On the Tiles

As a high flying media executive nights out in town have to occupy a low priority. For who's to say when some media yup on the grab won't pick your hung over morning to slip a blade in during a meeting and usurp your place in the food chain?
But there must be some RnR and I'm recommending Hakkasan after a sumptuous experience this evening.

Here be Hank

This is Hank, a cat who lives near me on Milton Road. He's a bit ancient and scabby but he's endeared himself to lots of passing Herne Hillites by climbing on their shoulders and purring in their ear like some kind of jet engine.

He seems to have gone AWOL, which is a huge hole in quite a few people's lives. One expects the worst, inevitably, but do please leave me a message here if by some chance you've seen the old fraudster.

Running on Empty

It's been one of those weeks when blogging has been beside the point. Nightshifts don't help, because they tend to close down your thinking and conversation; you're just head down trying to get through.

The other reason why it's been nigh impossible to write has been hearing at second hand the agonies of my friend Rachel, who has just lost her mother.

I've also been thinking a great deal about eleven year old Rhys Jones, as I expect a lot of people have.

Anything I try to write or think about grief seems trite, which is strange because I don't think of myself as a particularly shallow person. But not to write about it, to blog about cats, or politics or the latest restaurant seems superfluous this afternoon.

Yesterday Lesley and I went for a long walk in Sussex. There was nobody about to speak of, and the fields went on for miles and miles, occasionally broadening to include a lake, or a small village with a pub in the middle. I get great joy from the fresh air, the greenness of our country, the ordinary texture of life.

So to Rachel and anyone else who is blinded and disorientated by loss I say, hang on, the flavour of being does return. And while life is altered, it remains an extraordinary thing, worth having and being in, at any price.

Quite Proud of Him

There are cats that cut it and others that can't. Dylan is the former. It's his job, dammit. That's his brother on the right of the frame, looking on while Dyl relaxes with his catch which he landed in the garden somewhere. Dude!

Two Weddings, No Funeral

More Trouble

I was just setting off for work at around 4 yesterday afternoon when I noticed a police helicopter orbiting the estate near us, and by the time I reached the market near the tube police vans were piling into the street leading to where the helicopter was focussing.

The bush telegraph is operating at full pelt, and it now seems as if another young man was attacked with an axe.

In the meantime police have made an arrest in connection with the murder I mentioned in earlier posts - in Cambridge. Of a seventeen year old.

Research is now hitting ministers desks about the unfolding tragedy in our black community, but if you don't fancy a wade-through why not try this informative poster from urban 75, who hits the nail perfectly on the head.

One of the Good Boys

Nathan Foster may not have been the intended target of Friday night's gunman according to the Sunday Times, which seems to have been alone among the national papers in sending someone down here to find out what went on.

This corresponds to what I was told by one of my neighbours yesterday, who told me when she had informed her teenage daughter who'd died the response was:

"But mum he was one of the good boys"

A Shooting at the End of My Street

I should have realised something was going on when my street, usually very noisy with kids, went very quiet around eleven last night. This morning as I headed for the gym, people were gathered in little clumps discussing what I had already heard on the radio: that another young man had been shot dead.

He's already been named to me but I shan't post that here at the moment. The bush telegraph says he was a nineteen year old youth worker murdered after he declined to intervene in a dispute over a gold chain.

There was very little police presence at the cordon this morning, and no senior officers on hand to brief the media. Perhaps efforts to reassure the jittery community, who are concerned about reprisals, may start on monday when the management return to the office.

My neighbours tell me guns are now freely available 'for peanuts'.

If there's been an arrest I haven't heard about it.

An Apprentice Writes........

In 'The Apprentice' (the hit reality show on BBC1) Sir Alan Sugar comes over as the businessman who must know everything about everything. He despises any shiftiness or lack of honesty in the contestants, and demands to hear the groundwork for any decision - no matter how trivial. It is his grasp of detail that made him such a success as this excellent piece running on The Register website shows so clearly.

There is no point in being the boss if you don't know what is going on, which is a point Sir Ian Blair, who was ignorant of the truth of the Menezes killing hours after even his cricket playing off duty constables knew it, may choose to reflect on.

Update on Rachel North's Book

I'm glad to say it's selling out all over. She was on Richard and Judy yesterday - somehow we have to get that on youtube...