“Dad, when you die do you get a bench?”

Conversations amid the constellations during the nightly lockdown loop.

And it was nice to dispense with the Bose headphones as son Frankie joined me to walk and talk.

Somewhere near the promenade we flopped onto a bench and read a verse on a rusted plaque:

“Rest a while and enjoy the view as we used to do. Time is all you have”.

We put our feet up and as per the instruction took in the view of the fells in the distance as the sun set.

A little further into our stroll we sunk into a Shakespearian seat with an inscription from The Bard himself:

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

The next benches held various tributes to those lost, their birth and death dates, and some meditational advice for those in the here and now.

Far from memorial plaques being a gloomy read, one feels quite gripped by the names and words of the older, wiser and gone.

Almost all the plaques in our village advise us to slow down a bit.

Which frankly is a bit like teaching mother to suck eggs, don’t they know we’ve been at a snails pace since March 2020?

But I get the meaning. Totally. Stop worrying about trivial matters and concentrate on what’s important right now. Life is but a snippet and before we know it we’re gone.

Frankie was taking it all in before one of his usual insightful questions:

“Dad, when you die do you get a bench?”

I explained that sometimes loved ones may pay for a bench with an inscription as another way to remember someone.

I took some flak on Twitter for posting a photo of ‘my favourite bench’ the other week.

My favourite bench

Given I’m unable to visit my favourite bars, restaurants, football stadiums or charity shops, benches are floating my boat right now.

At the top of the Knott is another bench, but with a call to cultural arms:

“Art is the door to my heart and soul. And the North is its inspiration and key.

“Content amongst its hills and mills. Is where I’ll always be.”

I sometimes spend time waiting for a connecting train at Lancaster station.

I was stunned to find a memorial memorial to a cat – possibly the first in the country?

“In Loving Memory of Sir Toby. Lancaster Station Mascot and Train Enthusiast.”

A bit of Googling led me to find out about fantastic feline Sir Toby Toblerone to give him his full title.

Toby was a quadriplegic cat who would visit the train station with his owners.  He enjoyed watching the trains so much – especially the Virgin Pendolinos – that he would take up his spot on platform three several times a week.