It's a riot

I imagine you are all aware that the past week in the UK has seen a lot of 'public disturbances' or looting.

It was sparked initially by a peaceful protest last Friday at a police station in North London over a member of the public being shot and killed by a police officer. This peaceful protest turned into a more violent protest resulting in riots in North London.

The violence continued to the Sunday becoming more widespread across the city including Brixton, the feature of one of our earlier blogs.

On Monday Jackie left early to go to the Isle of Wight for a work away day. I went off to work at the normal time. Neither of us had really paid much attention to the riots at this stage.

However by Monday afternoon, as Jackie had just started her journey back to London it became apparent that the violence had spread and was close enough to home to give us cause for concern.

I ran home from work that day so wasn't aware of any problems with the trains but when I got home Jackie called asking whether Clapham Junction station was open, she'd heard maybe it wasn't. I checked online and while the station was open the riots had reached Clapham Junction and it didn't look like a safe place to be and the likelihood of the station remaining open looked slim.

Jackie and I kept in touch as she got closer to London, in this time I'd managed to find out that there had been a small amount of damage in Balham with a couple of phone shops broken in to and a small fire lit in a rubbish bin. Also the Sainsbury's supermarket had locked and barricaded its doors with customers inside to stop looters getting in.

Jackie's plan was to take the train all the way in to London Waterloo and then catch the underground with a particularly burly delivery driver workmate to Balham, I would meet her at the station.

So at the designated time I went down to Balham, keeping my wits about me in case there was any danger. Balham seemed unusually quiet, I couldn't see any obvious signs of looting although while I waited outside the Tube station some youths with balaclavas did walk past but to be honest they didn't seem particularly threatening, but it was enough to make me pleased that I'd gone to meet Jackie at the station.

Shortly Jackie arrived and we went back to the flat, safe and sound we caught up on the news and were particularly shocked to see some of the scenes from Clapham Junction. The video below was taken on the Monday evening, it shows looting around Clapham Junction and included scenes of the Wimpy Burger Takeaway, my cousin Nick lived in the flat above this.

Here is another video from the same guy, Northcoate Rd gets a mention, a feature of another of our blogs

So on the Tuesday there was a more tension with lots of rumours about further riots and looting planned, Balham was including as a potential target suburb. Jackie had to take the decision to close her showroom early to make sure her staff got home safely. Many shops boarded up entirely, the pictures below (not ours) show shops on Bedford Hill (where we used to live) being boarded up. The shop on the corner is Lavish Habit, a cafe that we had average service in as reported in a recent blog.

 As it turned out there was no rioting or looting in Balham on Tuesday night, and since then despite a bit of tension remaining there have been no troubles in these parts, probably helped in part by the very visible police presence.

While this has been a pretty bad news story for London there have been some positives, 2 things in particular worth a mention from our neck of the woods are the huge contingent of people who turned out to help clean up after the riots, particularly in Clahpam Junction, the story has been one of the real positive things to have been reported, contrasting the gloomy 'broken society' type reporting. The image below has been quite an iconic image of the spirit of Londoners.

Along similar lines, but even more local was a contingent on Balham people who against the backdrop of potential riots on Tuesday evening arranged impromptu neighbourhood social gatherings at the pubs that remained open, particularly the Balham Bowls Club and the Bedford. These gathering were arranged through Twitter and Facebook groups and spread by word of mouth, much in the same way that the riots were arranged. We didn't go but the feedback on various social networks were that they were tremendously positive affairs with lots of local people meeting others in a convivial atmosphere where for once it was not peculiar to spark up a conversation with a stranger in London.

So that's our riot experience, we never felt hugely under threat but it was still closer to riots that we would have wanted to be. It's not an especially exciting story but hopefully the only time we'll be caught up in rioting and looting so we thought we should document it all the same.