Most of our lives we sally through, immune to everyday risks because we’ve thought of our response to them long ago. Every so often, dreams conjure threats to our habituated experiences, but we wake to find them unreal, inconceivable.
On the particular day I want to talk about, my best friend Ollie had dreamt that the council were lopping off the trees of Ruskin Park. The residents were up in arms at the outrage. Anyone reading this must realise that this action would be such a public nightmare that it could only exist in the night.
The particular day was the 26th August. If you look back to my blog on that day, I wrote something in the morning anticipating how hot the day would be. Ollie called me up to ask if I wanted to have a few drinks at the Fox and Hound (Champion Hill, Southwark), play a few games of chess. What better way to spend a day?
I began the day with £15, and ended it with £0. We alternated buying jugs of Pimms, and maybe a packet of crisps. From the amount I spent, I’m pretty sure we drank two jugs each, and I also bought a packet of Cheese and Onion. I thrashed him at chess: he made the same mistake each time – he’d start from a strong position, initially appear to win and then allow a key piece to become vulnerable and me to swipe it. From there on, I just overwhelmed him with superior pieces. Later in the day, I would become the key piece.
So on the bus home, I was feeling pretty good about myself, not least because of the Pimms and good times with my best mate. I took out a volume of Peter Mcdonald’s Pastorals and opened it at the delightful sonnet ‘At Castlereagh Castle.’ An archetypal couple wander down a country lane; in the last six lines, we discover it’s the poet’s parents, poor but happy.
Got off the bus, went home. Paused in front of my house. I wanted to write a note about the poem, and it would never get written if I went inside with the stilted muggy air in my house from that 27-degree day. Go to the park. Find a bench in the half-light. Write note (slashes represent line-breaks) :
25th? 11:55pm At Castlereagh Castle: / with the second stanza, you realize / not generic couple his parents / walking from their wedding.
When Burnside talks of / stepping aside / or Paterson, of poetry beginning / at the point of self abandonment / Walcott of self-forgetting.
You’d forgotten you are / a minor force on a massive earth / not much of an I, against / the tremendous accretions, the sustained / language games in which every / man woman + child participate + / negotiates their own contribution / every day. a generic self existing in a / language covenanted by others to you, which / you share with them.
So far / your parents have hosted you long, / your bed you take for granted / spend too long there, hide behind it / as you stare at the elegant outer construction / of your house and realise you paid and / have no equity towards the house.
And each scenario is different / but with practice, experience, the forces / within it can be weighted / Just as legal language alters with / judgments, incrementally, molecule by molecule.
After finals, you could see yourself / as a generic, as a spectator of your / own times and were not scared to / gain some vantage on your I. / You will need money/ you will need advice / then maybe you can act on I, as well as think it. /
the presumption of ‘we’ / they tried that where my grandparents came from / I cannot begin to evoke the horror of presuming a ‘we’ cohere / the personality becomes a proxy of / the state’s wishes. Not really a / proxy, but repressed + encouraged to think not of its own force, but some / abstract faceless corrective / non-entities.
At this point, I decided I’d written enough and should go back. Exit down the ramp between the tennis court and the basketball court. A shadowy figure, shouting. Walk on – you walk straight on. Four of them. Older teenagers, 17-18, South American descent I’d say.
Another shout, this time closer – I can make out the word “want.” The shouting figure is behind me – fool I turn the slightest bit – can’t run, my white shorts are too full of stuff. His hand grabs me.
“Give me your phone.”
“No.
“Give me your phone” “ NO”
“Come on, man – just give us your phone.” I clasp my iPhone desperately.
Before I can stop them, they’ve taken my wallet and my oyster card. Hands clutching inside my pockets – eugh.
-GIVE ME YOUR PHONE.
-The police can find you if you take it.
Desperate hands clasping at my pockets. My shirt with a leaping rockstar shreds as they tug at it. Three of them - Punches – I fall on the ground. Punches on my back.
-The police can find you if you take the phone.
After at least a minute – the shorts have torn – ‘take his watch’ – the watch strap, already hanging by a thread, is broken in two and taken – finally after several punches, I’ve relinquished the phone. My arm now looks like this:
and my back is similarly scraped.
I find my wallet (haha, no cash, no point nicking it) and Young Person's Rail Card. I go home, talk to my neighbours (who are outside) to say I’ve been robbed, go inside and wake my mum up. I decide to call the police because I know the iPhone can be recovered with the Find My Iphone. Online, it appears to show the phone at Brandon Street near the Walworth road.
Two police arrive – they are incredibly reassuring. They take evidence and tell me that they’ve got ten police on the ground at the site. “All phones should have this – this is incredible.” Can I make the phone ring?
After fifteen minutes, they’ve had no success – the device must be at least ten metres off and is on the move again. I hear periodic voices from the walkie-talkie system – weird to be in the position of Big Brother, looking down at the phone from the skies.
The descriptions all seem completely wrong – they’ve found some young South Americans, but one’s arm is in a sling. They’ve found the phone, but the thugs have dropped it. They suspect that they may have been checking what I said, and it turns out I was right. Thank god they've found the phone.
They prepare me for doing a line up. We head off in a police car to Camberwell High Street.
Before the line up takes place, we unexpectedly charge through a red light when they see a licensed minicab speeding. They stop him.
“I’d book you if we didn’t have a charge in our care. Your license would be revoked. You should know better as a cabbie. Consider yourself lucky.” Cool. Never deliberately gone through a red light before.
Back to the line-up. None of them are the suspects. We go over the territory but see nothing. Later, all the leads – CCTV tracking the places where the phone went + DNA evidence – run dry.
Later, on the 12th August, I go to a party at Tatum Street, some 7 or so minutes walk from where the phone lingered so promisingly. I decide not to bring my phone or wallet. No risks this time.
When I get there, I see Tom C – and say hi, give him a hug, catch up.
“Why isn’t Emily here?
“She’s tired. Also when I got robbed, my iPhone was held only five minutes walk away from here – so she was scared of coming with me.
A pause from Tom. I say
-Give my your phone.
-No.
I lean over. –Give me your phone.
-No, Ben, NO.
I reach into his pocket and touch the phone. Then I let him go.
In a program about child psychology I later watch, they say that the child who reacts to injustice by saying “No – don’t do that” gives a somewhat intellectual response. What are we like?
