Future Nonsense

At any other time I’d have been happy to watch the whole place burn to the ground. My uncle was a docker and me Dad he worked at the fish market. That area’s part of my heritage, you know what I mean? Having these fucking huge buildings, pricks in the sky, it was too much.

Dad he sold the house and we moved out to Dagenham. He died two years later from a heart attack then, wouldn’t you know it, Mum, she got a job as a cleaner working in the HSBC tower.

I’d been squatting with friends for a couple of years. I was political, I suppose. We were, we were non-ideological. We just wanted to live free. It was a risky business, even at the end, when there were loads of places free. You’d last about, I think, three months in a place.

We didn’t get involved in all the fighting, with all the politicals wanting to make their revolution. You know, it’s better to make the revolution where you are, get on with it now, get busy. They made so much about the bank going up. It was nothing.

We had a group. It was a horizontal network, spread across East London. It was supposed based on sound consensus politics but our branch (as the communards would have called it) was dominated by this guy called Gideon Makhno. He was a pretty dynamic guy, a natural organiser.

He often talked about getting into expropriation but never seemed to manage it (although I know a couple of squats were used as temporary safe houses). He did seem to have a lot of money, which he’d funnel our way, but most of that came from art exhibitions, gigs and the occasional teach-in.

We were living in a townhouse, wicked place it was, on Columbia Road… I didn’t hear a thing until we had a bunch of politicals come round demanding we give them people and sand to fight this fire that was going on. They said we had a communal obligation, something like that. They weren’t armed, so we told them to fuck off.

We got so much hassle from the local so-called communards a few of us decided we’d actually up and leave. First time ever! There was also a mind that we’d spread the social centre, give people a choice, you know, if they didn’t want to be part of the commune. We’d been scouting about for spots when, I remember, Gideon came home after a couple of days, with a bright idea. He’d been around the Isle of Dogs with some mates and they found Canary Wharf was pretty much abandoned.

It was a difficult enough place to get to but think about it, the main building alone used to hold 50,000 people. Not even the communards went there much, a plus point.

It turned out a few others spotted the potential too. There was that recovered print shop on the isle. Some guys were using the boats in the marina to go fishing. A couple of us thought we should get in on that but Gideon said now. We were looking for free space. There were all those luxury flats, mostly abandoned. But we went straight for the big one.

About 100 of us, people from around the network occupied the main building. It took, oh, it took nearly a fortnight, but we had electric, light, heat, good running water and beds all going on the first, second and third floors. There was a creative area on the fourth floor. The elevator was still running so we figured we’d barricade the stairs, for safety. It was only on the ground floor but, even so, bad idea.

So, yeah, we had a launch night for the new social centre, big party on the fourth floor with bands, DJs, a fucking huge bar and a chill out room. We pulled out the stops. I know people were talking and there was thoughts of one day turning the whole area into an autonomous zone.

We were going to coin it in that night. I reckon at least a thousand turned up, a thousand, maybe two. The trouble was nobody had any money. They were all communards, with their IOUs, not proper money, these promissory notes stamped by the local commune. We were trying to get away from that shit.

It was rammed, an absolutely banging night. I wasn’t getting high that night. I was dealing with the sound on the live stage. Even so, I was still, you know, getting off on this great vibe.

It must have been two-three in the morning when, BOOM, one, two, three huge explosions going on. It didn’t really register at first but… we were under attack. Thinking back I still don’t get it. We were supposed to have security on the door but these must have been fucking firebombs or something. There was no petrol on the premises, least not I knew of.

Of course, whoever it was cut off the elevator. There was fucking bedlam. I don’t know how many people got out. We didn’t check who was there. It was come one come all.

Some guys tried to hack through the barricade but it was bricks and that, debris, it was really locked down. I know we got out by climbing down. Gideon, he had a bit of quick thinking. He worked a rope system lashed together on the first floor. It took ages but I was one of the first out. By this stage you could stand back and see the sixth to ninth floors were on fire, huge tower of smoke, some debris falling… you had to watch that.

Then of course it got worse. The other buildings started going up. You know, the fact we were there, opening night might have been a coincidence. This was big stuff, long time in the planning. If we’d have done it we couldn’t have done it better.

Five minutes later a communal fire team arrived, along with some medics, but there was little they could do by then to put it out. It was just a rescue operation. Then a group of militia appeared, started asking questions. We didn’t get on with the militia. None of us stuck around.

I don’t think any of us saw Gideon after that.

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I saw him, around London Fields. It was the end of April. We were assessing the place, taking soil samples to see if we could start a new allotment there.

I’d finished my A Levels that year. There was this meeting where we were all asked what we could do. My Mum remembered that I got good marks in Environmental Science. I got it because I did this experiment really well. I was always good at finding the best ways to get good marks and I remembered my teacher saying the soil texture experiment was easy to do. You get soil samples, put them in water and detergent and shake them all up to see how the layers form.

My Mum remembered this and, before I knew it, I was sent out to find good patches of ground to grow stuff. The people wanted loam or clay loam. So, that’s what I was doing. My friend, Anya, and me we went out with rucksacks, we had a trowel each and loads of these jars.

We were walking through London Fields. Like I said, it was only, like, April, but the grass was starting to get a bit long (not like it is now in some places). We had no problems though. We started walking up from old Broadway Market to the lido and the town hall, taking samples every twenty paces. It was quite quiet. You could see one or two other people.

It was late evening, nearly sunset. It’d been quite a hot day. Anya spotted this cat sitting on the roof of the swimming pool. It looked like an ordinary cat, but it was weird. It was like the perspective was all wrong… that or it was huge.

Anya didn’t want to, but I got a little closer, had a look. It was massive and had spots all over its body. This was the leopard. It was brilliant. The leopard was just sitting there, basking in the sun. I say the place was quiet, I don’t know, somebody must have seen it, surely? Nobody was panicking. Anyway, from where I was I could see it was panting a bit. Its chest was going up and down.

Then it saw us and stood up. I wasn’t afraid. It looked at us for a couple of seconds. I was about twenty, thirty metres away. I could see it sniffing the air, checking us out. Then it ran. I’ve never seen anything move so fast, so quiet too. It leapt off the roof and bolted across the ground. I dropped my bag and tried to follow but lost track of it behind the tennis court.

I thought it was brilliant but my Mum she freaked out when I told her, plus I had to go back and do all my samples again.