15

 

15 years gone. I'll be heading down to the grave on Saturday. Early. It's the 11th of July and Belfast and the rest of Northern Ireland will be teeming with flame-wielding idiots by early evening, so we'll drive down early and come home early to avoid the worst excesses of this bacchanalian horrorshow. In the past, we've had to drive round bonefires - always "bonefires" - swerving them like burning roundabouts in the middle of the road. The madness of rioting season seems to be getting worse. I expect more violence, more masked youths enacting pogroms. A bonfire was constructed in Bangor on a village green, circled by houses. The Housing Executive meekly supplied boards for the local residents windows, to stop them, what? Smashing? Melting?

In Moygashel, a town with a population that is 98% white (and I fear for that two per cent) a 56 year old man was arrested because he'd placed the effigy of a mosque on top of the "boney". 56. He was born in 1970. He's a year older than me and he's scared of brown people despite never meeting any. Racism is proliferating in places where the only people of colour are serving delicious cuisine the local population could never have thought of in a million years. Don't like foreigners? It's hairy bacon and grey eggs for you, fucker. 

They burnt the bonfire before the police could dismantle it. Because they're like fucking children. 

Katie Hopkins, who as a descendent of the Witchfinder General* certainly knows her way around a bonfire, has booked three nights of what she calls "stand up" at the Europa Hotel, her set perfectly tailored to the venue: bombing in the most bombed hotel in Europe. This isn't a coincidence. She's normalising race hatred and, well, just general hatred. They're all a part of it: Farage, Lowe, Hopkins, "Robinson", Fox. Influencers for evil. Getting rich off ignorance, hatred, misinformation, cruelty, of which there appears to be an inexhaustible supply. 

I hate this day. But I hate it mainly because you died on it, Kelly. I wish you hadn't. But you'd have been appalled at the way the world has degenerated in the last 15 years. And is that a coincidence? Since you went, everything decent seems to have gone, successive blows to kindness, justice, generosity, community. People are often nice in real life, but seem undergo a Hyde-like transformation as soon as they have their phones in their hands and the WhatsApps are pinging. You don't need to know about WhatsApp. 

It's a real mess. It's the fall of Rome. We're in a flailing, decadent era, the end point of that pesky capitalism you were always talking about. The infrastructure is splintering, and what emerges from this will be white plains of skulls. Donald Trump, a man who was a gameshow host when you were alive, has dismantled America, stopped aid for millions, bombed thousands, disfigured the White House, surrounded himself with brainless yahoos, and sleeps and shits through his Presidency. Even his golf handicap has slipped. He communicates to the world through tweets and AI illustrations where he's Jesus or Captain America. America is the stupidest country on the planet and that's why its so very, very serious. 

This is an unusual tribute to you, Kelly. But I know you. You would have hated all of this. You were better than this. Too good for the world. 

*This may not be true.