Visiting Adams at Highgate

In 2026 I passed through London and detoured to Highgate Cemetery. “Detoured” is the honest word — I went on purpose, I just never quite explained why to the people I was traveling with, in case they concluded my itinerary had finally come loose.

The cemetery is quiet. Tree shadows fall across the stone paths, and every few steps you have to stop and work out which way you’re going. I’m not a pilgrim, and I didn’t arrive carrying any grand sense of occasion. I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy many years ago, at the exact age when I most needed someone to tell me “Don’t Panic,” and I remembered the man who wrote it. The headstone turned out plainer than I expected. I stood there for a while and produced no beautiful sentences. Standing in front of a grave tends to empty the vocabulary, which is probably the most honest thing about it.

I thought about 42. The answer has been handed out all along; the question is what takes the slow work. I’d been laughing at that joke for years before it struck me as rather gentle: don’t rush to the conclusion, get the question right first. I spent a long time in the chip world, where you live by metrics and tape-outs. Standing at a headstone, I remembered that what I’d actually wanted all along was questions, not answers.

I left a TSMC pen at the grave. The reason is unromantic: it was one of the things I’d carried longest, worn smooth from use, nothing valuable, just always in my pocket. A person who builds things visiting a person who wrote jokes about technology — a pen felt more like something I would do than flowers would. (It’s also possible that it was simply the only thing left in my backpack.) 🖊️

The light was still fine when I left. I said “Don’t Panic” to myself, not to hurry along, but to remember that panic solves nothing and the work still gets done one piece at a time. On the way back I wrote the day down, very briefly. That’s probably what I’ve been learning these last couple of years: turn “thinking about it” into “doing it” — even if the doing is one line of config, one theme revision, one quiet afternoon.