Normal service shall be resumed shortly. For now, enjoy JT's account of what happens when squatters move in next door...
Midnight, Friday. Eyeballing a weeping crack user out of my bedroom window who looked like a cross between Willow and Jonas Gutierrez, I had to wonder where it all went wrong.
It all started a few months ago with a fairly innocuous three foot hole in the front window of the empty house two doors down. Then the drum and bass started. Pimped-up alloy rides came and went and then we noticed the cleaning products in the kitchen window. The squatters had undoubtedly moved in.
Seasons came and seasons uneventfully passed bar the odd vacuous disco glare at the bus stop.
Then the night of my twenty-fifth birthday arrived. Friends talking party shite over break beats and swapping jokes, jibes and amateur cocktails. The next morning, as we basked in the afterglow of the party, Rich came back from his van to report it had been ‘’pimped’’ with a six-inch gash to the back off-side tyre.
Ignoring the obvious and blaming the pavement, we left it at that and carried on with our sardined existence in a terrace house designed for a miner and his stunted chimney sweep kids, not five fecktrosexual twentysomething Geordies.
Last week the first summer sun drew our sofas into the yard and we toasted ourselves in what felt like the presence of an old friend. The capricious kind, inspiring and full of tales from lands afar that you promised yourself you would emulate when you eventually pay off that credit card.
A pleasant delusion that was soon shattered by the squatters fending off a brick-wielding assailant, probably irked by some scrawny bag of rat poison or vitamin C, come-on-thens and hes-not-worth-its rapping over our soundtrack from ‘The Harder they Come.’
Like the shark in ‘The Beach’ it was a precursor of further bad shit.
This is where we came in.
As I sat smoking out of the window of my basement room trying to look cool, getting to know an exciting and beautiful woman over half a bottle of Strongbow I became aware of an intermittent scuttling noise. At first I thought it was a rat, then my dickhead flatmate. But this was much worse.
As I stuck my head out to investigate I disturbed the midget Jonas on his hands and knees in the litter I hadn’t been arsed to tidy up. Startled, the exchange went something like this:
‘’What the F*CKING HELL are you doing?’’
‘’Ah..erm…sorry mate…there’s been a raid…’’
‘’Get the F*CK out of my yard, right now.’’
‘’Mate, you don’t understand…I’m a drug user…there’s been a raid-‘’
‘’Get out of here!’’
‘’But…I chucked it down here somewhere…I’ve got to get it back. I need a torch…’’
Midget Jonas was eye to eye with me in the darkness, the romance burning out with the fag-end, me controlling the situation like Gordon Brown, as my fingers hovered over the hammer in the drawer. Midget Jonas started to cry. The stand-off was like a nurse-patient argument over dinnertime gruel in the psychiatric wing. He evidently wasn’t going anywhere though. So I passed him a lighter and he ducked back out of sight. Seconds later he returned, his street-hardened grimy mits brandishing a crack-rock the size of the blood diamond.
‘’I’ve got it! I’ve fucking got it mate! Look I wasn’t lying! Awww I could hug you!’’
‘’Don’t.’’
‘’Matematematemate how can I pay you back?!’’
‘’Give me my lighter and f*ck off.’’
And with that he skipped away giggling with all the poise and psychosis of Wastey, the ostracised eighth dwarf who stole Doc’s silver pieces while the rest were out down the quarry, leaving me to ponder being able to listen to Tupac’s ‘’Changes’’ with that bit more moral authority.
I didn’t realise that our area of Leeds is colloquially known as the ‘War Zone’ by my social worker colleagues and with three more weeks to go on the tenancy from hell, I’m beginning to get it. If heaven is a place on earth, then surely hell must be too. Either that or the state of mind that finds you in Burley, on purpose, at night-time, scratching around desperately in a stranger’s beer cans and fag-ends risking everything for that crystalline relief.
As for the squatters, I suppose stealing a house so easily must give you a feeling of invulnerability. But to paraphrase Homer Simpson, there’s such a fine line between invulnerable and stupid.
John Teedge helps run a charity that supports disadvantaged people in Uganda: check out his blog for more information www.spoweuganda.org/
Posts
Please don't label all squatters as drug users and wastegash.
ReplyDeleteI have lived in many squats in london where the emphasis has been on social progress, art and revolution in inner city living with a sustainable and inclusive edge.
Check out rampART in shoreditch http://therampart.wordpress.com/
Also the now defunct squat in Russell Square that housed artists, musicians and single parents and asylum seekers, which we took over when a foreign language school went bankrupt. Squatting in England has a rich and progressive history, from the 17th century squatter's rights to present day art collectives springing up in areas where true creative classes have been outpriced.
Love
Georgia