Dear Clément…I hope you’ll read this from where you are now…
I didn’t know you. First, I saw your picture on a online newspaper. A very bad black and white picture. You were showing your profile. I read your name. Clément. Underneath was written your age. You were 19. Then I remembered what I was doing when I was 19. I was young, thinking myself as a big man because I was at the university, was playing the cock in a henhouse. Pretending I was someone. I was actually nothing. YOU were. Do you mind if I sit here, along the banks of the river Seine with you? Come one, we are going to have a talk about you, I’d like to know you…to have known you. I wish I had known you…If only we had had time to sit together in a pub and share a pint or two or three…But no, I was 19 and I was nothing. I just don’t understand how a young man, brave like you are can be beaten up to death, in the center of Paris, in the very middle of the afternoon, in front of a station. Were you invisible? Were those who let their hate kill you invisible? Were the people blind? Are we all blind? Blinded by our routine, our comfort, our job. “Hey. I work I don’t have time to commit myself.” No, excuses, we are blinded by our cowardice. Then, I see you, lying on the pavement, the print of the sole of the boot that has killed you is still on your face. A very vague sound resounds in my head. It’s the one of one pair of boots marching down the street of our cities. “It’s nothing…that’ll finish soon” we say. Then two. “It’s nothing…that’ ll finish soon” we say. Three, ten, thousands pairs of boots are marching down our streets. They make the ground shake, they make us hide in fear. YOU were not afraid, you were fighting against that dark wind. Yes, they are coming back! In the branches, the sound of their evil wind whistles…We can hear it, we think it’s nothing, they’ll never get the power. We are in a democracy. They were too in 1933. The crystal night is not that far away. The battle of Cable Street is not that far away. Your death is too painful, too unfair. The boots that have killed you were worn by hatred, by xenophobia. We are now crying because, since your death thousands have hidden in the dark, thousands have said “It’s nothing…that’ll finish soon.” No, it won’t…Hatred is part of us. Do we hate democracy so much that we let these things happen? Do we hate ourselves so much that we are ready to forget the basic principles of society? No Clément, YOU were someone…You were fighting for all of us…I am 38 now, I am nothing.
!. Polite children - including teenagers!
2. Car showrooms closing at lunchtime!
3. Talking to each other in the Doctor`s waiting room & saying Bonjour as you enter a shop!
4. General poor standard of driving especially signalling when entering and leaving roundabouts & the old chestnut of the car behind following too closely!