Speaking of buses – “which we were” [sic] –
if I get the early one I generally make a bee line for the back and sit near
these two guys in suits who work, I believe, at Sky Bet. I’ve named them Peter
and Paul, after the dubious birds from the children’s nursery rhyme. You know
the ones: they fly away and then come back, one at a time, and end up right
back where they started (sitting on a wall). But that’s by the by.
Like a lot of people over the past week
they were talking about the terrorist attacks in Paris.
“What gets me,” says Peter, “is the extent
of the media coverage. The way everybody keeps going on about it. The whole
singing the national anthem at the football match thing.”
“I know,” says Paul, “it’s like: gosh,
isn’t it awful when white Europeans or North Americans die in tragic
circumstances? I mean, I’m pretty sure more people than that were killed by
suicide by bombers in Iraq
the week before. But nothing in the news about them.”
“They say tragedy plus time equals comedy,”
says Peter, staring disdainfully at the front page of some woman’s newspaper,
“and I was thinking maybe tragedy plus proximity – perhaps multiplied by the
square root of ethnic similarity – equals shock plus grief plus outrage and
response.”
Paul nods for a few moments. The woman
raises an eyebrow and then goes back to her paper. I notice she’s in the
celebrity section now. An article about Paloma Faith’s shoes and how she used
to be hip but then sold out to the mainstream. Which is what I’m reading too.
“I wonder if we’d have had the same
response if it had happened in Germany
or Spain?”
“Probably,” says Paul.
“Italy? Holland? I would imagine so. But – ah, “ says
Peter, twinkling in his eye, “what about Bulgaria? Albania? Bosnia & Herzegovina? Would we have been so
moved then. I don’t remember anybody learning the Kosovan national anthem when
all that Slobodan Milosevic stuff was going down.”
“My granddad was saying how confusing it
all is,” says Paul. “He was saying how he was brought up to hate the French,
and now we’re all singing the Marseille [sic] and putting tricolours on our
facebook profiles. I know it’s just a passing fad. But the poor old bugger
doesn’t know what to think.”
“You can understand it, though,” says
Peter, “a couple of hundred school girls get kidnapped in Africa
and it’s bloody horrible but not something that’s likely to happen here. Or
some bozo in the States shoots up a high school or cinema and, okay, people in Britain are
upset by it, but they’re not worried they might be next. If anything, it just
gives ‘em a sense of superiority, one more scrap of information to throw into
some middle class dinner party discussion about guns and the right to bear arms
and other such nonsense they have no control over or business sticking their
noses in. But show some decent honest white Europeans getting shot up on their
decent honest nights out and it’s a bit close to home. No difference between
them and us. It COULD be us, is what they’re thinking. Probably not so much
grief as fear.”
“Paris is
just a train ride away; Sarajevo
a bit further afield. Gamboru Ngala or Jurf al-Sakhar? They might as well be on
the moon as far as most people are concerned.”
“A bit further away than that, mate,” says
Peter. “Pluto, I reckon. The former planet, not the dog.”
They both have a chuckle at this. It’s
heavy subject matter, but they’re lighthearted about it. ‘Cept not in a
thoughtless way; in fact, maybe just the opposite.
“Still, we’re all right; we’re in Leeds. S’probably just people down London way that are bricking it. Terrorists
are a bit like aliens in Hollywood movies:
they mainly go for capital cities; famous places; tourist attractions. Remember
Independence Day where they blow up the Empire State
Building? That’s just
offices; why would they do that?”
“Wasn’t even the tallest building in New York. At the time.”
“Good job Roland Emmerich didn’t go down
that route; that woulda been awkward. And not so great for DVD sales.”
“D’ya ever think,” says Peter, “of ways
that…”
“What?”
“No. I shouldn’t say that.”
“I think I know what you’re thinking,” says
Paul.
“It’s just that…well, you know how my brain
works. Always looking at ways things can be improved, whether it’s the supplies
ordering system or...it’s like, I mean, I’m no Nazi – far from it – and I’m
proper glad we won the war, but…”
“You know you’d be like, if you were
suddenly rocketed back through time into the body of his adviser, ‘Oi, Hitler,
forget about Russia, get your boys back over to France, ya barmpot, and keep
going for England.’”
“Exactly. It doesn’t make you a bad person
because you see better ways of doing things. Like crime: I don’t commit any,
but I’m pretty good at coming up with ideas for them; I can’t help it. Do you
know what I mean?”
“I do, mate.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it? To be appalled. To
wish people like this didn’t exist, and didn’t do the things they did – and to
then feel, I don’t know, frustration, because they…”
Peter’s walking away from me as he’s saying
this. We’re at the top end of Wellington Street now and it’s their stop. I’m a
bit frustrated myself, having to miss out on whatever came next. Not that I
agree with what they’ve been saying, but at least it was something different.
And food for thought. And –
Oh look, is what I’m thinking, as I turn
the page in my disposable morning newspaper, a horribly-made up woman from a TV
show I’ve never seen – Amy Childs? – is talking about her boob job; better get
that read before my own stop comes into view.
(Episode 4 of ‘Conversations Wot I Heard on
the Bus.’)
