Toploader headlining the town's main music festival and Natalie Cassidy (Sonia from Eastenders) visiting a neighbouring village have been the highlights of Chippenham's social calendar this month* and I'm genuinely sorry I won't be there to imbibe liberally of its forthcoming pleasures. It's been huge fun, the peak being when I encouraged a group of delegates to regale me with the chorus of of my own mid-nineties dance club hit 'Gotta get up, gotta get down! Huh!!!'
So, it's back to the daily routine and being considered an Islamic Extremist/Jihadi Fascist/Al Qaeda Terrorist. Take a pew...
I set up this blog a while ago, so my memory is a little hazy and I can't be arsed to check, but I think I've described myself as either an 'ironic' or 'iconic observer'. Whatever, this merely means that rather than engage with people or life itself I'd rather stand on the sidelines and laugh at you. However, this default position very nearly changed in December of 2008 when Operation Cast Lead kicked off.
Over 2500 Palestinians were killed or injured in the bombardment which began on the 27th of that month and - despite the assertions from Israel that civilian casualties only represented a quarter of these deaths (The BBC's Mike Sargent said "Israel deserves much credit for the precision of its targetting.") - the majority were innocents. For example, the airstrike which killed Hamas 'Higher-Up' Nizar Rayan also killed 18 other people in the same house including all four of his wives and nine of his twelve children. Monster or not. Thug or not, this was perverse. As the humanitarian crisis deepened the leaders of the 'civilised' West seemed complicit in their resolute inaction.
When the BBC refused to air the Disasters Emergency Committee's appeal for Gazans - presumably on the grounds that those dirty Arabs deserved to be killed by shells enhanced with white phosphorus - I looked at myself and beheld a sickening moral weakness and self-centredness. If I took a little time I could gather all the unwanted detritus from my life and transport it to those truly less fortunate than myself. George Galloway set up Viva Palestina to facilitate precisely this endeavour and one Sunday afternoon I had a loft clear-out...
...But, y'know what? Life gets in the way of what we really want to do and my worn beneficence remained in a dangerous pile by the front door for a few weeks before it eventually and inevitably went back up into the loft.
If I hadn't been distracted, had parcelled up my unwanted possessions and contributed to Viva Palestina then theoretically I could have been one of those in the Gaza Flotilla described as a 'Jihadi' or 'Al Qaeda Sympathiser' or 'Islamic Extremist' or indeed 'Terrorist' and would have been fully deserving of getting shot in the face.
I'm not the first to draw parallels with the Naval incident involving Iran in 2007. Then 15 Marines were arrested and detained after they were deemed to have unlawfully entered Iranian waters. The fact that the Marines surrendered was seen by Melanie Phillips (the most evil of the Daily Mail hacks) as:
"... a grim parable of the degraded state to which Britain has now descended and an alarming portent for the free world in its fight to
survive."
and
"... another terrible milestone in the west’s current suicidal trajectory of decadence and moral collapse."
Of the raid on the Aid Flotilla and the subsequent massacre of humanitarian workers, Our Mel had this to say:
"Conversely, as everyone could see from the video evidence, on the main boat the attack took place against the Israelis — who then killed nine of their jihadi assailants solely to protect themselves from being lynched, kidnapped and murdered."
So, that's all right. There was I thinking that because it took place in International waters it might have been a tad illegal.
The World Cup is now the news so what the Western media has reduced to a mere "Public Relations disaster for Israel" has disappeared from the front pages and the announcement that the investigation into exactly what happened will be conducted by Israel itself has gone practically unnoticed. I'm walking around with my arms outstretched and my palms turned skywards intoning "Anybody? Anybody? Anybody?" But then you haven't had my childhood.
I love my brother. He's cleverer than me and tuned in to a big picture which eschews my romantic world view. But we're brothers so we bicker and argue and it's always been this way, except that when we were growing up in Croydon it was waaaay more fun for me. I would have been about 4-ish and my brother 2-ish - just before he could speak or communicate clearly. So, if I, say, prevented him from watching his favourite TV programme he'd start crying and Mother or Father would ask, "Junior! What's wrong with Garfield?" And I'd say "I'll ask him," and then falsely report back that he wanted a Cormorant sandwich made with blue tortoise bread or something equally ludicrous and laugh inwardly. What my parents should have done was introduce a neutral third party (our younger sister perhaps, although probably not. She hated me back then) to launch an independent enquiry and spare my brother years of anguish at my cruel hand. After all, I was never going to say "It's a fair cop. I took his favourite red toy car. No, no. It's okay, I can find my own way to the naughty step."
* according to the Chippenham, Calne, Corsham, Malmesbury and Wootton Bassett Gazette & Herald
