Bad company

My niece is following my footsteps and decided to move to England. She is going to live and work in Brighton for nine months. The good news is that she first stopped by my flat for a few days before her move south.
Sadly, I am not very good company at the moment because I am skint and have a bad cold. So she is left to her own devise. However, she is an independent young lady so she manages.

It turned out that she never read Jane Austen so we have spent the evenings catching up on my Austen DVD collection. I love my dear Jane!

My niece posted a picture on the mushrooms growing in my shower on her Facebook page and her Swedish friends are shocked. Life here in the ghetto is different from the high living standard in Sweden...

On Saturday night there was some commotion in the staircases at 11pm and I went out to have a look. Seriously, one day I will fall victim for the “curiosity killed the cat” wisdom. On the stairs I found six teenagers loitering about. A young couple were making out and the rest were just making noise. They all stood tall as I arrived and looked like small innocent angels, ‘we haven’t done anything’ they explained. A wee boy of ten or so said he was waiting for his mum. I told them to keep it down because some people are sleeping. It did actually get quieter after that.

The next morning I had to sweep the stairs from chicken bones and empty take away boxes. I do suspect the kids but maybe I am wrong.

Apparently I live within the area where they will have a trial period of dispersal zone for youngsters; only two can stand together without being dispersed. Should I contact the police about the kids? Is it really right? Where should they go?

Yes, I do get fed up by the noise, the litter and the fact that they nick my flowers and destroy the curve appeal. If I call the police to disperse them then they will just end up on someone else’s doorstep.
Maybe I should interact with them in a more positive way, get down with them so to speak, “give me five, man”.

Ignorance

This morning I went down to Brixton town centre where the metropolitan police had parked a van on Windrush Square. The van showed images from CCTV footage during the riots and asked the public, “Do you know this person?”
I walked up to the van to have a look, curious as I am and saw that some of the images were on children!
I think it is wrong to publish images of people (suspects) before they have been proven guilty of any crime and especially so when it involves children.
I asked the officer by the van what they are doing and he said they are trying to identify looters. I then said, “But you show images of children”.
He then responded that they are old enough to do the crime!
I then said that they are not proven guilty yet and their crime is poverty.
Then the police man said that he is poor too but he don't steal!

I get so tired sometimes. If you work as a police man you earn more than minimum pay and therefore you are not poor. However, more than 50% of the children in Lambeth live in poverty. The poverty I talk about here are children who have to go to school hungry because their parents can’t afford breakfast, children living in poor housing with mould on their bedroom walls and with various infestations and overcrowded situations putting their health at risk.

This ignorant police man actually compared his own situation with real poverty.

He then asked me if my windows were smashed during the riots and when I said no he insinuated that I then have no right to say anything because it didn’t affect me.
I nearly told him that the riots would never have happened if it wasn’t for the police murdering Mark Duggan!
But I thought I better hold my tongue or I get myself arrested! You can’t be too sure nowadays when it comes to the metropolitan police force. Besides, talking to him was like talking to an ignorant football hooligan or skinhead – nobody was home, the light was not on.

Surely the looting by the bankers cost us all far more than the riots in August.

Why don’t they show images of the greedy bankers as well?

Why don’t they spend their time finding out how Sean Rigg could die whilst in police custody at Brixton Police Station?

That this sorting the wheat from the chaff can go on without any protests or opposition is cheer ignorance to me. It is scary to have a police force that treats people different depending on their wealth. Where is the justice in that?

Weekend peace

On Sunday I had just settled down for a nice breakfast in my PJs when there was a knock on my door. I open and there was a young police officer asking if I had heard any noise last night. My next door neighbour had had her door kicked in sometime during the Saturday afternoon or evening.
There was a small congregation of worried neighbours out on the landing, they too in their PJs. I joined in and was told that many neighbours had been burgled. A worrying thought.

In this case they had only managed to steal the landline! Surely the black market for stolen landlines must be limited these days when most people only have a mobile, or? Someone suggested it must have been a drug addict or something.

I don’t care who it was, it makes me feel insecure. I can’t even afford a home insurance and neither can my neighbours. I try to save up for a new pair of glasses since I’m blind as a bat with my old ones and glasses has to come before an insurance.

It’s all because the security system does not work, people can just kick on the door’s security system and let themselves in!

I called the landlord and told them there is no security here. She said she will talk to the maintenance guy about it but I’m pretty sure nothing will come out of it because they need to replace the entire system to one that you can’t kick open.

What to do next? Buy a gun? Create a neighbourhood watch? Hope and pray it will not happen to me? What?  

All suggestions kindly accepted...

The big clean up

After being home for days resting my bad knee and feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t go to the Nottinghill Carnival, I decided it was time for me to get out of the house. So on carnival Sunday I went to cinema and saw One Day, which was such a co-dependent rubbish.
As I came out from the cinema I walked pass a group of people that were smeared in chocolate and obviously just came back from Nottinghill after playing the mas with Pure Lime, the band I used to play with.
I was gutted so I called my sponsor, she said she will come and visit me. On the way home I noticed that the front garden was filthy with rubbish and I decided to clean it up. I’m not too keen on my sponsor to see the filth I live in.
That is how I ended up spending carnival Monday sweeping the street armed with a broom, refuse bags and garden gloves.
As I worked hard in the sun, the drug dealer from across the street passed me and tried to pretend he didn’t stare at me. I keep on bumping into him across Brixton but only when I do something weird.
I collected three bags of rubbish from the front garden and three bags from the back garden. I also cleaned the staircases up to my door. I don’t know if my cleaning makes me a mad woman or a genius? I surely hope it’s not yet another cross-addiction of mine! Gulp, is it?

Now, a slight change of topic. I always said I love Brighton because of all the seagulls there, which reminds me of Stockholm. (Stockholm is built on many islands and is surrounded by water and therefore has lots of seagulls.)
However, recently some seagulls seem to have moved into Brixton and settled down on my street. I hope it’s not all the filth that attracted them. I now realised that I hate the buggers because they have a nasty tendency to scream at 4am! Now I have to get myself a shotgun and sort the bastards out!
Maybe I can ask my drug dealing neighbour across the street?

A Brixtonian tree

There are strange trees in Brixton.
Outside the police station there is a large tree that looks like any other tree at first glance.

But as you get closer to the tree, you can see that the trunk is full with lanterns, notes and pictures in memory of Sean Rigg who died in police custody at Brixton station.

 

 

We should not have to have trees like this in Brixton!
However, I suspect we will continue to have them as long as the racist Metropolitan Police force is allowed to kill our young men without any legal actions against the killers.

• Video: Sean Rigg

Door problems

I have the bad luck to live on top of the main entrance of my block of flats. Sometimes it can be good thing because I get to hear a lot of gossip. People tend to forget how well sound carries when you are standing next to a wall. However, most of the time it’s a menace!

First of all, there is a door phone that with a metallic voice shouts out which flat number any visitors pressed for Queen and country to hear. I had a friend that used to say it was unsafe. I think he might have been slightly paranoid though. The mechanic call outs are okay during the day but not at 4am when I am firmly at sleep or rather tries to be at sleep!

Secondly, there are the youngsters that can’t bother to announce their arrival so they simply kick the door phone and let themselves into the building and help themselves to one of the bikes in the entrance hall. So much for security.
The other day I heard a cunning neighbour trying to scare the youngsters from stealing bikes from our house with a story of a crazy man living in the house that sometimes have a go at people with a huge knife. At least I hope it was a made up story - I never have seen such man.

Thirdly, when people kick the door phone or play with the door, which some of the little kids in the house like to do, they sometimes knock off the shield for the emergency alarm and sets off its high pitched siren. I then open my window and tell them to put it back but usually they don’t know how to do it so I end up having to go down and fix it myself. This is a hassle since I have a bad knee at the moment and struggle to climb the stairs. Next time I just have to shoot them at sight!

Today the gas and electric goes up with 20% and 18%. I have a feeling it will be a very long and cold winter for most of us in the house. I spoke with Simone about it the other day and we said we have to buy one of those Slankets and maybe a pair of slippers for both feet. Sod looking good!

I really hope I don’t get any surprise visitors this winter.

We might be cold in our flats but Brixton is certainly still burning under the surface. The footlocker store started to burn again after the riots. They put the fire out last week but yesterday the fire had started again. The fire in Brixton will go on burning until the police stop killing our young men on the streets!

Holiday

Just came back from a holiday in Sweden and it was like being on a different planet! The weather was great every day and I got myself a tan as if I have been to a Mediterranean country rather than the cold North.
Here in England I live in poverty but my family and friends in Sweden are firmly middleclass. All the houses I go to there are fantastic;

The nature is amazing;

And my lovely family are the best! (Thank you all for a fantastic holiday!)

I arrived at Arlanda Airport late in the night and my sister and her husband picked me up and we drove through the summer night to my dad’s country house. The trip took 40 minutes and we managed to see two badgers, two owls and one deer. Now they even have street signs warning for wild boar!

I had a really good time and my family spoiled me rotten, thank you! But I still can’t get over the contrast in living standards.

I arrived home during the riots. Home Sweet Home, or?

Rubbish

I don’t know if it’s only me but it seems like the council has cut down on the rubbish collection and our bins are always filled to the brim nowadays. I suspect it’s not only the people in my house that uses our bin; I think other households on the street dump their rubbish in our bins. No wonder we got mice!

 On top of it the whole street smells of sewage! Luckily, the stink is not right outside my house but as you walk towards the junction and the corner shop you need to cover your nose with a bandana, which can explain why so many people in Brixton uses bandanas.


The other week I decided to clear up the garden for the season. The maintenance guys have dumped loads of broken furniture in the garden during the winter. I tried to sort it out and make it look less messy but there is just so much you can do about rubbish. My neighbour has been on their backs for months to get them to clear the rubbish from the garden but alas, it’s still there.
I picked up all garbage from the floor and swept it with a broom, including all used condoms and cotton buds. I have no idea how these condoms end up in our garden. Do we have prostitutes working in the house? Is it the neighbours that use their bathroom windows as rubbish shuts, or what’s going on?
When I finished cleaning the garden I put a nice bright table cloth on the table and some flowers. I was very proud of my work.


Three days later I went to the garden for a coffee and the first thing I saw was a used condom. We should install CCTV and bust the dirty beggars!
I will not give up! I just have to bring a bin when I go there and tidy up a bit before I use the garden.


In the weekend I took my deckchair to the garden and sat down in the sun with a good book. Suddenly, the wind shut the door and I found myself locked out. I knocked the door and shouted, ‘hello’. A dude answered my call and told me to use the front door! Seriously, I don’t understand how people think. It took me about five minutes to explain to the guy that I was locked out and needed him to open the door for me. When he finally did open and let me into the house, he looked very grumpy.


I think I give the garden another go today...

Brixton vibes

If you like to take ‘a walk on the wild side’ I can recommend a walk on Coldharbour Lane. It is the large road that goes from Camberwell Green to Brixton and it takes about 30 minutes to walk its full length, depending on your speed. If you start from Camberwell you will find the first bit quite average for South London and even slightly on the boring side. It's just a ordinary street with houses, some building sites and a few off-licences and a couple of pubs.
After about a 15 minutes walk you reach Loughborough Junction with its train station and fast food shops. In daylight the junction is just a junction of four roads but by night it turns into the Wild West and you are on your own! There are a lot of small alleys where dodgy things go on and as a woman it's best to keep as close to the traffic as it's safe to do.


When you have passed Loughborough Junction it's almost as you have reached a warmer climate and find yourself in the Caribbean. Dreadlocks walking on the road and dancehall queens struts their booty. The cars have sexy lights and filmed windows and you can hear the base beat long before you actually see the car. As the car passes you, the reggae music hits you so hard that you can actually feel the beat on your skin. People dress in brighter colours and life suddenly feels happier!

Shortly after the junction, on your left hand side you will see the Brixton Sports and Social Club. The name make it sound as it's some health club or something but actually in the daytime it's a day care centre. Sometimes they hold family days in the front garden with balloons and inflatable moonwalk jumpers for the children. But in the night it turns into a bar and night club. In the entrance hall there is a closet with two big doors that open up and turn the whole thing into a bar. The name Brixton Sports and Social Club, reminds me of my brother in law’s club that is called Gubbängens Art and Swim Society, which in reality is a bunch of men meeting regularly to take a sauna and drink beer. It has nothing what so ever to do with sports!


After the sports club you come to the big brown estate, called Southgate House that looks a bit like a huge turd of shit. But actually, the flats are rather nice on the inside. However, the local gang of youths lime outside the main door or rather they used to but they have now been dispersed by the police when they started to post an officer there 24/7. Nowadays the boys move around on their bikes instead and have become a mobile menace rather than stationary.

In front of the turd there is a bit of grassed area with a low wall around it. The wall is perfect for sitting on and in the summer you have huge groups of men, and a few women, sitting on the walls drinking beers and smoking ganja. Across the road there is a William Hill where gamblers bet their money and there is usually a big lime going on outside. Music roaring from a parked car and a cloud of ganja smoke fills the street.
After the betting store there is a sort of wine bar or something, My Father’s Place, that looks very secretive and do not really invite you to pop in and have a drink. It gives a feeling of a member’s only club. God knows how they make their money!
In the corner you have Angel Bar and Restaurant, which in the summer hold parties that have a tendency to spread out to the street and give it a feel of carnival in the air.
Then suddenly, in the middle of all that there is a newly built block of luxury apartments that nobody local can afford to live in. I wonder who it was attended for, Cameron and his rich friends?


If you walk a bit further down Coldharbour Lane you come to Brixton Village where the smell from the jerk chicken BBQ fills the air. The chicken is made on a huge metal pan made into a BBQ grill. Reggae music is played all over the place. Behind the Brixton Village is the large in-door market with all its food stalls and vintage shops. In Brixton market you can buy anything, if it's not there it does not exist!

Then you come to the coolest fruit and vegetable stand in Brixton, Natural Valley that is managed by a Rasta family and they have great paintings on the outside. Jah man!
Then you cross Railton Road/Atlantic Road and to your left you can see the old Weather Man shop that used to play Nation of Islam’s anti-white propaganda on big speakers outside the shop. The shop is now, thankfully, closed. You can hear the music from the shops at Atlantic Road.
In the corner you have the famous pub Dogstar that is a popular waterhole on weekends.


After that you come to the part of Coldharbour Lane that I like to call the Barber’s Corner because of all the barbershops. The barber shops are the main hang out place and they are always filled to the brim with men and women liming and fixing their hairs. As an Anthropologist it would be a great fieldwork project to study the linage system between the different barbershops, they make the heart of Brixton. Except for the Chinese nail artists there are only blacks in the shops and it seem to be some tension going on between the Caribbean shops and the African ones. In the midst of all the barbers you will find Blacker Dread record shop. Sadly, for a white woman to enter the shop is a bit like it most have been for a black man to enter a white only bar in southern states of America in the sixties. All activity stops and all heads turn and stare at you in silence, very uncomfortable. This means I have to buy my records in the market instead.


Across the road there is a huge squat of some kind with a big horse head over the door. One wonders who actually owns the huge house and if they forgotten that they own it.
Then you have to squeeze pass the roadblock of people waiting for bus P5 before you come to The Prince Albert, mainly white pub and Satay Bar across the road for mainly black people. But towards the end of Coldharbour Lane you finally find a bar that has a mixed range of people, The Prince.
On the other side of the road you find Ritzy cinema that I visit as often as I can afford. You then come out to Brixton town centre with all the bus stops and KFC, McDonalds and the big Lambeth Town Hall with its tower clock. In the end of Coldharbour Lane they now have a police officer protecting law and order.


I might be mad but I love Brixton!

Brixton shooting and police outing

Brenda moved out! She had enough of stinky food, mice and cockroach infestations. Lucky her, she can afford to move out. Now she lives on the other end of Brixton. At least she is still in Brixton.

I went to visit her in her new flat to see how the other half live. The flat is in a really nice and calm residential area in a converted Victorian house. She has the garden flat and it looks well posh compared to my little gap-in-a-wall sized flat. She have two bedrooms and the doors goes all the way up to the roof. It looks very sleek and elegant. The open-plan kitchen come sitting room is slightly narrow but it's light with two large windows and sliding doors opening out to the garden. I was green with envy. I would love to have a flat like that. Sadly my budget does not stretch that far.

After a nice coffee and a chat it was time for me to leave and Brenda offered to walk me to the bus. As we stepped out of the house we could see that her road was blocked off by the police and policemen were knocking doors asking questions. During our nice chat, there had been a shooting just outside Brenda’s doorstep. I suggested she might be better off moving back to my house. 

It was freezing cold and we had to walk around the whole blooming neighbourhood in order to get around the roadblock and luckily I had my Swedish winter coat on. It was warm and snug and I was glad that after all, my sister had not sent it to me in vain. However, Brenda told me that she thought that I shouldn't wear it again. She said I might as well go out wrapped up in my duvet! Basically she said I looked mad in my coat. I do think she has a point there. It's five sizes too big and the arms end way below my hands and the shoulder padding stops around my elbows and when the hood is up I look very much like the Michelin man. We laughed at my shadow on the wall. We see if I ever wear it again. I suspect I will because I am at an age where comfort comes before looks.

Maybe Brenda would not be better off moving back to my house since this morning we had some sort of police outing across the street at 7.45 am. There were one police van and three police cars and at least ten police officers on the street. They were heavily armed with machine guns (or was it automatic rifles? Not sure, I am not a weapon expert).
The police went into the house next to the halfway house across the street. I am very curious of what could have triggered such a response from the police. On the outside the house looks very well kept with flowers and white picket fence. The family in the house are acting strange though. Even Brenda thought so. She used to live exactly across from them and therefore had better insights into their odd behaviour.
The family always walk out together. I have never seen the teenage children out on their own, without their parents. Usually the father goes first and checks that the coast is clear so to speak and then the rest of the family quickly gets out to the car looking carefully over their shoulder. Is the family under threat or some sort of police protection? Do we have witness re-location programme in UK like the Americans? Or is my fantasy running amok with me?


So Brenda probably is better off where she is after all.

The Rottweiler

I call my neighbour the Rottweiler because she does not talk to people - she barks at them. Anyway, she does her laundry during the nights and her washing machine is on the other side of my bedroom wall. The noise keeps me awake and drives me insane. How inconsiderate of her. She usually play gospel music and sing along to hallelujah songs on Sunday mornings and then comes night, she becomes a selfish little devil. What ever happened to 'love thy neighbour'?

I have called the landlord about the disturbance but the Rottweiler ignores it. One night I got fed up of listening to her blooming washing machine and went over in my pyjamas and knocked at her door (at four in the morning). She did not open the door so I told her through the door, with a whisky voice since I had not used my voice for some hours, ‘stop keeping me awake with your laundry’. It probably sounded quite scary to her.
At eight the next morning I got a knock on my door and it was the Rottweiler. She told me not to knock her door in the night and I told her I will, unless she stops waking me with her laundry. She claimed she can only do laundry in the night because she works and have to look after her four children. I told her I am aware of that it might be difficult to be a single mum but that is no excuse for keeping your neighbours awake - I need to sleep!
Things have got a little bit better after that but she doesn't say hello to me any more and she call me the bitch in front of her children. Great parenting skills!


Once when a Swedish friend was here for a visit, we got on a bus in Stockwell to go home and we heard an argument between the driver and a customer. Apparently the customer didn't want to pay and the driver got a fit and refused to drive unless she got off the bus. We were sitting upstairs and my friend got a bit worried, she didn't understand the Jamaican English the lady spoke. We decided to get off the bus and take the bus behind instead. As I got off the bus I realised that the upset customer was the Rottweiler next door. Her poor children had to witness their mother’s bad behaviour and will probably learn to behave in the same when they are confronted with a problem. As I said, the Rottweiler is a lousy mother.

The blooming Rottweiler, kept me awake last night again so I went knocking on her door but she didn't open, instead her little boy asked me through the door ,‘who is it?’ and I replied ‘it is the girl from next door’. I could hear them talking inside and the mother telling her son ‘it is the bitch next door’. Why am I a bitch to her? I have done nothing to her, or?


Her children used to play in the corridor outside my door with the bicycles, scraping my door. Sometimes I opened the door and told them to stay clear of my door. I can see how it must be difficult to stay in a crack in the wall size of flat with four children but she could take them to the park. I went over one day when her door was open and asked her if she have a DVD player and lend her three films for her children to watch. I thought that would give her some peace. A few weeks later the little girl knocked my door and asked me if I had more films. I said, 'they are mostly for older children, but you can have a look if you like’. The girl parked her bike and walked into my flat. The door was open all the time. Suddenly the Rottweiler barked and the girl ran out with a few films. Five minutes later I heard a knock on the door again. It was the girl again but this time her brother was with her (as some sort of protection I suppose) and she was crying. She said she was not allowed to watch the films because she had not asked her mother for permission to knock my door. I felt horrible, realising that she had been physically abused by her mother and been slapped. The children don't dare to say hello to me now. They are scared of me because of their horrible mother.


One day I found the little boy in his robe on a chair outside his door trying to reach the electric box and put the key in. Obviously the children where home alone or the mother would have done it. I asked him if he needed help. He had to accept my help but looked very scared as he did so. This little child gets far too much responsibility for his age. The mother also depends on him as the man of the house, which teaches him that girls and women are lower than him and helpless. It's not fair to him.
The Rottweiler also keeps her children up late in the nights, sometimes as late as one in the morning, even on school nights. The children probably do badly in school because they are exhausted.
At one occasion I heard the boy screaming late in the night, ‘no mummy, no’. I couldn't just turn over and go back to sleep, instead I called the police, which arrived promptly.
The next morning the Rottweiler was at my door and we discussed child rearing. She was upset that I had called the police but I just told her not to hit her children then. I don't want a Victoria Climbie case on my conscious.

The good news is that the Rottweiler is moving out. Peace at last!

The missing things

The snow hit us just before Christmas and the news called it arctic weather. A slight exaggeration when it never was below -1°C. There was two centimetres of snow in London and all the airports had to close! Seriously, is it not time for the airports to invest in some winter equipment?

As a result of the weather, my sister was not able to come and visit me as planned! I was devastated, maybe even more so because she was bringing some Christmas gifts to me and I will now look forward to a Christmas home alone and with no gifts, bugger!
Another thing that went missing was one of my Christmas stockings in the hallway. The other day there was a party in the house and the next morning the stocking was gone and I strongly suspect one of the party goers. I spoke to my Nigerian neighbour that helped me to dress the Christmas tree and she told me that it was a friend of hers that had had the party. I knocked on the friend’s door and explained the situation with the missing stocking. The man came out in the hallway to have a look at the spot where the stocking used to hang. His Nigerian friend joined us and they chat along in Yoruba. The party host said he will replace the stocking next time he goes to the shops.
I was very pleased with that result but obviously he only said that to calm me down because the stocking is still missing!
I was contemplating writing an angry note about the immorality of stealing but decided against it since it will put a damp on the general Christmas spirit in house.

I have finally sorted a proper winter outfit for the cold winter ahead of us. The weather forecast tells us that the arctic weather will stay with us for the whole of January! But just in time for Christmas the blooming snow is gone and the temperature rises to around normal +8°C!
You can all thank me for the warmer weather. Getting my winter coat, which fills half my flat, will guarantee warm weather in the future. I will now have to buy a new wardrobe to house the damn thing!


At least I know what is missing in my life; my sister, my Christmas stocking and the arctic weather! I really hope I will get it back in 2011.


Happy New Year to all my lovely readers!