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It was a relief to get through the final gig in this run of six away from home and 16 days of pretty solid work. I headed back to the bar of the posh hotel I was staying in (it’s nice to have one in every now and again, as fine as Premier and Holiday Inns can be) and ordered myself a smoked old fashioned. It arrived in a beaker like you’d get from a laboratory and smoke was drifting off it like fog. I drank it quickly. There is nothing more sophisticated than necking cocktails on your own in a hotel bar. And you could see from everyone else’s astonished faces how cool they thought I must be.
My thoughts turned to home, both to the imminent reunion with the two people who mean the most in the world to me and to the city that had come under attack today.
Westminster Bridge means a lot to me (and I would assume to most Londoners). On the early dates with my wife we crossed it several times and had a running joke about going to visit Robot World in City Hall (long before I would become fixated on robots in the wrong way), filled with blossoming love and feeling like the city had been built for us. It’s also been a fun turning point on the Royal Parks Half Marathons and the inspiration for my never written series of children’s books, “The Shreks of Westminster†and like many other of my fellow Londoners I love the way that the decoration on the side of the bridge sometimes t
hrows shadows on to the pavement that look like cock and balls.
Even without the significance of it being the site of the seat of our democracy, it’s of huge importance to us all, because we will all have daft and happy memories built around it.
As I ordered my second old-fashioned I tweeted "I will drink to London town. No cunt can spoil it for us. We stand together.â€
We have no choice but to go about our daily life, aware that some prick will undoubtedly attempt to spoil it for us, but knowing that we are stronger than any of the dicks (on either side) who want to curtail our freedoms. There’s enough shit to worry about in London, without having to worry about this too.
Of course the injuries and loss of life are devastating and infuriatingly pointless and like any decent human being I mourn for them and like any non-decent human being am thankful that it hasn’t affected me or my family this time. But it can’t let us stop carrying on as normal. Not even through any sense of bravery, just because there is no choice.
On Twitter as always, some people made themselves the moral guardians of what the correct response to this situation must be. One person chastised me for tweeting about my gig, feeling I should have left an appropriate amount of time before turning my attention away from the horror. He didn’t tell me what was an appropriate amount of time or indeed an appropriate amount of horror. As stuff like this happens every day somewhere in the world does that mean we must never talk about anything else? Or is it a valid and correct response to carry on as normal? I think that’s something you make your own decision about, but I hate that level of sanctimony almost as much as I hate the terrorism (but not quite, so it’s all right).
Someone else asked if it was appropriate to tweet the picture of the cocks of Westminster Bridge (volume 2 in my children’s series), given what had happened there (as if the person I had RTed hadn’t realised(). It might not be to your taste, but to me it seems like a valid stand to not allow terrorism (or actually dickism as it should be called) to alter our perceptions of the things that matter to us. To carry on laughing and seeing shadows that look like cocks is a proper V sign to there terrorists. Jokes and seeing penisy shadows are two of the top five things that IS are fighting to destroy.
We mourn in our own way. And as always humour and laughter are not always disrespectful, but are powerful symbols of our refusal to let life defeat us. Life (or more accurately) death will eventually defeat us, but we win these small battles while we are still here.
And after a sad afternoon, I got on with my job of making people laugh and then got mildly pissed on my own and felt good about that too. Life is fragile and you’re much more likely to die in an accident or at the hands of someone you know or because Donald Trump has taken away your health care, so don’t let anyone convince you to be afraid.
