I wondered about writing this as my stuff tends to concern matters of the heart or light-hearted (nay, banal) stuff on the state of online dating etc but then I reasoned that, actually, I can write about what the hell I like. So I will.
So, today I am going to write about the events of yesterday. 8/9th (time-zone dependent) November 2016 was a huge day. A huge day for the Globe but also a huge day for Politics, news outlets, families and individuals. After a campaign that seemed to go on forever, America finally decided its next President would be Donald Trump. I follow Politics closely both personally and professionally and I have to say, I called it wrong. It is the first time that has happened for a while but I was far from being the only one (see majority of pollsters’ predictions). I guess I assumed that, when push came to shove, people would not be able to put their chips on elevating Trump to the highest office in the World. But many did. When I woke up at 4 in the morning (no change there then), I saw it beginning to unfold and began to predict how the day ahead would go on social media. In anticipation of this, I tweeted about making the tea and started posting anything and everything non-Election related. The reason I did that was because I knew every possible view would be expressed adequately by everyone else, that emotions would be running high, that people would start falling out and that, in those moments, the best hope for me would be to pump out the odd bit of distracting gallows humour. Judging by the likes and retweets I got, I wasn’t alone.
But as the day wore on, it began to get tedious for me, I can’t lie, and actually I had to switch my phone off from time to time. It’s absolutely right that freedom of speech means people can say what they like but social media has meant people have taken venting their spleen to the endth degree. I also had a silent rage brewing that, while busy mourning the death of the West and predicting the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that the US Election had (allegedly) led to, other tragedies were silently unfolding. 7 families of the Croydon tram dead and 2 families of two teenage runners killed (allegedly) by a drunk-driver were processing news that their lives really and truly – and not allegedly – had changed forever. On any other day, the Croydon tram tragedy would had consumed us and our UK news channels almost exclusively. Yesterday, apparently ITV news put 90 – yes 90 – seconds of coverage on the Tram tragedy. This is disproportionate surely by anyone’s standards? As for the promising teenage girls killed out on a training run, it seems they were largely consigned to the online edition of local news.
I get that people are gutted and that the media whether mainstream or our own personal social version is catering to that but, in the midst of our despair about the unfolding events of geopolitics, is it really beyond the wit of all of us to pay our respects to people snuffed out on a grey and miserable early November day? It’s all about perspective and, while we live in hugely challenging and worrying times which naturally elicit every conceivable human response and emotion, I wish we were better at allowing other people the space to deal with that but also keep an eye on the bigger picture and retain a bit more perspective. And with that, I will close, go and look for some hilarious and puerile gifs and, of course, pop the kettle on…
Swapping Breeze Blocks for Butterflies 