Categories: uncategorized, buildings-and-cities
Tags: foundspeech, london, local
Date: 03 June 2007 03:58:39
I was at Sainsbury's at New Cross, One of my least favourite buildings. Separated from the street by a huge and useless car-park.
There are men who hang around the car-park begging. I was waiting for the bus at about 10pm, as the shop was closing, and this man came up and asked for money. Black bloke, forty-ish, maybe a Jamaican accent, looked really unhealthy, dirty clothes, smelled very bad. "70p for a bus-fare to Tottenham" Which is nonsense of course. I assume (on no evidence) that he really intends to buy some alcohol or cocaine, or maybe heroine, or pay back some dodgy debt. Which I can hardly criticise him for seeing as I have a three-litre wine box n my bag. I gave him some of the coin in my pocket. So he upped his demands. One pound, two pounds, Just out of prison he said. Needed to go back to Tottenham. I said he was being dishonest. If you wanted four pounds why didn't you say four pounds in the first place? If I give you four pounds are you going to ask for five? No of course not. And I give him the small change in my pocket, which is about four pounds.
And he does ask for five pounds, and he's coming very close and poking me with his finger, and there is no way I'm going to give him any of the folding money in my other pocket or take my wallet out while he's around so I say (truthfully) that I've emptied my pocket and that's all that there is. And unusually I feel nervous. He is being really weird.
He went off and met a friend of his further along the car-park. Someone I've often seen hanging around there. Much younger white man, unshaved, very thin, wearing a dirty torn brown anorak. They do the South London aggressive slapping each other and cuddling sort of macho greeting thing. Wander off. A bit later white bloke comes up to the door of the shop and starts punching a signboard, jumping up and down until he's broken it and the poster has fallen on the ground. (Speed or coke seems more likely than heroine or alcohol at this point).
And I want the bus to come, The shop is closing, no-one else is around, and I don't want to be near these people. Which itself makes me feel bad, because they haven;t actually threatened me or anything. And when he does come back and ask for more money and I tell him no he just shrugs his shoulders and goes off. And the bus does come, and I get on it. And I dislike the New Cross Sainsbury's even more than I did before. If they had just turned the site round so the door was facing straight on to the street instead of being in a hole a quarter of a mile away it would feel much safer. Brief internal rant along the lines of "no-one who owns a car should be allowed to design buildings in cities"
Overheard in a pub on that very day:
"... and then it started again and there were bottles coming though the window and I thought it would be petrol bombs next so I came back to London the city I was born in, my home. I've been here for eighteen months now but I haven't signed on or registered to vote because there are people out there who will come to get me if they find out where I live now..."
Part of a conversation I was in myself:
"My good friend Sandie Shaw hates "Puppet on a String" so much... she's being trying to live it down for years"