Having respect for the dead

(Not a cheerful post)

This monument is in my local park. There's a church which has a church yard full of mostly crumbling gravestones then across the road in the park is a walled area of memorials. I don't know who this memorial is for. The wall behind it has stones engraved with the details of various people who died in the 19th and early 20th century.

On a side of this monument that you can't see, somebody has graffitied it with "1D" which I believe stands for the boy band currently popular with the younger generation. This makes me incredibly sad that somebody lacks the respect for this monument and the person or people it represents and thinks that recording their loyalty to a bunch of boys the world will have forgotten in a few years is that important. I like to think they're young, they will learn. I hope so.

I've been watching the rolling news coverage of Boston on BBC and Sky News. It makes me feel sad that anybody can believe it's ok to set a device which kills and seriously injures people indiscriminately. Sadly I've grown up with rolling news coverage of terrorist attacks. They make me want to avoid going into central London and I feel ashamed for being afraid. We are meant to be strong and remain undefeated in the face of our enemies who try to make us feel terror. There's a song by the indie band Editors called Well Worn Hand. It's a reaction to a random killing. It's a short and simple song but for me it sums up the fear of random violence.

"Let's lock ourselves away
We'll never ever go outside
We'll curl up in a ball and hide"

Growing up in south London hearing about people getting shot or stabbed and seeing crime scenes and flowers became a part of life. Mostly they are dismissed as gang-related but other people do get caught in the cross fire or mistaken for somebody else and then they're dead or suffer life changing injuries. I think taking anyone's life is a terrible thing but taking the lives of strangers is unimaginably horrific.

I'm sorry this is such a sombre post. Watching the TV news crews trying to make a story out of people's trauma in Boston made me feel angry. There are photos all over the internet already of people with missing limbs and covered with blood before they've even reached the hospital. There are photos of pavements strewn with blood and they loop these images and others while they wait for more news to come in and the tally of dead and injured to grow. Really we should let the people of Boston prioritise reacting to the situation and getting the injured to hospital before pestering for statements and interviews.

It also saddens me that these images don't really shock me. What has happened makes me feel sick but the images are something I'm used to from the rolling news coverage of previous terrorist attacks and disasters. It will take a lot of cute photos of puppies and kittens to convince me that the world is really ok tonight.