Body Electric

I woke up today with one of those headaches that makes your whole world wobble every time you move, and even the dull sounds of distant planes and the tapping of keys seem painful. I’d had the weirdest dreams thanks to my mother’s lasagne last night. In it I was sitting outside on a warm grey day in London, perched on a dark wooden bench, no dedication, looking out across the Thames. In the corner of my vision was the London Eye and in the other the painted bow of HMS President (1918). She’s a naval vessel turned restaurant. Talk about recycling. The Thames is beautiful. Its grey-green wrinkles are speckled as the sun peaks out for a moment and the Eye glows in the distant bend, the Westminster flags flying as silhouettes. I think in the dream I was wondering about the riots and if they’d reach me but there wasn’t any sign of them.

It’s odd really. Two nights ago we were all sprawled out in the sitting room, my Twisted Sister, my brother and I, after eating far too much roast dinner. We were contentedly watching Top Gear when my brother’s computer tells him that he’s being called on Skype. So he wanders out and despite the good humour in the air, as James May wins the challenge for the mere reason that his tin car was £2010 under budget (despite losing all the mini-competitions).

“Are you ok?” I hear him asking, “When did it happen? Are the police there?”

Arman, a boy that I’ve known since he was thirteen, who sang bass in the school choir and has more charisma in his little finger than half the people I know, is calling my brother from the wreckage of his family’s shop in Enfield. Terrifyingly, my brother himself was there the night before, out partying without a care in the world. The shop, a family owned and run watch shop has been looted, the windows emptied of the painstakingly toiled over watches and items of jewellery.

I can’t quite believe the extent to which these rampaging hooligans are going. It’s almost terrifying but because it seems very far off from here, most of our conversations are rather self-righteous and philosophical.

I started an article when we were away in France, comparing how the police in London treated me when I was burgled to how they treated my best friend Alex in Paris. The police in London didn’t come for eight hours, simply told us to sit tight and not touch anything. The police in Paris, on the other hand, laughed at my friend Alex and said it was her own fault for being a girl, took her watch from her wrist because it was ‘evidence’ and then told her to stop wasting police time all the while leering at her.

“Every day,” she said, “there’s a new story in the papers about how someone has been injured or killed by the gendarme in random acts of brutality.”

They’re corrupt.

“There’s no point in telling them about the fact that you’ve been mugged or sexually assaulted because they’ll blame you.” She continued quite candidly, after telling us about a man who followed her up to her room one night and attacked her but who she luckily managed to fight off.

I think we should put into perspective just how ‘bad’ the Metropolitan police are – we’re actually very lucky in the UK to have a Police Force that tries to do their job. Maybe if they had a little more power (eg. to actually attack a man whose drawn a gun, real or not because how can they tell from a distance) then they’d be able to do their job properly. A hooligan who’s struck down by the riot police should NOT be able to appeal for compensation because of police brutality; I almost feel the police should be able to sue them for wasting police time. The limitations we’ve put on our police make little sense when it means they are rendered almost useless in the face of criminal activity like we’ve seen the last few days. Of course we don’t want to see a return to the 80s but a mob cannot be stopped without reciprocal force.