Bus Conversation About Paris Attacks

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.’)