FORGET the beach – nurse Mark Dabbs heads straight for the graveyard when he jets off on holiday.
For the Midland-based tomb travellers’ holiday snaps are like a who’s who of the late and great.
Mark’s journeys have taken him to locations including Seattle in the US to see Bruce Lee’s final resting place and to Switzerland, where Charlie Chaplin is buried.
He has even been to Sao Paulo to be pictured at the graveside of Brazilian F1 legend Ayrton Senna.
Mark has dragged ex-girlfriends and family members around with him on tours of cemeteries across the globe, from queueing to view Mao Tse-tung’s glass coffin in Beijing to standing in the shadow of Ludwig van Beethoven’s grand headstone in Vienna.
“It can sometimes be a bit of a bother especially when me and my brother, David, went to America and I tried to steer most of the trip around graveyards and cemeteries,” said Mark, a 38-year-old staff nurse at Walsall Manor Hospital, who lives in the town.
“Or there was the time I had to shake off the caretaker in Brazil so I could get a picture of Carmen Miranda’s tomb.”
Other famous graves Mark has ticked off include those of American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King, comedian Benny Hill and Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
He even tracked down the heart of composer Chopin which, in line with his dying wish, was buried in his Polish homeland while the rest of his body stayed in Paris. Mark said: “In Paris, I went to Pere Lachaise and also Montmartre to see Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Chopin – minus his heart, which I tracked down years later in Warsaw – and many more.
“I’m trying to track down all the US presidents and British prime ministers.
“But there are all sorts of interesting graves and people, like in Canada when I found Charles Blondin, who went over Niagara Falls.
“I went to Oxfordshire to find Lord North’s grave, who was a prime minister.
‘‘That was most interesting and showed how, even after 300 years, men can still be remembered.
“Some people might think it’s morbid but I can think of no better way of finding out about historical figures such as Nelson or Churchill without seeing buildings and places associated with them.
“It can be a bit of a turn-off, though, when you show the holiday pictures and it’s tomb after tomb.”
Mark also has a collection of pictures featuring him waving the scarf of his beloved Walsall FC at famous landmarks like the Parthenon in Greece and the Eiffel Tower.
He’s even persuaded stars such as Joan Collins, Gary Lineker, Gordon Brown, Adrian Chiles and David Dickinson to pose for the camera with his Saddlers neckwear.
But his headstone hobby, which began more than 25 years ago with a visit to the grave of assassinated US president John F Kennedy, is his real passion.
He has been to around 200 graves and has plenty still on his list, including the last resting place of Communist revolutionary Kim Il-sung in North Korea.
“I’ve been meaning to give a talk one day at work about the hobby but I have yet to get around to it,” said Mark.
* Do you have any unusual hobbies? Email newsdesk@birminghammail.net
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