So farewell, then, Thavisha Lakindu Peiris (25). I never knew you personally, but I do know all about your hard working career mindedness. I can see from the published photographs (in your graduation photo you look old enough to be your own father) that you were a credit to your family in Sri Lanka; until you were stabbed to death on your last night as a pizza delivery driver, only hours before starting a new job as an IT consultant.

Of course you never did start that job, because your-young-life was-cut-tragically-short.

I would apologise for addressing you in this clichéd manner; except, if you will permit me to talk past what actually happened to you, I think it is the cliché rather than the actualité which I should be addressing.

I’m not convinced, you see, that the telling of your terrible story is as it purports to be: a sign of how much we value human life. I suspect that Young Life Cut Short On Last Night Of The Pizzas, is really a way of saying: his real life hadn’t even started; he was just about to emerge from that shadowy, zombie existence comprised of not-quite-human creatures who either can’t cook or who can’t get a proper job. (It could easily have been said about you until recently: still delivering at Domino’s two years after graduating in 2011? Must be something not-quite-right.)

Or, if your story is especially poignant because you weren’t really a delivery boy any more, what does that say about the boys – some of them are as old as your father – still stuck behind the wheel with the cardboard boxes in a padded bag, not going anywhere else? Supposing their lives are like a scene from The Walking Dead, it surely shouldn’t matter any less when they get stuck with a knife.

Of course the context all but confirms the clichéd account. You died at the wheel of a foreign-made car in a cul de sac on a large-scale council estate – one of the many failed projects of Britain’s 20^th century, on the edge of a Northern industrial city in long-term decline. read more