RIOT TOWN

Midnight 10 August 2011

At 6pm today, I stood by my kitchen window and watched the deep breath in as London quietly prepared itself for another possible night of riots. By then I was tired of the anticipation and for a moment, I thought, 'Let them come.'

If they're coming this way, just be done with it. I don't want to keep checking twitter and facebook every 30 seconds, watching out for the ducked heads and covered faces of dangerous young kids passing by my bedroom window. The police sires and helicopters have been going all day. I'm tired of the same old reel sky news and the bbc are playing - and yet I can't switch them off. I can't stop listening and looking and trying to find out what's happening.

By 6pm, it'd been 24 hours with a knot in my stomach. Up the road, my local shopping centre was boarding up its windows and doors

The riots are scary because they are everywhere. My friend Venetia was in a cab last night and her driver told her that at that moment, there were 14 simultaneous riots happening across London. From the poor areas of Croyden and Hackney, to the prosperous Ealing and home of middle management, Clapham. Friends live above stores that were ransacked and gutted, and across the road from buildings that have been razed to the ground. People's homes have been burnt down. An old woman in Ealing woke up with looters in her bedroom, going through her belongings. A current viral sensation is a video of a looter helping up an innocent injured kid who has been knocked over in the rioting ruckus - getting him to his feet, then opening his rucksack and stealing his belongings. London is burning. Everywhere there are photos of kids in baggy sportswear and bandanas tied over their faces, hoods up, only their eyes showing - they're setting bins on fire and throwing bricks at police cars. South London gangs are calling truces with eachother in order to join forces in the riots and cause the maximum amount of damage possible.

I can't deny that the riots are scary. And that I have felt scared in their wake. But more than anything, more than I am scared or saddened; I am angry. I am so, so angry.

The riots broke out after a man was shot and killed by police in Tottenham (North London, shooting location was 3 minutes from my old apartment) and a peaceful march upon the Polica Station the next day descended into chaos. The tottenham riots, which blitzed the area all through saturday night, were mainly between the black youths of the area against the police force. While shocking and disturbing, there seemed a method to the madness. Kids vs Police over a death. Sunday brought more of the same, although to a slightly lesser degree and in different areas.

Monday though..... monday was when it exploded. Suddenly riots broke out all over London. Groups of kids started ransacking whole streets, breaking the windows of shops, stealing everything inside, then petrol bombing the building and watching them burn until they are hollow shells. Nothing related anymore to that guy in Tottenham, Mark Duggen, who pulled a gun on a cop and found himself shot twice - once fatally. By the time kids were clearing the bikes out of Halfords in Brixton and the trainers out of JD Sports in Clapham,it had nothing to do with a man in North London who died. It had everything to do with greed and some of the most flagrant lack of respect I have ever seen.

Two teenage girls were interviewed on BBC this morning, drunk on rose wine they'd looted from a local store, claiming the riots were 'fun' and 'hope they'd happen again tonight'.

When asked why the riots were happening, they said, 'It's the goverments fault..... I don't know.... The Conservatives. I forget who it is. I don't know.'

When asked why they were rioting and looting in their own area, knocking off their local people they said,

'It's the rich people. The people that got businesses, and that's why this is all happening, becuase of the rich people. So we're just showing the rich people we can do what we want.'

This is taking place near a string of gutted and ruined stores, including corner stores and off licences - little independently owned shops that have nothing to do with tories or so called rich people.

What is most apparent is the blinding stupidity of the rioters. One looter in Clapham answered a reporter's question of 'what are you doing?' with the mind bogglingly moronic response 'getting our taxes back, innit.' Another was arrested stealing from Currys, an electronics store. The exact same store that she worked at.

People were walking through the broken glass windows of Debenhams and scooping up armfuls of clothes. Clearing shelves in off licences of their bottles of rum and vodka. Most imporantly though, everyone got a new pair of trainers and a new phone. They are ripping our city apart for trainers and phones.

The media is desperately scrambling to use the 'disenfranchised youth' angle. Everyone wants to blame the poverty, the budget cuts, the poor, poor neglected youth of England. Glenda Jackson, the Hampstead/Kilburn MP, said it best: 'Don't give credence to the argument that these are deprived children, they all ahve Blackberries.'

Most people involved in teh riots are teens. A shocking 50% of arrests yesterday were people born after 1991. The youngest charged is 11 years old. These riots have been organsied primarily on BBM and twitter - smart phone apps. These children say they are fighting 'government, tories, rich people, i don't know' - But here in lies the core of my fury - How many starving third world revolutionaries are parading around with Blackberries, organising riots on BBM to steal trainers?

There is no sense. They are not fighting for a cause. They are rioting to riot. They have found an excuse to go out and wreck havoc, do whatever they want. Some snotty nose little shit in a hood and his tshirt pulled up over his nose and sunglasses on, just said on the news, 'I'm doing this because I can. Because tonight the police can't do anything to me.'

He was clutching a bottle of rum. He had fat fingers and a young voice. He couldn't have been more than 16.

The go-to line of 'retaliating against the goverment' makes my blood boil. By no means am I the biggest fan of the Conservative government, but what is there to rally so hard against? Our free health care? Our easily manipulated benefits system? I don't agree with many of the budget cuts that this government has made, but I also don't believe in the benefits system that has existed in England for so long. The Conservative government has made it much harder to 'sign on' - ie, receive the dole/jobseekers allowance. And so it should. Why, if you are physically able and mentally capable, should you not work? Why should people who do work have to pay tax in order to fund your arse sitting, tv watching, criminally lazy lifestyle?

As I said,by and large I don't agree with the cuts - I think they've made many many wrong decisions with regard to them. For instance, disability benefits are almost impossible to get nowadays, even when people are really, legitimately ill and actually cannot work. My friend Nathalie is going through a bit of a benefits battle after several rounds of chemo left her constantly ill. One of these bouts of sickness landed her in the hospital with a heart infection, where a viral infection went undetected, and left her paralysed from the waist down. Not long after she was declared a paraplaegic, her local council sent her a letter stating they were slashing her benefits as she could not prove she was 'unfit for work.' They also refused to contribute to a stairlift (her flat is on the 1st floor of a walk up) or pay for her to move. This meant she was unable to elave her house for months unless she was physically carried down the stairs - until some very kind people raised money for her and bought her a stairlift. She is managing to get back on benefits - which she should have as she is physically unable to work - but it has been a long and hard road.

And yet she has never once incited a riot, thrown a petrol bomb, looted a store. Her problems cannot be fixed by stolen trainers and phones and flatscreen tvs.

What is it they are rioting for?

I keep thinking this, over and over again:

184 MILLION Africans suffer from malnutrition. THAT is a tragedy.

15 MILLION African children have been orphaned by AIDS. THAT is a tragedy.

Every 4 seconds a child dies from aids/poverty. THAT IS A TRAGEDY.

Having to work, to hold down a job, in order to buy yourself new trainers and phones and flatscreen tvs IS NOT A TRAGEDY.

Get off the dole. Take some accountability for your life.

I am so angry I can barely organise thoughts in my head. More than I am scared and more than I am confused and more than I am sad - I am angry.

There have however, in teh wake of all this destruction, been moments of quite incredible hope. Last night The Ledbury, a 2 star Michelen restaurant in Notting Hill, was attacked by the mob. Rioters smashed the windows and bombarded in, taking jewellery and wallets from the diners. The kitchen staff retaliated and fought of the mob with rolling pins, pots and chefs knives. They then hurried them down to the cellar until things calmed down, giving them cognac and champagne.

Kingsland Road in Dalston was not hit at all last night, despite gangs splashing up on both sides of the long road that reaches from Tottenham on one end to Shoreditch on the other. THe turkish shop owners (of which there are many - given the high saturation of turkish owned shops on the stretch) stood out in front of their stores, arm to arm, all the way down the road, refusing to let anyone near their shops. They called their friends and those friends called their friends and any gangs who approached Kingsland Road dispersed quickly at the sight of The Turkish Grocery Army.

This afternoon you couldn't see Clapham Junction for the hoards of people with brooms, black bags and gloves. It looked like the whole of Clapham came out to help clean up the streets. Tonight there are hundreds of Sikh men in Southall, guarding their temple and the streets - creating a presence to safeguard their community.

And my personal favourite, my absolute best, is that there was some footage last night of a street in Ealing that had been absolutely pillaged. Well... almost absolutely. Standing between some barren electrical stores and cleared out clothes shops, there was a waterstones, England's biggest chain of bookstores, left completely untouched.

Today there was a sign in the window of that Waterstones.

WE ARE STAYING OPEN. IF THEY STEAL OUR BOOKS, THEY MIGHT LEARN SOMETHING.

As i type this there are riots in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. It's like a ghost town outside my window, save for the constant wail of sirens. I don't know where they are going. London is eerily quiet right now. I think we're all still waiting for something else to happen, but if it does, I hope to be near a Turksih shop, or a Sikh temple, or in the cellar of a Michelin starred restaurant drinking champagne. Or in a Waterstones.

...and this is where we live now....

I’ve been quiet. To this land of the internet, as good as dead. It’s a combination of tiredness and a distinct lack of connectivity; mostly I have been siphoning any leftover filaments of energy I have crawling into bed with my boy – or lying with my legs across his lap watching made for TV murder mysteries, tracing his prominent eyebrows with the soft pads of my thumbs. I’d go so far as to say I’d spend all of my free time with him, doing whatever mundane task the day required of us, just sitting on a bus getting to wherever it is that we need to go. But in truth, buses make him edgy, and it’s an often arduous task simply travelling as a pair. His shoulders hunch up as if poised on the precipice of battle, his eyes dart toward the footfall of strangers every time the doors open. At first, I found this attitude odd, but with time and a shift in residence I’ve come to realise it’s not so much nature as nurture. It is, as much as anything, a South London thing. Defining personality by geography, as if gleaning personal insight by reading the A-Z.

South London is ugly. From the false hope of the south bank of the Thames, the beautifully lit Royal Albert Hall and the lights on the bridges, the city slopes down into a wasteland of fried chicken shops, clothing stores selling itchy, alien coloured polyester, signs boasting ‘EVERYTHING £5!!!’, mobile phone stores, their windows garishly lit with Chinese LED signs, ‘OPEN TIL LATE’ ‘PHONE UNBLOCKING DONE HERE’, pink plastic diamond encrusted iphone covers hanging in their windows. All goods on sale, everything displayed. Even the crackheads and whores (or as is common, crackwhores) find little reason to hide themselves south of the river. They press themselves up outside 24hour minicab offices, drinking Super Tennants, selling their wares, themselves, as if Peking ducks in restaurant windows on the streets of hungry Beijing.
There’s a peculiarity built into the South London demeanour; an out and out aggression, a sort of spit and snarl that acts as a precursor to every sentence, every action. You hear it all the time, it saturates the already damp air. The 188 bus runs from central Russell Square to southerly Greenwich. An accidental misstep, the result of the jerking bus plucking your centre of gravity like a reverberating chord, will in Bloomsbury be met with a staid lack of acknowledgement or a polite grimace. But by the time the bus starts its path down Tower Bridge Road into Bermondsey, the same action will be met with a small snap at best, an onslaught of abuse at worst. I ride the bus trying to fit my whole self into a space too small to physically inhabit, hearing the hard wet slapping sound, like heavy feet running on a pavement, of all those altercations taking place, . I sit at the back at the bus only when it’s empty, and when it’s full, as near to the doors as possible. If it is ever me that stands on someone’s foot, my elbow digging into someone’s back, I feel my North of the River, privileged upbringing spill out of me like sick. “Sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Tsss...” The low hiss and growl of Bermondsey. “Fucking mug.”

This South London is new to me. Sure, I lived in Battersea for a substantial time and yes, it is an area that exists on the southern bank of the river, but one can scarcely call it South London. I loved Battersea, the park and the river and the crumbling mansions blocks on Albert Bridge Road, the poor man’s Chelsea, the beat up red merc with the soft top held together with duct tape. I live in South London now. Actual South London, proper South London, Pie and Mash and Millwall South London. I live just near the heart of the blue, near a 24hour supermarket big as an aeroplane hanger, on a noisy street that most Saturdays is peppered with riot vans and football violence. I guess, as it goes, I call South London home now. But when you come to the teeth and bones of it, truthfully I don’t like it much. Most of the time, I don’t like it at all.

I remember having a conversation with Shelley once, a million years ago, where I boldly proclaimed that I wouldn’t want to fly First Class once if I could never fly it again. What would be the point? Every trip after that I would only think of how things were just that much nicer on the other side of the curtain. Champagne before takeoff, real china, proper cutlery. The ability to breathe without tasting your neighbour’s sour recycled air. Ignorance, I told myself, was bliss. It was a silly teenage thing to say and I don’t agree now with my 16 year old self, but I can’t help but find a small nugget of truth in my juvenile petulance. There’s always a slight sad taste, like metal, when things aren’t as good as they used to be.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m happier now than I was then. Personally, I’m in a better place. But in a bid for self preservation, I still avoid going anywhere near to Baker Street as far as I can help it.

Isithwalambiza

There is this thing my brother does, his wife tells me, when she feels sick; he lies in bed next to her and massages her hands until she falls asleep. There is something about this that makes me ache a little bit inside. I can’t quite put my finger on it, I can't quite pinpoint the exact cause within the actions, but there is definitely something about it that makes me hurt in some hazy way, as if suffering from pains in a phantom limb. She feels sick a lot these days, waves of nausea rising in her at regular intervals. A few months ago we went to a spa and a praying mantis jumped on her cream towelling gown. The ladies massaging almond cream into our calves laughed and laughed as she tried to swat it away, telling her, “You know this means you will be pregnant soon. A Praying Mantis is always a baby.” And we in turn laughed at the quaintness of the folk lore, the fertility equivalent of ice cream leading to nightmares or playing with matches causing you to wet the bed. A month and a half later, my brother cleared his throat in that way he does when he has something of consequence to say, and told us, “So guys, a bit of news… Corlia is pregnant.” and then there was much hugging and congratulating and sly tears that leaked from the corners of our rapidly blinking eyes and Matthew hurrying to the freezer to retrieve the bottle of champagne he’d previously secretly stashed in order to quickly chill. As we sat and talked about it, laughing at the sheer absurdity of this age old occurrence that is completely and utterly miraculous with each happening, she said to me, “Remember the praying mantis?”

And now she suffers from morning sickness, that is really also afternoon sickness and night sickness and when she does, my brother lies in bed next to her and massages her hands until she falls asleep.

We went to the coast last week and at night, when I lay in bed down the hall from them and I could not sleep, I thought of who that house harboured. It was no longer just us; there was the tiny thumb sized (thumbnail sized?) human they are bringing into the world too. And I thought about how something was fundamentally changing. I can’t fully describe it, I’ve yet to find the words, but now when someone asks me what is happening, I want to say, “Everything. Everything is happening.”

An open letter to my sister

Dear Corlia

It started with long winded emails that invariably described in unnecessarily loquacious detail the exceptional turn of a hair pin bend in a winding road in yet another far off place that I had gone to; another place to lay my hat in some vague attempt to find my home. You said, 'Write this stuff online.' So I did. And so, sometimes when I am somewhere between here and there, I write down small bits and pieces of my fragmented days; the funnier things, the things that don't tell too much about the long and lonely hours and the gaps in time and the large cold question mark that follows me to bed, sleeps with me like a lover, its cold bones pressing along my spine. I am the small spoon to my own self doubt.

You said, write it online. So I did. As if I were telling you the story. Just like all those emails I'd written you. But it's not quite the same. My computer is a battered piece of weathered goods and if it weren't for my withering detest for the carrying of stuff, I'd get my typewriter out of storage and work on that instead. There is also the small issue of being unable to source ribbon for the antique. The last time I wrote on it my prose was blind embossed into the page. I prefer letters, real ones, written on paper, sealed with wax. They are tangible. Handwritten letters, like typewritten prose, exist in a way these words on these screens do not. If it exists on paper, I treat it differently. I am a fastidious writer. But I don't consider this real writing, this internet thing. I leave spelling mistakes as is. Grammatical errors. Missing words stay lost, clumsy sentences continue to clunk along, tripping over their heavy feet. I'd prefer the paper mail and wax seals, but in truth I am not a particularly dedicated letter writer. I begin with the best of intentions, but after several courses of correspondence, I find my dedication flags, and the one week response rate slows to two then three then a sluggish four and soon the letter and the blank paper and the unaddressed envelopes and my very intent is buried under a pile of debris on my desk.

So it seems that no means of correspondence suits me quite completely, but we continue in whatever form of it we can lay our hands on. These are the breaks when you live across oceans from your family. On a Monday, I'll send you an email. You'll catch me on skype for four minutes three days later. Sometime before the weekend, I'd get a facebook message from you. I'll respond in a text message. So many words that don't exist. No typewritten letters, the x always a little low on the line, on ivory coloured linen paper. No wax seals or personalised stationary or calling cards.

In some ways though, these words that don't exist do have their benefits. The ability to instantly connect. The way that when I'm walking down the street in some dilapidated European city and see a foreign language magazine in a newsagent with a brooding australian actor looking painfully serious on the cover I can pull out my phone and send you a quick message and within a few minutes you'll be agreeing with me that the beast does indeed belong on the list of those whom get their dark shipped all the way in. And so it will be, momentarily at least, that I don't feel we are quite so far apart as we really are. And then there is the way that I can write a letter like this one, and put it up here, in the space where words don't really exist.

This is the way it is for us. Everyday I make a choice, and that choice leaves me with phones and wires and cables and screens and shitty wifi connection. And that's the way it is. Those are the breaks. But I wonder if one day I'll be able to write small notes, in quink, on thick linen folded cards, my initials embossed subtly in the corner and drop them through your front door when I am passing through the neighbourhood and find you're not home. Or send you handwritten invitations to dinner, or thank you cards. I wonder if we'd live close enough that these words that don't exist ceased to be, and instead it would be my looped handwriting in a day planner and a glass of wine and something tangible, and I'd say, "Let me tell you about this thing I saw today...."

And I don't know if that's how it will ever be... But I hope so.

xx

A heart two sizes too small

Whatever the New Year equivalent of the Grinch is, I fear that is who I find myself in the likeness of this new year. I must confess that the general joviality a fresh set of calendar pages has brought to most has passed me by and I feel tattered, weathered and downtrodden, as if still languishing in the last of the so called ‘Nasties.’ There seems to be a certain hubbub in the general population, the shedding of a decade’s worth of misery in lieu of embracing an air of impending prosperity. I read it put best today, in an article reporting the significant increase in like for like winter sales figures for London this year verse last year, saying that after nearly two years of recession Londoners were determined to enjoy themselves at the sales; they called it ‘frugality fatigue.’ It does seem that way, that the general populace has en masse decided the recession is over, that bankers shall stop jumping out of windows, bonuses shall return, champagne shall flow through the city streets, there will be riches, bespoke suits, Louboutins and cocaine for all! And it seems to be regardless of the fact that no one is shopping with wads of cash. No, it’s all on credit, the very thing that got us into this mess in the first place. Utter, depressing delusion. Just because we want something, does not mean it will simply BE. If that were the case, I would be typing this with a pair of Acne Atacoma wedges on my feet. And it does not stop there. How apt that this is the week the world’s tallest (and possibly most pointless) skyscraper opens? The Burj Dubai is a 206 floor hotel/apartment/office/parking/shopping space. Of that, 160 floors are habitable. It’s 828 metres high and its interior covers just over 3.5 MILLION square feet. Because that’s what Dubai needs. More empty spaces it can’t fill. It’s a state $100 000 000 000 in debt.That’s one hundred billion US dollars. BILLION. As of October 2009, 1 in 4 homes was vacant due to oversupply. Similar figures applied to offices. That’s before the Burj Dubia spat its 3.5 million square feet into the mix. Obviously I’m fully aware that the initial conception of the Burj happened long before this economic hiccup we are experiencing came to fruition. Back when the Burj began construction, Lehman’s had a gainfully employed workforce and people trusted Bernard Maddoff with their money. Remember all that time ago?

Needless to say (....don’t you wish it had been?) I am late to the party of New Year cheer. It’s going around like a bad head cold and I do hope I am not immune to it. Being a Grinch is boring and does not make for pleasant dinner conversation. And so, as to not be the bearer of altogether bad tidings, I can say that it has not been all doom and gloom these first few days of the year. Shelley received a beautiful white truffle from Paul for Christmas and I was lucky (/sneaky) enough to be with her the night it was eaten, shaved in gorgeous pungent slivers over silky pasta. Walking up Regent Street, I was pulled by the hand up onto a platform to pose for a photo with one of the Hamley’s pirates, as my 30 odd strands of pearls apparently made me look a bit like ‘a very stylish treasure chest’. That’s a direct quote from the main pirate, who took his personal camera out of his inside pocket, handed it over to Pirate #2 and demand I have my photo taken with him. Followed almost directly by a small kerfuffle when some Japanese tourists who had been witness to the scene then thought I was famous. I giggled all the way to Liberty, where Magpie and I drank several cups of tea, admired other customer’s expensive handbags and even more expensive plastic surgery. This evening, Robin and I went to see La Boheme (my absolute favourite opera) at The Royal Opera House. And right now, its snowing.

Paris vs Berlin

It’s a question I’ve had over and over in the last few months, “So, which did you prefer? Paris or Berlin?"

It’s on odd thing, the way those two seem to be, to most, the ultimate in atmospheric city competition and simply cannot co-exist in the intrepid wanderer’s heart. I find it particularly curious as when I returned from Shanghai, no one declared, “Shanghai or Hong Kong? You must choose!” Similarly, there has never been any need for me state a preference between Christchurch and Sydney or Champagne and Franschoek, Barcelona or Brooklyn. But having lived in both Paris and Berlin, it appears that I am meant to find myself drawn more toward one than the other.

One thing I have heard numerous times, without any prompting, “Berlin is so you! More so than Paris!” As if I had preceded this statement with some confession of how I was never really all that comfortable buying baguettes twice a day and eating figs for breakfast every morning. For the record, no such thing is true. The honest truth is that I love Paris. I loved it then, I love it now. I miss it. I often read apartment listings longingly, wiishing the pound to gain in strength against the now almighty euro and bid my return to My Beautiful Paris. But the statement, the casual brush off of “Berlin is so you, Paris isn’t” is such a sideswipe it has often left me reeling. How am I not Paris? Are my shoes not designer enough? A quick glance at my shelves proves otherwise, spotted: Gucci, Versace, McQueen, Louboutin, Gina, Giles Deacon, Pucci, etc. No, i think I own sufficient snobbish footwear to qualify to Paris. What is it then? Am I not elegant streets and window boxes and city beaches in July? Am I not sidewalk cafes and wine in the afternoon and hot, buttery garlicky escargots and silk scarves and Laduree and coral lipstick in the cracks of the mouths of the old women in their moth eaten furs on the threadbare carpets of the beautifully dilapidated tea salons, eating nicoise salads, feeding the hard boiled eggs to their dogs? How am I not Paris, as much as I am a bit of everywhere that that I have ever been?

I don’t feel that I’ve gone anywhere and not taken something from it. It’s true I may not be Paris through and through, because I am also a little bit cold Methode Cap Classique in Robertson’s thundering rain, Shark Kites in Shanghai’s night sky, Milk Dumplings in Ningbo’s private dining halls, the thrill of cyclone in Coney Island and eating pizza at 5am in New York’s Lower East Side and Tuscany’s tiny passage ways and kid sized cars. I’m at least a fraction watermelon cocktails and blown out tyres under brutal Spanish sun and a tiny bit of those little pewter coloured pottery bowls bought on the side of the road in Swaziland, and just a hint of the Mozambique sunrise and a whiff of the dhows and dawas in Mombassa. A little bit British, a good handful of African red earth and the smell of gum trees and petrol and spice and hair cream and Zam-Buk.

How am I not one place as much as anywhere I have been?

And how am I so Berlin? How am I Berlin more so than anywhere else?

Berlin is a confused city. It bears its scars. It is, in my opinion, the only major western city that would do something like leave the bombed out spire of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church as is and make no attempt to mask it, rather to preserve it as a testament to loss. Berlin makes no qualms of its scars, its past. They are plain enough to see. As if finding shame in its past would equate a dismissal of its self, its bones. Berlin has long lived under a fragmented rule. It has been pulled apart by separate governing states. It has been burned. It has been bombed. It has been literally divided in thought and process and physicality. And even now, its identity is being forged. Even now, all these years after the war and the wall. Berlin is still learning how to be. It’s no wonder it is such a haven for the worlds poets, punks and general lost souls. At least in Berlin, you are always almost in sync with a city struggling to find its way, stumbling over its own feet, just as you are.

So maybe, in this way, I am Berlin. Fragmented. Stateless. Divided.