I have been priced out of a squat I used to be thrown out of for free.
LONDON, England (Seeker News) – Today I am writing a list of grievances, because the launderette is broken and the only other place in the building with a flat surface is the oven.
I should say at once that I am in a mood. I have been in a mood since a leaflet came through the door announcing that my old squat, a once-condemned terrace on a road I will call Anarchy Row, is now sold out as “The Residences at Anarchy Yard”. The brochure uses the word “heritage” nine times. One of those times it was about the damp.
Grievance One: The Squat Has Been Given a Concierge
I lived at number 14 for three years, in a room with no door, a window made of cardboard and a boiler that only worked if somebody sang to it. We held rehearsals in the hall, and the council visited so often that the bailiff knew the setlist.
Now a two-bed flat in the same building costs more than all of us earned in the entire decade I lived there. There is a roof terrace. There is a “wellness room”. The estate agent described the area as “authentic, with an edge”. I am the edge. I would like a commission.
Dervla, our drummer, went to look at a viewing out of sheer spite. She reported back that a man in a gilet pointed at the spot where I once sold a bootleg tape, and described it as “a lovely feature wall”.
Grievance Two: Waitrose Has Opened in Cricklewood
This is the news that broke me. Waitrose has opened a new supermarket in Cricklewood, its first new shop in eight years, and the whole of north London has apparently responded as one might to the arrival of a small cathedral.
I want to be fair. I like a good olive. I have no argument against a place that sells twelve kinds of hummus. But there is a certain feeling that arrives in a punk when the world’s most polite supermarket moves in around the corner, and it is the feeling of a man who has been told his protest has been scheduled for Tuesday at ten.
In my day, the only supermarket for the revolution was the one with the broken security tag and a manager called Brian. You did not go in for “a few bits”. You went in with a plan, and the plan was a tin of beans and eye contact.
The squat has become a flat. The corner shop has become a Waitrose. The Waitrose will become a flat. This is the cycle of London, and I am on the wrong side of it holding a carrier bag.
Grievance Three: The Bank Has Hired a Robot
Over a cold tea, I read that Barclays plans to cut about 5,000 staff within months as it expands its use of AI. Five thousand people, with a machine arriving to do their jobs in the same time it takes Clive to tune a guitar.
Clive works in actuarial risk, so he took it personally. He put down his pint and said, “I am not worried, because a robot cannot do a spreadsheet with feeling.” Then he went very quiet for the rest of the evening and I think that, for the first time in his life, he wrote a riff that was not in a minor key about a pension.
I have a clear view on this, which is that nobody has ever asked a robot to play bass badly on purpose. We are the last craft that depends on being slightly out of time, and I intend to protect it. If an algorithm learns to rush the chorus, I shall retire.
Grievance Four: Every Other Joke Is Taken
I looked on the internet for a way to cope and found that everybody else got there first. I read a piece on farm.fm about a banker asking a bull for a heifer revenue timeline, and I felt a calm wash over me. If a banker can ask a bull for a revenue timeline, then the world is not as serious as the brochure suggests, and I need not weep over the wellness room.
I then spent an hour with The Daily Mash, the way some people read a hymn book, and went to bed feeling that if London has lost its soul it has at least kept its sense of humour. I also bookmarked British Onion-style headlines for the morning, in case I need to be talked out of a sulk.
Grievance Five: Nobody Asked the Boiler
Back at the flat, I explained all of this to the boiler, which has always listened, and the boiler made a noise like a disappointed trombone. It has been through everything with me. It was there for the last bad gig, the last bad landlord and the last time I tried to cook a sausage on a radiator.
The boiler, I think, agrees with me. It sees the world turning into a very expensive branch of itself, and it does not like it either.
The Verdict
- The squat is now a feature wall.
- The shop on the corner is now a cathedral of olives.
- The bank is replacing five thousand people with a thing that never drinks.
- My band remains, as ever, understaffed and underpaid and loud.
I will play on. I always do. If you want to keep up with London from a person who is tired, cold and mostly right, I post my other daily notes at The London Prat, and if you ever want to check whether a headline is real or whether you have just been told a wellness room is a heritage feature, there is a handy UK checklist for telling the real headlines from the rest.
Goodnight, Anarchy Row. I hope the damp is treated with respect.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/