I think the first time the “floral tribute” entered the culture - or at least my consciousness - was after the death of Princess Diana.
All those flowers outside Kensington Palace - all those tearful mourners, sharing a collective grief for a person they never really knew, but who somehow, through the media and her public life, belonged to them.
The floral tribute is common place these days.
As a reporter you get to see quite a few.
Some are poignant and moving and sad.
Some are angry and exclusive to immediate family and close friends and just as sad.
But it is the former that capture public sympathy and attract the bouquets and poems and memorabilia.
The tribute site has become more than a place to lay your flowers and remember a lost friend or family member.
It has become the hippest hangout in town.
And after another pointless killing of a young man at the start of what had promised to be a creative and rewarding life, Somerfield in Station Road, Sidcup is the case in point.
A colleague told me this morning that young people had gathered there last night playing guitars and singing songs.
And that the only reason yesterday’s robbery at the Horse and Groom pub made the national papers this morning was because there were reporters from the dailies still loitering at the scene of Friday night’s murder.
You know the TV cameras will be there, the scores of journalists grubbing for a quote and press photographers.
It is the angsty teenie alternative to Britain’s Got Talent.
Now what I would like to say is that this is all evidence of a macabre death cult that has grown up as a result of the spiritual, emotional and intellectual poverty engendered by unbridled materialism.
But I am just a humble reporter and would be ridiculed as a pretentious tosser even attempting such a nonsense.
But, but, but ...
What about the groupies that flock to murdered teenagers on sites like Facebook - not to mention the more “low rent” sites like Gone Too Soon?
In the week after Jimmy Mizen was horribly slashed and bled to death in a bakery in Lee, more than 10,000 people joined the an RIPJimmyMizen group on Facebook.
The group members came from all over the country and from abroad and almost all of them had never heard of Jimmy Mizen before he was murdered.
I know because I spent an afternoon trawling through them.
(Does that make me worse for pursuing those who pursue those species members culled prematurely by a violent death?).
Ditto Robert Knox - thousands of “friends” on Facebook.
Not to mention the possibility that teenagers have been tempted to kill themselves in the vain hope they will be “eternalised” on the these sites.
And as the kids follow behind this bloody pied piper down the road to more death, death, death, death - the adults wring their hands and wail “what are we to do?”.
Another campaign, broken Britain, it's hopeless, no justice, send them home, I give up.
This week the media have gone into paroxism of despair over knife related crime and violence.
As a result of yesterday’s frenzied glut of reporting the “news” has ground to a halt today.
Nobody has been slashed, stabbed, kicked shot or beaten in the last 12 hours and as a result the journalists have nothing to write about.
They have forgotten what made the world go round before all the violence.
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