bye bye to the old flat (attack on the block)

8 years ago horsemouth was back from his month in porto. he'd packed his stuff up from the flat in pop(u)lar (with the help of his friends) and had it moved by van to the house in lower clapton. 

bye bye to the old flat. 

now the estate that it was on he doesn't miss. a young bangladeshi lad was murdered shortly after horsemouth moved there (he was a star student, he went to mediate when his friend was getting grief from two dudes from a neighbouring estate, him and his mate got stabbed in the legs but by pure mischance they stabbed him in the femoral artery and he bled out and died).

nonetheless the people who scared him on the estate were the white people not the bangladeshi youth.   

one of the neighbours was a gangster's moll with a whole crew of dodgy reprobates onside. she took against horsemouth's block and the people in it and there was trouble on the back of that. nonetheless horsemouth managed to dance through it all unscathed (more by luck than judgement). his downstairs neighbours, for example, got attacked and iron barred by one of the moll's cronies. 

while the block was being renovated there was an attack on it by copper thieves (who did a considerable amount of damage). now horsemouth can't prove it was this lot (he was on holiday at the time) but that  is indeed what he thinks. 

er. other than these fools horsemouth always felt fairly safe down there. 

horsemouth liked the flat. it was single (so there was no or little conflict). all the immediate neighbours were nice as were many people on the estate. he liked the edgelands feel of it - all the artificial underpopulated spaces of docklands for example. true there were few decent pubs down there though.

the flat itself was up on the second floor and faced westward (so it was shady in the morning, got great sun all afternoon and had great sunsets in the evening). the light there was beautiful. was it as good as the flats he lived in when he was living near columbia road on the nags head estate? well no (but, despite all that he has said, it had a lot to recommend it).  

much as horsemouth enjoys hackney it was (like the previous time he was back up there) no longer the grimey paradise it once was to him. but it was where the housing was (and he was grateful to get it).  

hail the new towns

'the planners saw this new town as a utopia, and to us it was. of course, people are often nostalgic about their childhood and their home town, but I know that for my family, and many others, washington was a vast improvement on the towns they’d come from...

I salute those who made my new town a reality.' - george clarke architect and television presenter. 

it is, of course,  important to build the next generation of new towns with better transport links (so that people are not so reliant on cars). here horsemouth is thinking of schemes  such as worcestershire parkway. 

there is a certain irony to the hailing of a new town just up the river from sunderland (don't rely on horsemouth's knowledge of geography). last night horsemouth watched footage of the youth (and plenty of ageing fatties) riot round sunderland (in all its pedestrianised/ ring roaded glory). today/ tonight more right-wing stirring of the pot (and possibly more tomorrow). horsemouth finds this depressing as sin. 

he supposes that at some point it will crash and burn (or perhaps just run out of steam) but it has rolled the wave of racism and xenophobia in the uk that extra bit up the beach. 

it's the morning. horsemouth is up. he's wearing a jumper (but then he did have the windows open all night). it's a cool grey morning. he missed doing a zoom beers thing with howard yesterday perhaps they'll catch up today. he is in any event back in town from monday so we shall see.