Sometimes it’s hard to know what to write about on this blog when we hit the summer. And sometimes, because of things that happen, it’s hard to know what is the right thing to write about and the right thing to say.
There’s part of you that wants to just talk about the Champions League final, perhaps to provide some kind of refuge or distraction from everything else. Under normal circumstances I’d feel it necessary to talk a bit about Sergio Ramos and his antics, but the circumstances are not normal, are they?
What happened in London last night, so soon after what happened in Manchester, makes it impossible to ignore. It’s heartbreaking to see people lose their lives in such a pointless fashion, and I know terrible things happen to innocent people all over the world every day, but when it’s that close to home it really resonates.
I love London and its people, the heart of this amazing city lies in its incredible diversity and to see things like this happen there is difficult. And then you feel bad about feeling so bad because you know there are things going on in places further away that are just as bad, often worse, and you realise that distance is like a cushion between you and those things. It doesn’t make them less horrible, they’re just easier to compartmentalise.
Isn’t that part of how we deal with things though? If we stopped to really think about the horrors people inflict on each other for specious reasons you’d never get out of bed. But then you have to get out of bed, because the only way good will triumph is for all of us to do what we do, to carry on, to be decent people, and to look after each other.
To reject all the twisted ideologies that lie behind this and other attacks; to reject the opportunists who will use the deaths of innocent people for their own political gains; to reject the people who see people die and then use it to get likes and Re-Tweets for the controversial opinions they have for money, the bottom-feeding, parasitic, heartless, piece of shit leeches that they are.
It’s hard not be afraid, and it’s easy to feel anger and hatred towards those who carry out these atrocities. They don’t deserve anything else but it’s important to remember that they don’t represent anybody other than terrorists. They use the cloak of religion to hide amongst ordinary people, happy to tarnish them for their own ends, but the only way to define them is their cowardice.
London will carry on, as it has before and as it will again. All I can do is offer sympathy to those affected by last night, and send a message of love to all of you who read this website. That love was palpable in London last week, with people from all over the world, of all colours and creeds, and from all walks of life.
No matter how hard they try, they’ll never, ever be able to destroy something as wonderful and enduring as that.
❤️
