There I was having a quietish sundown excuse of a red out on the stoop with some genial pals and assorted children, when the now unsurprising news came through that a doddery old bag holed up for her last unwinnable stand in the Ritz had died of a brain attack. Yup, my worse instincts got the better of me along the line of the bitch is dead, fuck yeh... so I performed a merry Irish jig around the aforementioned stoop. It was the instinct and frustration of growing up as a teen during the old bag's reign coming to the fore. How could it possibly not? Awful times. I thought I was bigger than to be happy at someone's demise...obviously not. The 80s tainted me more than I imagine.
The children around looked quizzical at the passing of someone equivalent to them as Harold Macmillan or Anthony Eden (who they?) were for me at their age, at least they or the outcomes of their policies were not so divisive and damaging. The colonial commoner among us from Australia looked quizzically shocked but his pommie partner fully understood but rather than spill her wine chose only to join me in performing a round of ecstatic cartwheels and double backflips to accompanying fireworks and the Ode to Joy. Not intended, just knee-jerk instinct, as I suspect it was for millions of others.
A calculating woman with, for me, divisive ideas and outcomes which ruined and disunited my country and made it a nastier, greedier place the legacy of which lingers. Sure, well worn arguments have been had and doubtless will continue to be so as she, and those times, inevitably becomes an increasingly forgotten footnote. Arguably the best time to have celebrated was in 1990 when she got stabbed in the front by her own as a liability for which the appalling Mail has been lamenting ever since.
That said, having an awful lot of folk crowing unashamedly at your death is the stuff of dictatorships, or demagoguery or regimes smelling cloying close to it. Ugly. Indeed, ugly in that the once impartial BBC won't play Ding Dong in full in fear of upsetting the right which kind of puts her on a par with Mohammed in terms of sensitivities among some idiots and fools.
So, yes, were I back home I may well have been up in London, for old time's sake, waiting for some dumb fuck now underpaid overtime dependent plod, or overseas private plod, to make up an excuse to bash a few heads with Daily Mail sponsored batons and spuriously nick a few folk. It would only confirm that the legacy of Thatch has only been negative, nefarious and nasty.
May she sup well on the sulphur with her chums Saville, Ronnie, Botha, Pinochet et al. In the meantime good old Glenda Jackson seemed to sum it up well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2013/apr/11/glenda-jackson-margaret-thatcher-video
The children around looked quizzical at the passing of someone equivalent to them as Harold Macmillan or Anthony Eden (who they?) were for me at their age, at least they or the outcomes of their policies were not so divisive and damaging. The colonial commoner among us from Australia looked quizzically shocked but his pommie partner fully understood but rather than spill her wine chose only to join me in performing a round of ecstatic cartwheels and double backflips to accompanying fireworks and the Ode to Joy. Not intended, just knee-jerk instinct, as I suspect it was for millions of others.
A calculating woman with, for me, divisive ideas and outcomes which ruined and disunited my country and made it a nastier, greedier place the legacy of which lingers. Sure, well worn arguments have been had and doubtless will continue to be so as she, and those times, inevitably becomes an increasingly forgotten footnote. Arguably the best time to have celebrated was in 1990 when she got stabbed in the front by her own as a liability for which the appalling Mail has been lamenting ever since.
That said, having an awful lot of folk crowing unashamedly at your death is the stuff of dictatorships, or demagoguery or regimes smelling cloying close to it. Ugly. Indeed, ugly in that the once impartial BBC won't play Ding Dong in full in fear of upsetting the right which kind of puts her on a par with Mohammed in terms of sensitivities among some idiots and fools.
So, yes, were I back home I may well have been up in London, for old time's sake, waiting for some dumb fuck now underpaid overtime dependent plod, or overseas private plod, to make up an excuse to bash a few heads with Daily Mail sponsored batons and spuriously nick a few folk. It would only confirm that the legacy of Thatch has only been negative, nefarious and nasty.
May she sup well on the sulphur with her chums Saville, Ronnie, Botha, Pinochet et al. In the meantime good old Glenda Jackson seemed to sum it up well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2013/apr/11/glenda-jackson-margaret-thatcher-video
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