“I don’t like cemeteries!” I thought, as I entered London’s Brompton Cemetery the Sunday before last. Not true at all, of course. “I need reflections,” I jotted as I began my wander, worried I wouldn’t find anything that inspired me.

Out of my Recoleta Cemetery comfort zone, I tried to stay curious, writing down the gravestone names that appealed to me – Charlotte Pidgeon, Spencer Digby, an Edwin and an Eda. There were people running, cycling, rollerblading, reading; squirrels and wild sweet peas; crows and deadly nightshade.

Then I came upon the tomb of Frederick Leyland: a treasure chest on legs, with verdigris walls of swirling flowers and ivy. It’s one of the most mesmerising things I’ve ever seen. A quick bit of googling revealed it’s by Edward Burne-Jones. So that’ll be why.

I’ll show it to you another time, but what interested me is that giving one tomb its own photo shoot helped me to settle in to the cemetery somehow. And by the time I came back round to these simple headstones, they seemed Transformed. Yes, the light had changed, but so too had my relationship with my surroundings.