Gnome, sweet gnome
If multiculturalism and meritocracy have undermined or overwhelmed Britishness, I have to confess that I’m all for it. We’re not the country we were twenty years ago, and all the better for it. Now that discrimination is taboo, barriers between us have fallen and we all appreciate, enjoy and indulge each other so much more.
Did the British invent snobbery? They probably can’t lay exclusive claim, but they’ve always made an especially good fist of it. Does it live on in this new Age of Diversity? Well, it may not arch its eyebrow quite as disdainfully as it did, but it’s always been subtle and insidious and, yes, its delicate sneer is still detectable.
Where, for example, do you stand on the decoration of graves? Especially children’s graves? I’m talking solar-powered angels, windchimes, smiley plastic flowers, twee-wee cherubs, big-eyed teddies—you know the stuff. Where do you stand on all that?
I’ve heard people who should know better wrinkle their nicely-bred noses in revulsion, then launch into a diatribe about roadside shrines, Dianafication, trash, we never used to do all this—AND NOW WE’VE GOT BLOODY JADE!
Gnomification is Cynthia’s word for it. She, like me, is wholly indulgent. We enjoy it.
Simplicity. Restraint. Decorum. Are those virtues? Or are they merely the obverse of repression, inhibition, an undeveloped heart? Why bother debating it? Can we not agree just to suspend our critical faculties and let others do their thing? In the immortal words of Mehitabel, wotthehell wotthehell.
There was a good and moving piece about this in the Spectator at the end of January by the eminently humane and inclusive Matthew Parris:
I was walking along Limehouse Causeway, a narrow street running close to the Thames in East London. It was about half past eight in the morning, I was short of sleep and feeling temporarily annoyed with, oh, nothing in particular — just everything. Approaching a junction I saw from some distance that the pedestrian railings hugging this corner were a mass of flowers and paper.
That irritated me. Presumably a memorial to somebody who had died nearby. Sad, no doubt, but we never used to make roadside shrines like this in England and the habit has always struck me as mawkish and somehow pagan. Getting closer, it became clear that the whole corner had been turned into a crematorium-style display, with masses of blossoms, trinkets, letters, soft toys and the like. My grumpiness increased. ‘Sweep it all away,’ I thought. ‘Death is a private thing. Let people mourn privately. Whatever happened to our English reserve?’
He stops to read some of the cards:
The longest tribute was stuck to a lamp-post, a whole letter, written in an unsophisticated hand, addressed to young Kane — an outpouring of affection and grief, starting with: ‘Kane, we can’t believe your acctually gone everybody thought you was going to pull through...’
He discovers that Kane was 15 or 16. He was riding his moped when it was hit by a car and burst into flames, trapping him.
I took a closer look at the whole display. There were crash helmets, teddy bears, T-shirts, letters, cards, and a good £100-worth of flowers. You could hardly see the cruel steel railings beneath. Feeling now too moved for comfort, and resolving to return and make some notes, I walked on ... As I fumbled for the keys, and thought of Kane Theodore, and the flowers and cards ... my eyes began to well with tears I simply could not control. I had to turn away quickly from a passing jogger, open the door and dive inside. Those tears were not for Kane, whom I never knew ... They were tears of self-reproach and — admit it — of shame. Shame not for my behaviour, which is usually fair, but for my feelings, which are spasmodically unfair and unkind.
Read the whole piece here.
And then see what hot water the public officers of Stockton have got themselves into after attempting to impose their own ghastly good taste on the ghastly good taste of the owners of the children’s graves in the local cemetery. Thanks for this, Cynthia. Read it here.
Labels: memorialisation
posted by Charles Cowling at
13:55
4 Comments:
One thing about these roadside shrines is that there doesn't seem to be a universal and acceptable protocol for removing them, whether a month, 6 months or a year after the death.
After a while, the flowers, teddies and photos will fade and become caked in traffic grime, becoming, in my eyes, a very visible reminder of the process of decay and something that detracts from the memories of the person who's died.
Should we (the public, the council, the funeral directors) document them by taking photos (which can be forwarded to the family), and then destroy them? Or remove them and present them to the family? Or leave them for ever?
I'd be interested to hear other people's views on this.
Many a Doctorial thesis has been written on this subject......
It may be, in the long run, that the collected grime and passing detritis is the only visible reminder of post-mortem decay left in our sanitized society...
Who knows - it is a question that surely has a different answer when asked at each memorial location...hence the lack of universal protocol. One person's appropriate gnome is surely another's abomination.
"Can we not agree just to suspend our critical faculties and let others do their thing?" - beautifully put... This is my point on many matters when it comes to death, and life too!
I agree with Tony maybe people would feel more conformable with the some rules and regulations on this, but no time is ever right, it’s like the big old question of when is right time to move on? You’ll never please anyone. And anyway, I’m with Charles 'wholly indulgent'! Bring it on, who cares what other people think! Plus it gives drivers something else to think about while they’re chatting on their phone or fiddling with the radio at 60pmh!
great post Charles..
Perhaps the trend of memorializing strangers has to do with grieving our cultural prohibition of grief itself.
In some ways, grief shares a status with pornography. We're supposed to feel guilty showing it publicly - we've all heard people apologize for crying in front of us when someone dies, and been too polite to comfort them for fear of compounding their 'shame' - but we can agree it's ok behind closed doors. There's often anger in mourning; that's not helped by colluding with the taboo against sharing it.
Our roadside mourners have something to say. We can abhor their taste if we can be bothered, but it's missing the point. They show that grief should be seen and heard and honoured, not stigmatized. On what other stage can they encact their censored geurilla drama? We need a national theatre for real grief, not a busker's corner for some third-rate cover version that gets moved on by the emotion police.
Good on you, Charles, for setting up this discussion forum; it's a start, at least.
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