My friend Christopher lent me his camera.
On Monday I was coming back home at around 4pm. I couldn’t go through Mare Street because there were cops with plastic shields blocking it – and in front of them were kids. Nothing was happening. I took a few pictures and went home. I told my flatmate, “Hey, what are the helicopters for? Nothing’s happening.”
But on TV it was
“Oh my God, look at this,” he said. “It’s all happening in Mare Street. They’re breaking into shops.” I said, “Let’s go. I’ll change clothes, put proper shoes on.”
We walked down to Tesco’s, sat down next to a guy who had a (friendly, he said) pit-bull, and then walked on, taking side streets to get into Mare Street before the police blocked it.
And then began the dance.
Of people moving forward and backwards. Lots of people were there. Lots of black and non-black teenagers, girls, lots of white (but also black) middle-class residents taking pics and talking. People talked about the anger, about the anger, the anger (of the young people who live in the area).
A red sports car was burning on a side street.
It was smoking crazy. I was taking pictures, even though taking pictures seemed silly. It felt like there were more people taking pictures than things happening. But then it changed.
Police charged and people ran and it was scary. You wouldn’t want to fall when everyone is running. There were people on bikes everywhere. We ran.
“Diamonds!
Let’s go for diamonds!” People tried to break into a shop called NGO Diamonds. I thought: Yeah, right, like you’re gonna get diamonds, kids. Then they began taking stuff from a petrol station shop. I heard someone asking, “So it’s OK, they let you take the stuff?” and someone answering, “Yeah, nothing they can do about it.”
Soft drinks, packs of crisps, Toblerone bars, little bottles of alcohol. Kids with their hands full and grinning. I thought, “Wow, that would be a very stupid reason to go to jail.”
BUST CARDS.
That’s what a girl was handing out.
“If you are arrested you have a ‘right to silence’. Just say: ‘NO COMMENT’ You have the right to free legal advice at the police station. If you don’t know a solicitor we recommend…”
Mare Street was clear again. Going back towards Hackney Central I saw that Appetite’s window had been smashed. “Uh, I could use a sandwich” joked people around me, but the police were guarding the window and the ATM next to it. In front of JD Sports (that had been looted earlier on) a woman was talking to a crowd of photographers: “Do something! Do something for the community! Stop taking pictures! Do something!” People of the Socialist Workers’ Party were interviewing a guy, asking him why he thought this was happening.
There was smoke in the air, somewhere in the direction of my house
Stuff was happening in Clarence Road. Stones being thrown at the police, a car burning. I stood there watching, taking cover when stones flew. A guy in his thirties was shaking his head in disbelief: “I was a product of youth clubs. These kids here, they don’t even have that. They wouldn’t be doing this if they had something to keep them off the streets.”
There were Oyster cards on the floor, lots of cigarettes at some point. A white man offered me a bottle of alcohol, which I declined. I had no money and people were offering me free stuff which I couldn’t accept. Ironic. It’s not like I’ve been poor all my life though.
I took pictures.
It was hot because of the fire. It was also beautiful. Fire is. Nothing you can do about it.
Anyway.
There was this girl I had met, a photographer, and we started walking towards Lower Clapton. News arrived that cameras were being stolen. She hid her massive camera under her sweatshirt. Mine was small. I thought no one would want to steal it. All along people had been friendly, smiling.
We were walking.
But then a guy tried to pull my camera strap over my neck. I held on to it. So he pulled and the strap broke and the camera fell on the floor. I said, “Don’t take it – not my camera!”
He punched me in the face and my left eye got hurt and I couldn’t see and next thing I knew there was something wet and hot on my face and he kept punching but I don’t remember where or how and then I was on the ground.
He was gone and all his friends were too. A hooded masked guy came and asked me if I was all right. Girls came too. A kid gave me his (looting) bandana so that I could wipe the blood off my face. Then he complained cause I had stained his hand with blood and I had to wipe the blood off. But I kept the bandana.
(I am not black and I am middle class.)
In London Fields we saw policemen on horses. We walked home with the photographer. I put some ice on my eye. We ate some pizza and watched the news, footage of the fire in Croydon that kept burning.
“Scum on the streets”
wrote a model I know on Facebook, the following day. “They’re feral rats,” said a woman on TV. This made me really angry. It made me wish I would stop knowing this girl and silence the TV (and, later on, David Cameron).
All the people I saw were human.
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Je m’excuse beacoup pour hier.
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quand reviendras-tu?
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pardon s’il te plait.
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dire des trucs impossibles à dire en français
te pareces a una flor
(tu ressembles à une fleur)
Ouvre-moi comme un livre. Ma main est posée sur le lit, paume en l’air. La télévision sur l’armoire. Le lit est plus étroit que la plupart des lits doubles. La chambre est au cinquième étage est rose.
dit Cyril au café. Ça manque de mots qui soient pas enfantins – “foufoune” c’est vraiment glauquissime et “chatte” a quelque chose d’un peu potache ou de mécanique. Il faudrait en inventer un, genre “sgroubzz”, un terme un peu pratique, descriptif, pouvant se teinter de différentes colorations selon les contextes.
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I am a cunt.