I would have been waking up in England yesterday, but the coronavirus had other plans for us this year. We’re on day 100-and-something of lockdown, so it’ll have to be another photograph from my Recoleta Cemetery reserves. (I don’t love the photo, but I do love what it has to say.)

My notes tell me this is General Félix Benavides. Wikipedia tells me he fought in the Paraguayan War, which I wrote about in my entry War & peace 10 years ago. He was governor of Río Negro, a Freemason and the first official president of the Fishing Club here in Buenos Aires.

What fascinates me is that more than 90 years after he died, I am sharing a photo of him, stone standing in for flesh. The ‘inhabitants’ of Recoleta Cemetery were trying so hard to be remembered, it feels only right to keep them in the spotlight. But marble is cold and rigid and unforgiving. The sculpture may be three-dimensional but it shows only One side.

Fortunately, a jolt of reflected light shifts the focus from the general’s status and military achievements, a wavy outline of tree branches merging with his moustache – a glimmer of our connection with nature and the universe beyond. He is charged with spirit, brought to life, and I find myself spinning stories of what he might have been like. Was he easy to talk to? Did his voice match his demeanour? What would he have said if I’d bumped into him fishing on the banks of the Río de la Plata?