My 7-year-old made and coloured in a little line of flags for all the countries (OK, all that he could think of) to celebrate peace & everyone being friends. We hung them at the front of the house for him. And someone came to the front while we were indoors and ripped up Germany.

Get a fucking grip, people. They were clearly made by a small child. Coloured in haphazardly and all. And if your idea of doing VE Day (this happened yesterday) is that you do spiteful shit to little kids in the name of nation-crazy xenophobia, you might just be doing it wrong.

He knows about WW2. His mum is German. (Her fam from the Ruhr is in books on the resistance, and didn’t all live). He wanted to know why they did it to him. I had to explain, so very gently, that a few people everywhere do stuff like this to strangers because of nationalism.

So thanks to that anonymous VE Day coward, a hero in their own mind and nobody else’s. For being Exhibit A in a demonstration to a 7y/o that the exact thing everyone hoped had been extinguished by the liberation of Europe is still in the shadows, disguised as patriotism.