April 19, 2015
Rubber boat from Libya en route to Malta
Butting in to winds and waves of wine dark sea
With a cargo of Africans
Crammed in, jammed on
Hopeful helpful Europe will set them free.
Loud colours, cotton print lifeless in the water
Floating not yet bloated from the wine dark sea
With a cargo of cadavers
Waived quietly on their way
Who cares what colour dead turns out to be?
Scooping up survivors is a white man’s burden
Face masks and boiler suits, colour coding’s clear
With cargoes of Africans
Still more cargoes of Africans
Healing and helping hands giving way to fear.
(with apologies to John Masefield)
Jewel heist. Diamond caper. Scarper, it’s the Rozzers. What larks!
The real location was London’s diamond trading district, near Holborn, yet the £300m Easter raid on the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company suggested relocation to an Ealing Comedy, complete with burglar alarm that went off but prompted ‘no action’ onthe part of bungling police.
But Key Stone Cops ‘n’ Robbers wasn’t much of a comedy; certainly couldn’t cut it as tragedy. The Daily Mirror tried for Jacobean, positing Mr Ginger and Mr Strong alongside footage obtained from security cameras at the entrance to the vault; paintingthe thieves as Reservoir Dogs. But the footage itself was closer to outtakes from health and safety information films, complete with operatives in High Vis vests demonstrating how not to lift heavy loads.
Nefarious or not, a lot like watching paint dry.
Heavy-set bloke running away from car, more like something from Family Guy. Cut tothe park where there’s an ugly clash between his green top, tending towards turquoise, and the lime-like foliage of an overhanging tree.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat: rim-shots but too many of them for Ray Charles’ girl knocking on his door. It’s really the sound of Walter Scott going down to meet his maker (Hallelujah, He Loves Us So), the proverbial black man blasted in the back while running away from a white police officer.
Shot by a passer-by, the cellphone footage is neither comic nor tragic. Looks a little ludicrous but lacks a single punchline; instead it takes seven hits to knock a man down. Following procedure, the shooter logs on to a different (tragic) order of things, but only post festum, post mortem. Death itself comes un-masqued, without tragedy or comedy; it is desultory, diminished, demeaning. read more