Another Voice | 31 January 2009

I was walking along Limehouse Causeway, a narrow street running close to the Thames in East London. It was about half past eight in the morning, I was short of sleep and feeling temporarily annoyed with, oh, nothing in particular — just everything. Approaching a junction I saw from some distance that the pedestrian railings hugging this corner were a mass of flowers and paper.

That irritated me. Presumably a memorial to somebody who had died nearby. Sad, no doubt, but we never used to make roadside shrines like this in England and the habit has always struck me as mawkish and somehow pagan. Getting closer, it became clear that the whole corner had been turned into a crematorium-style display, with masses of blossoms, trinkets, letters, soft toys and the like. My grumpiness increased. ‘Sweep it all away,’ I thought. ‘Death is a private thing. Let people mourn privately. Whatever happened to our English reserve?’

I reached the corner, and stopped to look. Two little girls were there, perhaps tending, perhaps observing the temporary memorial, so I hid my feelings and started to read the tributes. It seemed the deceased was a youth called Kane Theodore, known to his friends as The Fizz.

The longest tribute was stuck to a lamp-post, a whole letter, written in an unsophisticated hand, addressed to young Kane — an outpouring of affection and grief, starting with: ‘Kane, we can’t believe your acctually gone everybody thought you was going to pull through…’

I was beginning to feel a bit sheepish about my irascibility. I looked at some of the many photographs of Kane: probably of mixed race, not particularly handsome but a cheeky, open face; and so young. ‘RIP 1993-2009. Kane. Always remembered’ said a card, with a little heart attached.