Harry Paterson

Despite living in one of the most reactionary periods for the last hundred years, we are also, paradoxically, living in one of the wettest times ever. No, I’m not talking about the weather either, I’m talking socially. We’ve turned into a nation of confessional emo bed wetters and I hate it.

You can barely drive along a mile of road anywhere in the UK without seeing hordes of decaying flowers clustered forlornly around a spot where someone was knocked over and killed by a speeding vehicle. Or some wannabe ‘gangsta’ was stabbed by a rival scum-bag. And so on…

It matters not, seemingly, that the majority of these floral tributes are from people who had scant interaction with the deceased and even less liking for the unfortunate victim. Nope, you can still see those cringe-inducing tributes that read “Gon 4 eva m8 but not 4gotun luv u man from the [insert risible facsimile of bad-ass, black, American street gang]”

Facebook pages will be opened in their honour and a ghoulish tidal wave of fake grief will pour out as everyone jostles to be the most upset, the most devastated and claim the most intimate relationship with the now famous corpse.

It’s not grief, per se, I find offensive or, obviously, the tragic loss of life that undoubtedly hits home in a very real way to wives, mothers, sons, daughters and husbands. It’s the fact that somewhere along the way we’ve turned grief and mourning into a tacky spectator sport. I can recall exactly when it happened, too; the day a single mother, living on benefits, wrapped herself around the chassis of her car in a Paris tunnel.

What followed was mind-boggling and deeply disturbing. Literally, millions of people went into emotional breakdown over the death of someone they’d never known and never even met! Workplaces granted compassionate leave to the most seriously afflicted, help lines sprang up and a rain-forest’s worth of trees were butchered to provide the cards upon which hysterical messages were inscribed. Basically, the entire nation succumbed to a kind of mass hysteria and anyone who challenged this ran the very real risk of physical injury.

Now, of course, this behaviour is commonplace, accepted, mandatory, almost. Which is why the aforementioned road side tributes are so frequently seen. It’s the reason why teenage girls doll themselves up to the nines just to hang around the spot where some poor disturbed kid hanged himself in an outbreak of teenage angst. Doesn’t matter that the poor sod wasn’t known to the ‘mourners’, nope it’s an opportunity to garner some attention and indulge in some amateur dramatics courtesy of the latest teen suicide.

Sick, sick and thrice sick. And it makes me so. It’s even more intense when the dead happen to be genuinely famous. An actor, say, or a rock star, maybe.

Gary Moore died recently and I was saddened that I’d never see him live again (no pun intended) or hear a new album from him. His passing was a loss to the international musical canon and it was a bloody shame. Repeat to fade for Phil Lynott, Bon Scott, John Bonham, Ronnie James Dio and dozens more over the years.

Here’s the rub, though; I shed no tears, indulged in no hysterics nor did I feel compelled to camp outside his final resting place, in the freezing cold, to weep, wail and gnash my teeth to any parasite with a microphone and a camera. Because I’m a cold, heartless, unfeeling bastard, right? Wrong. Much simpler than that; I didn’t know him. At all. Never met him even once. He wasn’t my dad, uncle, brother, cousin or mate.

Whatever happened to that famed stiff upper lip? Where did that legendary British stoicism go? Is dignity now of so little importance we’ll happily trade it for a few brief moments in the spotlight?

You can wimp out and fudge the question by bleating that everyone deals with grief in different ways but, really, that’s bollocks, isn’t it? Surely, if grief is anything, if the pain of bereavement is real, genuine and heartfelt then it craves solitude, privacy and introspection? Not garish and outlandish displays of public hysteria.

When my Mam died a few years ago I was gutted beyond belief and to compare those feelings to those which I experienced when Gary Moore and Ronnie James Dio died would be to cheapen everything she meant to me and everything that most remarkable of women most certainly was. I miss her dreadfully and there really isn’t a single day that’s gone by since when I haven’t thought of her. And that’s as public as I’m going; she brought me up better than that.

So this is for you, Mam. Happy Mother’s day. Yeah, I know it’s early but at least I didn’t forget this year