New neighbours?

A man is shouting. I can't catch what he's saying other than "fuck" something ,and "fucking" something else. His voice is really strained. There's another voice screeching, soprano to his alto but it's him I'm hearing most of all.

A couple of times as I've been posting this morning my walls have shaken. Banging is coming from the next door studio. My old neighbour moved out over half term, left me a note (oh why not your number too lovely girl?) The voices sound further away than that though.

On Saturday some people moved in to a two bed a few floors down. Is it them? Or is it coming from next door?

If this is how it's going to be I'm glad I'm moving. As I sit here redundant though, not knowing quite what to do so opting for the safe option of doing fuck all, I mustn't let my mind run away with me. My future hasn't happened yet, it's best I don't think about it.

Raol Moat

Raol Moat asked for help, didn't get it, so shot three people then shot himself.
I asked for help, didn't get it, so sent a postcard....

P = Police

We're sat on the curb side with our cans, our boys playing somewhere on the street when a police man walks past with a blue blowup bass guitar.
"Cor I like your instrument!" shouts C's mum.
He turns and smiles at us and we laugh.
We sit making bawdy jokes, "fishing for talent" with her son's balloon. It doesn't tap anyone, never mind anyone nice. I haven't had such a good laugh in ages!

Friends, friends from my past,who I haven't seen for ages, stop by and chat, we say we'll hook up soon. I hope so, they're great people.

Later two guys stop and talk to us. They saw little C's customised Man Like Me t-shirt, they came from Brighton to listen to the band play. They were gutted too. They sit with us and shove fresh strawberries into a quarter vodka bottle.

Our sons meanwhile have found two badmington rackets and are playing with bottle tops that they find on the street.

The policeman comes back. He's very sweet, asks us if we mind filling out a community research form.

"Do you know Clout?" I say. C's mum laughs.
"Yes," he says.
"Is he your boss?"
"Yes."
"I interviewed him last year, nice man isn't he?"
"Yeah," he smiles. He's got dimples, he looks quite cheeky. C's mum's taken with him that's for sure!
"You interviewed him? What for?" she says.
"Part of a community research thing. He was really helpful. Has he got you doing this now? Going into the community, find out what we want from the force?"
"Yes,"
"Cool! Say thanks from me!"
We all chat some more until his "partner" comes along. He's not got such a friendly face and our copper gets up.

The guys we're with play with our boys as me and C's mum make a dash for the loo. "You can keep them!" she says laughing, then "what are we like, leaving them with people we don't even know!"

By the time we come back, my son's renamed them Uncle Mark and Uncle Vernon! Where he got those names I do not know!

We troop to the Golden Arches, because it's getting late and we need to feed our children.

They have a water fight with C's new pistol and a customer gets annoyed (no suprise there but at least the boys listened to him when asked to stop...)

My son had somehow got hold of the coppers blue blowup bass guitar.

He played it all the way home!

It took me half an hour to wake him on Monday morning. What a weekend though, what a weekend!

Suicide at the Towers

How I loathe to write this post but I feel I have to.

I was awoken this morning at 8.15. "Who is it?" I said as I walked towards the door.
"The police."
What now? I thought.
"There's been a serious incident," said the copper. "We need to know if you saw or heard anything in the early hours of this morning."
"No I didn't. Has there been a death?"
"Yes."

A man with grey hair, said to be in his 50's jumped from the 8th floor of Papier Mache Towers. I say jumped, you can't push someone off that balcony and had he been thrown, someone on that floor would have heard something.

I walked around in circles for a bit, unable to find Nico Teen sitting on the table infront of me. Found it, shaky hands rolling. Made a cup of tea.

I went outside. My neighbours were there. We looked over the balcony. A swarm of police officers, two cop cars, one police van, an ambulance and a white tent with the letters OK on it. OK? A dead man beneath it? My eyes focussed QK. QK written on three panels.

Apparantly there was a jacket with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the pockets, which is how they knew the 8th floor was his platform.

"My nerves are shot to pieces," said my neighbour, she who had the dead man living above her for two weeks before he was found.

None of us know if he was a resident. We all keep ourselves to ourselves so even for the old timers it can take some time to identify anyone new. Perhaps he came from outside and figured it was an ideal place to leap away from his problems.

On a beautiful morning such as today, he would have seen the city to his right and Hampstead Heath to his left. Blue sky and green, green, green. He leapt between 6.45 and 7am onto cold, hard, concrete. A son came home and saw nothing, his dad went out to walk the dogs.

As soon as we were allowed to leave the block, I grabbed my swim stuff and headed straight to the pond meadows.

I didn't want to come home but when I did, flowers had been laid. My neighbour was sitting outside her flat. "I haven't moved all day." The police finally left at 3.30 she said. She saw the body. Even under covers, rigamortis had set in and she could see the outline of the man's bent arm and leg, the position he landed in.

It's shaken up the entire block. I don't know what energy is around here at the moment. So many deaths recently. I didn't tell you our resident alchy got run over a week ago. A couple of years ago a mum's kids got taken into care after she hung one of them over the balcony. Would she have let him go if the caretaker back then hadn't seen the incident and gone up to talk to her?

I'm labelling it under Crime because taking your life is the most tragic crime of all. Putting it under housing too. I'm glad my son wasn't here. How do you justify any of this to a child?

Rest in Peace Mr Man Who Could Take No More. I'm sorry you had no-one to talk to, no-one to stop you.

I so wish Pearl Jam didn't follow this post but I have to honour Mr Man's life and do so by mentioning him.

I might get the flat on my floor....

Bid this morning on the flat on my floor. Fat chance I'll get it usually, but... but...
The window on the front door is still cracked from when the police bust down the door a few months ago. The lock is still a little scew-if.

If I didn't live here, I wouldn't take it. No bloody way! Who broke it? Someone in the block? Who lives in the block? How bad is crime incidences? How safe is it?

As it was, when I was moved here and saw the burnt out shell of a car in the forecourt, I wanted to run a mile but the council said it would be to a hostel and I knew the Bishop wouldn't let me squat in his flat forever so the first night I locked myself in while a dozen riot police did a drugs bust upstairs. Nice welcome.

How many will turn it down I wonder?

(That two bed is £96 a week. £250 a week for this one bed. Not rocket science the demand for these places)

Sad, sad stuff

I read a newspaper article last week about a young 21 year old girl who killed herself after being rejected for 200 jobs (Mirror: 23/4/2010)

She "took a drug overdose a day after receiving yet another "No" letter following an interview". She left a note for her parents and boyfriend saying: "I don't want to be me anymore. Please don't be sad. I want everybody in my life to be HAPPY".

Oh Vicky I am sad. She was applying for a dozen jobs a week her mother said, including shop work, waitressing, stacking shelves and becoming a dinner lady, all jobs that I did when I was younger.

She has gone now. Not gone to Europe to seek her chances and send postcards home. Not flown to Asia or anywhere else. She has gone, gone for good.

My thoughts go out to her family and friends.

My label goes to "work" and "elections" because I can't articulate what needs to be articulated.

Rest in peace Vicky Harrison.

Rest in peace 16 year old Agnes Sina-Inakoju who was shot in the neck two weeks ago while in a take away shop in East London. My thoughts go out to your family and friends too.

A turd in the lift

Yesterday the big lift was working (for once) but not a soul would go in it because sitting there, right in the centre, was a large poo.

"Is it a dog's?" I queried to others waiting for the little lift.

"I don't know," was the reply.

Being a curious kind of girl, I peered into the lift for a closer inspection.

A dark brown, nutty log. Not a dog's poo. A human one.

I have to raise my son here. It one thing asking people to clean up after their dogs but you do not expect people to defecate in small enclosed spaces that are not a toilet. We are not in China. (I have been, I can say things like that) I'm glad my boy wasn't with me at the time, he'd have found it funny.

The stool was no longer in the lift just now when I got back from the shops, but the lift still stinks. Then again, the lift always flipping stinks, of urine mostly.

Given that I live in Papier Mache Towers, I shall, from now on, call the lifts The Toilet. I don't talk about The Toilet much now my bike's got a shed and I don't have to carry it down the stairs, but should I allude to it, like I did this morning when I told of my social worker getting into the lift, it'll now be a sentence like "She got into The Toilet and left."

I'm labelling it under 'crime', because it is one.

It's just an illusion ooh ooh aah aah!

Yesterday afternoon I returned home from Camden with a few tokens and a bunch of CNJ copies. Outside the block there were maybe a dozen young boys, who disbanded when they saw me. By the front door there were four girls, they too disappeared as I locked Zat to the railings for I was going out in an hour or so.

Oh for fucks sake, they've messed with the lock, was my first thought as I approached the door. The slot where you put in the key was totally skewed, I could not get my key into it. The door opened. Well at least they've totally broken it and I can get back in later, was my second thought.

I went upstairs, had a cup of tea, a couple of slices of toast, a few cigarettes and then it was time to go and meet Steve. We were going to watch a play at the Hampstead Theatre; Darker Shores, a Christmas ghost story set in 1875. Strange goings on at The Sea House in the desolate Sussex coast. (I did think, incase you are wondering, 'sod the money' for twas pricey, but the girls had really baled me out on Friday night, it was another gift from them.)

I went back downstairs. The front door was shut, couldn't be pulled open. It wasn't broken after all.

I go outside. The lock was still damaged. I pointlessly tried the key, no, no chance. Fuck. And it's Saturday. Aaargh, I posted that I did not need a new problem.

In the winter darkness I see three guys. "Do you live here?" I asked. Yes, no, visiting a friend. "The lock's bust, will you be in later tonight so I can buzz you to get in?"

"There are side entrances," one explains. "We can leave it on the latch for you."

The gate accessing the side entrance - which leads to the first floor - is locked. I'd have to climb over it.

"I've got my bike, I don't want to leave it out here all night."

"You could lock it out here, get into the building, then come out from the inside and get it," suggests the boy.

"Oh thank you for your brains. Yes I'll do that."

What a fucking palaver. "I don't blame them, I know they're bored out of their minds, but geez, can't they think of something that isn't going to bugger up everybody else's evening????"

As I cycle to Swiss Cottage I tell myself not to worry. There's nothing I can do about it, I can only hope the boys do leave the side entrances on the latch.

The play, ladies and gents, girls and boys, was brilliant! Third row stalls, we were practically on the stage, which was swirling with mist, eerie, very eerie...

Professor Gabriel Stokes, a scientific historian, enlists the help of an American spiritualist, Tom Beauregard, to get to the bottom of the strange supernatural goings on at The Sea House. It was funny ("Why don't the working classes see ghosts?" asks Stokes. "Because they don't have time!"), the suspense was gripping, I 'jumped' a couple of times.

The illusions were just fantastic. From the apple, which is 'real', disappearing. The table rising from the floor and shaking, quivering along the stage, an empty chalk board suddenly having the names upon it of those who have died. The real and the imagined clashing all the time.

The bed though. As water showered under the frame, a body just appeared in the thin mattress, taking form under the dry sheets until a man sat up and got out, soaking wet. How did that happen?

At the end, the Professor, the Spiritualist, the housekeeper and the maid took their bows to rapturous applause.

"Where's the guy Steve? Is that part of it as well? Did we imagine that? Did that happen?"

Oooooh! We went and had a beer afterwards!

Home, oh the palaver awaits. I'll just check the door so I can get pissed off and that energy will help me over the railings to the side entrance which hopefully, will be on the latch.

Eh? There was nothing wrong with the lock. There it was, untouched, untampered with, glistening under the sky. In the still, still midnight, not a soul who could tell me I didn't imagine it earlier.

The key went in, turned and out of the cold and into the building, walked me with Zat, just like that! (Tommy Cooper)

Was it just an illusion ooh ooh ooh ooh aaaah aaaaah? Illusion... (Imagination)

Freaky!

What is it with some women?

"How did you get that scar on your eye?" asked the young assistant at the hairdressers last night. Supermario had invited me in for a coffee and I'd graciously accepted.

"Oh a girl lamped me on the 24 bus a month or so ago. I was rather hoping it wouldn't scar but it just seems to get redder."

I tell her what happened (TFL makes a killing here on the blog) then continue to chat as I peruse a copy of The Sun.

"Women jailed for attack on stranger" it tells me.

They beat, kicked and stamped on a man going about his own business in a "savage street attack".

Now I carry assumptions around with me like many other people. One of these is that attacks by gangs on civilians are usually carried out by teenagers. They may involve girls, but they are 'young'. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just telling you my assumption.

These women were 21, 29, 31, 32 AND 42 years old.

42?? 21, 29, 31, 32?? 42??????? Kicking and stamping on a guy's head???

WHAT is going on girls??? Aren't we supposed to be standing tall as the stronger sex?!

That, before you ask, is from a 'joke' I heard many years ago:

Why are women stronger than men?
Because they carry ladders in their tights! Wah wah wah

Come on come on come on people, isn't there a better way we can vent our fury than lashing out at someone else? And yes boys, I'm talking to you too. Confucius says.. Confucius says lots of things.

A woman stabbed a man in the block last night. There were three men and her up there so says early whispers. Self defence?

I don't know anything anymore.

Dawn raids

"What's that noise mummy," said my son in the very early hours of this morning. "I'm scared."
"Eh, oh, nothing sweetie, just elephants."
"Elephants?"
"Eh? Elephants? Yes, elephants, no, not elephants, I'm dreaming, but it is nothing, that noise is just the lift maybe, go back to sleep. Everything is ok."

Sometime later we are having breakfast. We hear a heavy thud and the block vibrates. Another and again it vibrates. Three or four times, thud vibrate, thud vibrate...

"What's that mummy?"
"Let me just go outside."
"No mummy no!"
"It's ok, it's ok," and I step out in my totally oversized Virgin Atlantic pyjamas (swiped it off the plane when I was on a work junket years ago)

Two police cars, a police van and an ambulance are in the forecourt.

"What is it mummy?"
"Oh just the police."

My son leans over the balcony. "Why are they here?"
"I don't know, come on, come and finish your breakfast."

It turns out the "elephants" were three men and a woman banging on a door at 4 am this morning. Gleaned that info from a child in the lift. There was blood outside the lift, he said. Police were talking to everybody.

I bump into Mr Gray on my return from the school run. He doesn't know, it's still all very unclear but there was a stabbing and if it's the person he thinks it is then he's "really surprised."

"A man or a woman?" I ask. "Who did the stabbing?"

"A woman," he replies.

"What is it about women at the moment?" I say and tell him what I'm about to post to you, but of course, if you're reading in sequence, you have just read it.

The police won't do anything today

Billie called. No point going to the police today she said as the detective in charge of her case is away for two weeks.

She wasn't happy for the officer she'd spoken to on the phone had told her that the police would just give her ex a warning because it wasn't 'domestic issue'

"Hacking into my emails isn't a domestic issue?" Billie doesn't understand. Can't say I do.

She doesn't trust this detective either: "When I first went to report my ex the detective took care of me, drove me home, said 'any worries you call me'. Then they changed it, put him on another case. This one's up himself."

She said she'd file the report when that detective was back, there was no point going before then.

"My daughter's ill and she's in school. What a crap life, life is crap and the hardest thing is in these emails he tells me he loves me and that is crap."

It's chilling, your ex abuser finding your old email and tapping into it to send emails to your new psuedonym.

Years ago I asked the Foca to stop telling our son he loved me. Have to say though, when I asked him not to appear in my inbox when we broke up, he didn't. Up until recently when he forwarded a picture a professional had taken of our son he has by and large let me be. I never needed to take a restraining order out on him though nor did he ever put me in hospital so we're talking about two entirely different men here.

If Billie's ex cared anything for her, like he claims to, he would let her be. She shouldn't have to involve the police. The police will have to listen to her.

(I asked Billie if I could blog our conversation. "Well, I don't know. OK". She doesn't read this blog but thank you, you fine fine mamma)

"The police won't do nothing"

I'd arranged to meet Billie at 1 o'clock in Camden today following doc and support worker but she rings and says she can't make it, she's on her way back from college and feels overwhelmed with all the work she has to do.

"I'm in the cafe opposite the Crowndale," I say to her. "Swing by on your way home, five minutes, for a hug if you need one, it would be good to see you."

She turns up about half an hour later and tells me her ex has hacked into her old email address and is sending her messages from that to the new fake name one she set up. She doesn't know how he's got that email. She tells me she's scared. "I don't know what to do. The police won't to do nothing."

"Tell the police," I tell her. "Go and log it with them so at least they know."

Hers is a big story but the bones of it is that the police put a restraining order on her ex a few years ago and physically he hasn't harrassed her. But we all know there are other ways to abuse somebody.

She's adamant she won't go to the police: "They'll bring him in, write their notes, let him go again." Or "They won't even agree to see me, they'll say there's nothing they can do."

She told me she called him from a phonebox to ask him to stop sending her emails "but he can hear the pain in my voice. It's horrible, be won't stop."

There is something they can do, there has to be. I tell her to go and tell them I told her to (so that with any luck they'll pick up her own reluctance to take herself there), and to say what she's just told me. I then tell her that I'll go with her. I'm no social worker or anything but I'll be there as her friend.

Billie and I did the "safeguarding children" project together. It's ironic she does not trust any of the safeguarding services open to her. I tell her that if I have to, I'll tell them I interviewed the Chief Superintendant, that he knows me, clout them with that (blimey, the blagging you have to do as a stigmum though thanks to a bit of lip gloss, not even the Chief guessed I was one).

She wiped the tears from her eyes and said she has to call them first to say she is coming and they might say no.

"Don't take no for an answer," I say. "I'm baking my cake tonight, I'll be free to come with you tomorrow morning."

Fingers crossed for her hey?

(Billie agreed to let me post about her when we were doing the safeguarding work but that's not to say I will rat a tat tat, rat a tat tat about her life. Just so you know.)

Snow White and the Seven.....

Quite a surprise as I come out of the lift to take my son to school. Seven police officers are coming out of two vans and coming up to the door.

"You'll have to tell me what it's about," I say to the Good Caretaker as I let them in.

"We don't know yet," says a police officer.

Likely story, I think to myself.

They are gone when I return. "Don't worry, they weren't for you," says the Good Caretaker with laughter in his eyes.

"Who for then? Why were they here?"

"Oh a man upstairs, I don't know why."

"Seven policemen for one person?"

"Well you never know these days, they might have dogs.." and he carries on chatting abit about the assault on officers in the past.

"They weren't wearing riot gear," I say (for here at Papier Mache Towers, that is not an uncommon occurence)

"No, it was probably nothing," says Good Caretaker and I leap fairy like into the lift (ok that bit's not true, just taking abit of creative licence...)

The Good Caretaker was right to put me at ease however as I did get swept away by a fantasy during this morning run.

I imagined I would come home and see my door bashed down then charged with domestic disorder. I rather hoped they would stay and tidy up, then thought of Snow White in the little cottage she found. She had help, but no, the Dwarves didn't help her initially. It was birds and squirrels and deer, not pigs ho ho ho!

TFL make a killing from the carnival

I blame Transport For London and my own stupid fecking principles for the gash I have on my cheek following an assault on the 24 bus.

On Friday I put £10 on my pay as you go Oyster card. This will generally last me a long time for as you know, I'm a cyclist.

On Sunday I joined Kelly and her Red Stripe crew at the Notting Hill carnival. I took the tube but when I got to Westbourne Park, owing to the sheer number of people, there was nowhere to swipe my oyster which meant the whole single fare would be deducted (£4) I asked an attendant where I could swipe it and he assured me that it didn't matter and I would not be charged the full fare.

"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Yes," he responded.
I believed him.

(The usual oyster fare is just over £2)

Later, after much mirth and merriment, it was time to go home. Jumped on the tube then in Camden hopped on the bus, swiped my card and sat down.

The driver comes up to me and tells me there's no money on my oyster. I tell him that can't be true. I swipe it again, see there are insufficient funds say I don't understand this and sit back down asking him to take me home anyway (oh thou invisible spirit of red stripe - Othello)

So yes, here the story gets murkier as I say I'm not moving, Transport for London has lied to me, Transport for London can cover the cost. Another passenger offers to pay my fare. The driver won't accept it but I also tell her to hold on to her cash. There's a girl at the back telling me to "get off the fucking bus". I tell her that I won't because this morning my oyster had lots of money on it, enough to get me home.

The bus isn't moving. Eventually, the girl at the back, sitting with her boyfriend, moves to get off the bus. Before doing so she comes right up to me, her nose millimetres from mine and starts threatening me. I don't know what she's saying because I am saying "get out of my face, get out of my face, get out of my fucking face."

Eventually I push her away and she swoops down on me. My own hands are no match for hers as I'm seated and she's standing over me so I defend myself with the only thing at my disposal. My feet. She lunges, my legs push her off, she lunges again, my boots meet her chest. It's effective, her boyfriend grabs her away, but the damage has been done, my cheek is all wet. I wipe it and my blood wears me like a glove.

I decide to call the police. I'd had my run in with them after I'd separated from Kelly to go to the loo and they'd cordonned off all the roads back to her. "Turn right then right again," would say one set of police, which I did only to be met by another set saying the same thing, on and on (so yes, I actually spent a few hours of the festival on my own) Now though, I wanted them to keep me safe.

The police come on to the bus and on discovering I've been at the carnival, ask how much I've had to drink. "Oh is this what it's going to be about?" I ask, quite crestfallen. Then I hear someone say, the driver I think, that I've been "aggressive". I want to laugh but my cheek feels tight. I tell the police I won't report the assault because the girl has fled. They tell me to "get off the bus."

"I called you you know, not the driver, not another passenger, me but I will get off the bus because you won't help me so there's no point." Kelly texts asking if I'm home and I call her and cry. I blub as I walk the two miles home.

Why did I call the police? Because I wanted the driver to know, I wanted the people I'd held up to know, that I didn't feel that what I was doing was wrong. Admittedly, had I not been drunk and tired, I'd have got off the bus spitting my own personal nails at Transport For London, wouldn't have sat on it defiant.

How much did I drink? It doesn't matter. The cut on my cheek was still bleeding yesterday morning. My son came home asking how I did it. "I fell," I told him. My ex laughed: "Did you keel over?!" I shook my head. "It's a long story."

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.

Street Wardens

As we walked back from the hairdresser's last night where my boy had his barnet snipped, there were police up walking around on the second floor. As I walked into the building, they walked out and being the curious kind of girl I am, I asked them why they'd come.

The two policemen walked away but the street wardens stayed and told me they couldn't say.
"Did you come about the knife incident on the 10 year old girl last week?" I asked.
"We've heard nothing about that," they answered.
"Someone put a knife to a girl's throat in that playground there. She gave a statement but because her little friend couldn't, the police said they can't do anything."
"Right, well we can look into it for you."
"Yes, please do. I'll talk to the mum, see if she'll talk to you, but quite honestly, what needed to happen for it not to be ignored?"

They offered to walk us up to our flat (as both lifts were out) and although I didn't feel a need they insisted. I'm quite glad we passed no-one on the way up but they now know where I live and said they'd post a leaflet through my door today with their details.

I saw Peggy this morning who said they promised to do that weeks ago around all the flats. I sometimes think I've got NAIVE stamped on my forehead. I really do know better, or at least I really ought to. We'll see.