There’s been a bit of a digital ding-dong on the Facebook
page of my local community over the last week. Insults have been swapped, shots
fired, accusations made. The normal equilibrium which suffuses the air has been
sullied, poisoned even, by the battle lines which have been drawn in the
virtual sand. The whole sordid affair
seems to threaten to spill over into fighting in the streets, pitchforks drawn,
knuckles flexed and brains redundant.
I’d like to claim some kind of moral high ground, but I've
been in there, keyboard swinging like Macbeth’s sword, verbally slashing this
way and that with carefree abandon. My
feet have been firmly planted in one camp, and my oh-so-witty* barbs and snides
have been tossed like grenades of intellectual annihilation at my foes. I chose sides more to have a fight than out of
conviction. It passes the time.
The source of this conflict? Flags. Or, more specifically,
flags on poles in the local cemetery. Big, fuck-off flags on big, fuck-off
poles, to be more accurate. In recent months there has been a trend for the
dear departed to be remembered not just by the time-tested stone marker, a
bunch of flowers and the weeping mournful.
It seems that it is also de rigeur to shove a flappy flag on a pole so
that anyone within fifteen miles eyeshot** can see the – most commonly – nationality
of the deceased. I don’t like them. It
seems I am not alone.
I must admit a bias.
The local cemetery is dear to what remains of my heart. I spent many
days in my mid teens wandering its sylvan avenues, listening to The Archers and
pretending I was a dweller in a leafy Cotswold village, rather than in a flat, coffee-brown
Manchester council estate. My affair
with the cemetery blossomed, and in my later teens many was the evening I could
be found drunk in its enclaves, gothing around with my fellows goths. There are also rumours that it was my venue
of choice when guided by the influence of acid, but I refuse to incriminate
myself. Because I may have just thought I’d
gone to cemetery when I was , in fact, supine in my room listening to Dark Side
of the Moon. Again. And again. And again.
I was so grateful when CDs came along and I didn’t have to
get up to turn the record over half way through.
So, I don’t like graveyard flags. I find they intrude on the serenity of the
place. The air of quiet, of reflection
and escape becomes a carnival of fuckery. .
I don’t give a shit in a doughnut where the deceased come from, or where
they've gone. It’s not my business, and
I don’t like it being made my business.
But it transpires the council also don’t like them, and as
of today, they are banned. Any flag on
pole must be removed, or it will be forcibly evicted, and sent to a flag
refugee camp or somesuch location.
I didn’t read the fine print.
However, there is more at play than an affront to my sense
of the aesthetic. An online petition has
surfaced which claims that the council is trying to ban Irish flags. This is clearly a steaming, moist truckload
of runny horseshit. The council wants to ban, in fact, all flags. This petition is a low
strategy. It implies that anyone opposed
to the flags is a jack-booted English Imperialist who thinks Paddy should know
his place. It’s also brought out the I
Blame the Bloody Muslims brigade, who are on half-coherent rants about political
correctness gone batshit crazy and how they bet THEY won’t have to take down
THEIR flags.
I can almost picture these goons pointing at the horizon, stamping
up and down, steam whistling from their ears as they point at the distance
shouting, ‘ Them! Them!’ apoplectically.
I don’t think they’ve read even the big print.
And so the lines have been drawn.
And I chose a side.
Because of this petition. Prior to this, I had had my reservations about
the flags as outlined, but I take objection to lots of things, and if people
acted on my list of complaints, there’d be no end of unforeseen consequences. I’d like to get rid of slugs, Fray Bentos
pies and yellow cars, but I’m sure there are people who would rather die than
see this happen. ***
I even have some sympathies.
It’s hardly equitable that if I’m rich I can build an imposing, ostentatious
tomb, at a perfect height for a drunk teenager to climb up and fall off in the
early hours, but if I’m not so flash for cash I must restrict my demonstration
of mourning. And while I find them
annoying, they’re hardly killing anyone.
But once the lies are out, it’s hard to maintain
sympathy. Once the raving crazies pin
their flag to mast, metaphorically speaking, I’m inclined to explore the
options.
And, that, Michael Gove, is why I will be voting to stay in
the EU.
* I suspect this is probably how I saw it, rather than how
it actually was. Stella makes everything
funnier. Without it a Michael McIntyre gig would be thousands of bewildered,
sober adults puzzled at the little fat man talking about how pointless his
existence is.
** Like earshot but for eyes. Obvs.
*** Apart form yellow cars. I don’t believe that anyone
thinks there a good idea. Not even Bananaman.
