I’m in two minds over the riots
Hackney on Monday 8 August. Photograph: Gemma Drake
Daughter was toiling away in Hackney when the riots started, so she was made to leave her workplace early. But hardly anyone else was leaving Hackney. They all seemed to be flooding towards it, probably to join in or have a stare. Daughter sensibly kept going, picked me up and off we went to Waitrose, but that too had to be evacuated. Daughter was so excited by the bread reductions that she didn’t hear the call to get to the checkout, where the poor cashier was worrying about going home to Hackney.
“Typical,” sneers Fielding. “You and your bloody Waitrose. Smug bastards.” But what does he know? He never goes there, and then he droned about middle-class liberal ponces commenting on rioters. Although his decades at the chalk-face have taught him to empathise with youth, even he now thinks the rioters are bloody maniacs, and his empathy has nearly all gone.
So has mine. Half of me wants to whack the rioters with a cricket bat, and the other half blames the world, for being unfair. My friend Munch won’t come visiting, because she daren’t leave her Battersea home unguarded, just off the Northcote Road, with looters halfway down it. She is sleeping in her front room, a hammer by her bed, her hosepipe at the ready. The man next door and his sons are armed with golf-clubs, and they’ve had a long talk about losing their liberal feelings, wishing for compulsory callup, rubber bullets and the birch.
I can see why they’re feeling vicious. I feel it when I see attacks on ambulance and fire-engine crews. I’m sure I remember a taboo on that, once upon a time. Now there isn’t a taboo on anything. Rosemary wants two years’ compulsory National Service for rioters. “Up at dawn, square-bashing, better diet, no crisps, alcohol, or computer games, early bed. That’ll mean jobs for the redundant army personnel, training the rioters, and no need for more prisons. Oh I’m on a roll.” says she. “And when they’re really fit, if they’re ever so good, they’ll be released into the community, and then what can they do?”
What indeed?
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