decay

Mosaics in entryways

Wall

That park down the road

A "stumpery"

Wall! Leading to the prettiest place I've found in sunderland.

Wall

Pretty bridge and autumn colour (in december, but still)

Pretty river

You guessed it: Wall.

Not wall. Slippery death trap, actually. But it was pretty.

Natural wall from where the river was

Little secluded area

As excited as I am to be leaving Sunderland and returning to Whitworth, I'm still going to miss this place. Of course, staying doesn't hold much of an attraction for me, since almost all my flatmates, who became my best friends here, are leaving, too.
So I'll think fond thoughts about Sunderland as I've known it, with two brits, two germans, two americans, and an australian as my companions, and be happy that I'm going back to a university where more of the faculty is sane and likeable.