I did try to put together some sort of post about the past few days events. But I found that after expressing my feelings of loss and dismay about Reeves Furniture Shop (a kind of iconic building in Croydon), and a fair bit of London Road being burnt down, all I was coming up with were worse platitudes than Boris Johnson. So I decided not to bother.
I did however come across this post by a blogger who goes by the name of Motown. He lives in Camberwell and gives his eye-witness account of the (comparatively) minor rioting/looting that took place in Camberwell on Monday evening.
A brief extract;
I decided to head further down the street. There were a lot of people out on the street, but relatively few involved in looting. There were a lot of people (my estimate is 30% of people there) who looked as though they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (like the two girls and the guy on the bike in front of the bus). It wasn’t really a scary environment, I’m not saying that people weren’t frightened, but I think a better description would be shocked and disgusted. I saw a middle aged woman walking with her elderly mother through the worst hit area and they were obviously concerned, but I (and I hope they also) didn’t feel that they were unsafe. It sounds stupid to say it, but the atmosphere amongst everyone else seemed like carnival – I actually saw a girl getting chirpsed (chatted up).
It is an interesting nuanced account which I think is worth reading in full.
A Scotsman in Suburbia 