Say it with flowers

Go down any road or via these days and you are bound to see attached to some lamp post or other stanchion the remnants of some small posies of what were once flowers.

You can sometimes even see the same withered memorials on bridges over our motorways.

No doubt left by friends and relatives of someone caught up in some bad chariot smash.

When did this tradition start?

Cicero does not remember such tributes to the carnage that seemingly happens on our vias on a regular basis when he first took to the vias in a chariot adorned with L plates.

And unless his aged memory is once again playing tricks, Cicero considers this a relatively recent tradition. In which case of course it can hardly be considered a tradition.

Cicero is not sure how many years must pass before a regular event qualifies as a tradition but he is sure it cannot be a tradition if it started in his lifetime.

Now Cicero can understand why amici, patres and matres, filii and filiae and other assorted members of the familias, might want to mark the scene of a chariot smash and to leave a memorial to a loved one.

But does anyone consider how seeing the withered remains of some blooms can impact on other chariot drivers?

Do we want to be reminded every time we pass the spot marked with these withered offerings that driving a chariot is a dangerous and life threatening pastime?

Do we really want to know that someone in whose footsteps and tyre tracks we follow may have lost their lives as they went about their business along the self-same via?

It only goes to remind us that human life is a frail thing; that it can be lost in a moment in careless driving; that we are mortal.

And maybe that is really what these signs are all about.

Maybe these flora scraps are not left as a memorial but as a warning.

Maybe since our polis can no longer afford to erect and man speed cameras, and given the vitriol that arises from the installation of these Big Brother devices, this is a new tactic from the guardians of our liberties and freedoms.

Maybe their devious minds think that when they see wee memorials to man’s immortality we will slow down.

Clever.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.