“I often wonder about Tsunami, a sushi restaurant on Voltaire Road in Clapham, south London. Did its proprietor – even for a split-second, as he saw news footage of the great, life-annihilating breakers washing up on the shores of south-east Asia, India and Ceylon – consider a name change?
“In the dark days of January 2005, while casualty figures mounted and the fatalities rotted, might he, she, or they have doodled absentmindedly on a pad, jotting down such alternatives as Massive International Relief Effort, ‘Early Warning System’, or possibly the catchy ‘Humanitarian Aid’? For any of these designations, you might think, would be more sensitive. Or did the sushi master view any such tinkering as mere sentiment?”
To read the rest of Will Self’s Big Issue in Scotland article from April 6, go here.
