Remember

Attending the Remembrance Service in the village this morning it was impressive to see the crowd three deep on all sides of the square around the war memorial.  A few berets marked out the veterans, but the rest were just, well, villagers, attending to show their respects.  Quite a few had children with them, the odd one perched on their dad’s shoulders and, in years and decades to come, no doubt these grown up children will in turn attend with their children.

Around about this time of year there’s normally a mild media prod at the convention of poppies and some liberal handwringing, but, with recent conflicts very much in our minds and images of war in the Middle East a daily diet on the news, any challenge to Remembrance Sunday and the wearing of the red poppy is, at best, a limp effort.  Warfare and loss can be commemorated without being celebrated.

After the wreath laying and an immaculately observed two minutes silence, there was a poem and prayers and then the church choir struck up the first verse of the National Anthem.  Having been at Twickenham last weekend to watch the Bar Bars play the All Blacks, I was part of the capacity crowd belting out ‘God Save the Queen’.

If you want the national anthem sung properly, can I suggest that a stadium full of 70,000 odd Englishmen who have had a beer or two each is pretty much unbeatable. 

#‎R.I.P.

Rik Mayall is dead, and I can’t quite believe it.  How could somebody with that amount of energy, somewhere between a dynamo and a typhoon, expire at so young an age.  If he had lived out his life and wound down naturally, he would probably have lived to be 472, but to go so young is wrong.  Of course, there was the whole quad bike accident, but still.

He was, I think it’s fair to say, formative.  It’s normal playground behaviour to discuss last nights telly the morning after, I think the episode of ‘The Young Ones’ where they go on University Challenge is actually still being discussed among those who saw it when broadcast.  Certainly, whenever I happen to turn on the telly and UC is on, my first thought is ‘Achtung!’.  More than that though…Lord Flasheart, in Blackadder II and Blackadder goes Forth.  ‘Always treat your kite, like you treat your woman’.  In my experience, if you heed that advice you won’t go far wrong.

Reaction to Mayall’s death has proved something of a litmus test for reaction to celebrity mortality.  In short, Twitter.

There are various expressions of public grief

The most affecting are those public memorials, garage fourcourt bouquets of flowers gaffa taped to a lamppost at the site of another roadside tragedy.  If you want to spare yourself some grief you can pretend that they are actually a traffic calming measure put at busy junctions by the council.  If you like.  In America, they’ve even got a word for them, ‘descanso’.

Away from the roadside, there’s the equally affecting doorstep memorial.  Usually set against a backdrop of fluttering scene of crime ‘Police stop’ tape and a single bobby standing watch.  Simple messages and stuffed animals tell you all you need to know about that.  Want to know more?  Read the novel ‘Fullalove’.

Moving into social media, Facebook has proved a popular site to post messages and share photographs of the departed.  It’s fitting that Facebook should serve some purpose in mourning the dead, as it’s often the source of images for the news media breaking tragic news of the passing of somebody who isn’t a celebrity and so is not the subject of thousands of stock photographs.  That’s why a newsreader with a serious face and a low voice occasionally breaks the news of the unfortunate death of an individual in front of a background showing the only picture available to the news media of that individual, usually grinning like a loon and giving a cheery thumbs up or, quite possibly, a pixillated hand gesture.

Then there’s Twitter.

If a news item starts ‘Tributes have today been paid to…’ get ready for some quotes that are no longer than 140 characters and which may read how much somebody will be missed, or how important they were, but really mean that the person sending the tweet couldn’t even be arsed to send an e mail.

Always looks for lengthy, sincere and long statement.  That is the celebrity with the good agent who has taken the time and trouble to craft something genuine for their client and it is a lot, lot better than tweeting a tribute which can say anything you like, but only ever means ‘Read of the tragic passing of X while on the loo reading Twitter.  Immediately tweeted in response, as am feckless media whore’.

It’s a measure of Mr Mayall’s standing that his tributes were substantial.  Mind you, comedians all do like to bloody talk, don’t they.