Fire starters at Papier Mache Towers

My son is home, hurrah! And today he suggested a picnic on Hampstead Heath. We lay about, larked about, lazed about in the breezy sun then popped into the playground before heading home.

In the little playground outside our block, the little boy from the 4th floor tells me a group of teenagers started a fire on the ground floor inside but he called to his mother whose emphatic tones made them scarper. I looked up and his mother was on the phone to somebody. The police? I wondered.

The two boys with little J were telling me there were five of them, two of them girls, up there smoking cigarettes before they went on the rampage for telephone directories left outside people's doorways which they could set alight.

Once in the block neither myself nor my son could resist climbing up to have a look. It was still smouldering next to the lifts so I poured what little was left of my water onto it. I then went up to the fourth floor to ask the mum if she'd called the police. She hadn't. I thought we should. Just so it could be logged, you know, should it happen again.

The police ask me if it's worth calling a fire engine and I say no, it's smouldering but it should be ok. Camberwell wasn't long ago though was it? Six people died in that Papier Mache Tower inferno. Started by a fag butt if I read it right.

WOOO WOOO WOOO goes the big red fire engine for our tiny smouldering pile. I suppress a laugh because it's not funny. The five teenagers are standing across the road watching it all unfold. I've seen them outside the block a few times. They're not 'ours' which is why they play here. Crime; crime's increasing here at Papier Mache Towers, it's getting worse, says the mum on the fourth floor.

The firemen said the kids might see their presence as some kind of game to be played and do it again. I'm hoping the kids will see fire as a game best played outside, if played at all.