We are now on Day 3 of the official mourning period. Three of ten. I can't tell you the last time I spent ten days sadabout something. Can you? Maybe the first time I listened to Bon Iver. That aside, I mean, in terms of sadness? Over a death? Over someone's death that I've never met? Hmmm. I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to have had both grandfathers pass away before I was born so I never grew to love them before losing either of them. Hard to cry over something you never had (whatever Freedom-obsessed Americans might tell you). "I LOVE AMERICUHHH! THE LAND OF FREEDOM!" "You like freedom and personal choice?" "HELL YEH! THAT'S WHY I LOVE AMERICUHHH!" "Wait til I tell you about a little place... called Amsterdam" When my Nan died from Cancer, we were all expecting it. It had been coming for a while. The same with my Gran who followed the family tradition some years later. In both cases, I probably had the same feelings as Harry and William have now. A mix of gratitude for the love and for the conversations over the years - and fascination in hearing about the earlier years of their lives. And then, inevitably, the sadness for my Mum and Dad who would never get to share a cup of tea with them again, trading their gossip on a Sunday afternoon. Difficult to draw a parallel between that and this though, isn't it? I honestly think if I had asked anyone outside of the bloodline to remain sad or respectful for longer than a few hours I would've got a mix of "Err, fuck off?" and "Chill out, Buzzkill. This is the pub not your therapist's". When the American magician, David Blane, stayed in a box made of ice, in New York's Time Square, he was greeted with shouts of well wishes and screams of support. "You can do it!" they cried. "We love you, David!" When he attempted similar in London - faced with the choice of love and support or "Hahahaha GET FUCKED!" Brits went for the latter. When the lead singer of The Cure, Robert Smith, encountered an overly-excited interviewer on the red carpet, he (infamously) failed to match her enthusiasm. To watch the clip of it is hilarious. It's not just that they handle the situation differently. It's as though the interviewer (American) is from a completely different solar system. This optimism, these feelings are totally alien to Smith (British). And it's not just pop culture either. It bleeds out into society and cascades down into your friendship circles. We don't do emotion, culturally, generally. Probably because we live in a dystopian, classist nightmare where all our decision makers were ejected from their family homes to be raised in sociopathic boarding schools. People who - at birth, even as their mothers were doped up on Oxytocin - were welcomed into this world with not a kiss, but a handshake. When an ex-girlfriend announced she was resigning from the position, to me it felt like a crushing waste of a perfect love. Out of the blue. Shock. Over. Done. That took a sort of mourning process. I didn't feel normal* again for about two years. But even that didn't require ten days of outwardly-pouring sadness and sensitivity amongst me and my friends. In fact as I recall they all grew rather tired of the subject. *"normal" may or may not have included a large quantity of Class A substances and tragic warehouse partying But hey-ho. This is the weird country we live in: One where your concerns for your grandmother's heating bill are dismissed as snowflakeism but questioning the level of royal news coverage is unforgivably callous. Asking people to wear a mask is authoritarianism but failing to wear your red flower every November? Justifiable homicide. Indeed, in Britain poppy seeds don't grow opium... but outrage. Those who warn about the veritable flashing dashboard of fascism are dismissed as "hysterical" while grown men on six-figure salaries lose their shit over vegan sausage rolls. We are a strange, paradoxical, fucked-up little island who've yet to truly come to terms with our relationship with emotion. We've yet to understand why we allow sociopaths (who can scarcely spare a synapse for dead tots on a beach) to tell us how we're supposed to feel about something. Perhaps it's best if I sign off here. Before I say something I regret. So I'll leave you with the [paraphrased] words of a Right-wing hack from the height of the Pandemic (I think it was Allison Pearson, but I can't find the piece now, maybe it was JHB? I don't fucking know). "If I died (of Covid) I certainly wouldn't expect people who don't know me to stop what they're doing and the entire country to grind to a halt" Well, quite. I wonder what the people with these attitudes are doing now? How they feel about the Ten Days Of Official Mourning? About various events being cancelled? TV schedules being cleared? I mean, *I* never met the Queen. I have no ill will to her or her family. I feel a bit sad for them, sure. But I just... feel a bit indifferent about it all, you know? Does that make me a Britain-hater? A traitor? A snivelling, snarky enemy of patriotism? Hardly. To my mind, if expected to join in with some big, public outpouring of emotion, I'm honestly more inclined to shrug: "Chill out, Buzzkill. This is the pub not your therapist's". And truly, what could be more British?
