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I was sad to hear about the death of Denis Healey, but also astonished to discover that he was 98. I interacted with him in real life on one occasion, (though not sure exactly when this was - I would have said in the last ten years, but I seemingly failed to mention it in Warming Up). I was sitting on the tube when I noticed him standing nearby. I got up and immediately offered him my seat, out of respect for who he was more than anything and he laughed and said, “Are you saying that I look like an old fart?” and resolutely stayed standing. He must have been in his eighties or nineties at the time, but how cool that he didn’t see himself as old or infirm. I’m 48 and most days I would accept a seat in the same circumstances.
At the check out in the supermarket this morning, everything was progressing normally, when suddenly there was a load popping sound nearby. Five years ago everyone would have assumed that that was due to a plastic bag popping (which it almost certainly was in this case), but the check out girl flinched and then looked relieved when the firecracker sound wasn’t followed by several more and people screaming. This is the world we now live in. People at the scenes of murder sprees (and I wondered today how the word “spree” a jolly and happy word, ever got connected to the word murder - I mean sure, often the crazy people doing the killing are enjoying themselves as if at a party or a jape, but no one else is and the killers don’t get to name the act. Why are we bowing to the murderers and calling mass shootings a bit of fun, when they clearly aren’t) often say that to begin with they thought it was someone pissing around with fireworks or whatever, because guns don’t always sound like you’d expect them to do so. So now we’re becoming primed to think that if we hear a harmless and dull popping sound that we’re actually about to find ourselves in the middle of a terrorist or nutcase (not sure they should really have different names either - again it implies that one set of people have a valid non-crazy reason for their murderous intent) atrocity. Or at least that’s the first thing that occurs to me and the check out lady at the Westfield today. She said, “What was that?” and then smiled at me when she realised that she had literally dodged a bullet and today would not be the day that the Westfield fell victim to a terrorist atrocity. Though I think we both knew that it was highly likely that at some point someone was going to have a go. Which is the whole reason both our minds leapt to that conclusion.
It’s a good job I wasn’t killed because the dips I’d been sent out to buy went largely uneaten by the people at the party and it would have been a terrible shame to have been killed over a dip that would have been shunned in any case. Though had I been killed I doubt the party would have gone ahead and if it had I suspect my wife wouldn’t have been in the mood to come to the Westfield to pick up the last groceries I had ever bought and then serve them up to her guests. So she wouldn’t have realised that the whole trip had been a pointless waste of time.
I would have died a hero. Going out to get very necessary dips for a party and no one could say that my death hadn’t had meaning.
It was a fun party though. More so than it might have been had I been killed. Especially for me.
