London's burning

About three weeks ago, the noisy and vaguely antisocial youngsters occupying the ground floor flat of the house opposite mine suddenly were gone. I don't know if they skipped out on the rent, or were evicted, but the owner of the property immediately got to work on gutting and redecorating the entire gaff. Sadly, this apparently necessitated dumping all of the contents of the flat (clothes, books, mattresses, bookshelves) in a very unruly pile in front of the building. The man is apparently too cheap to even hire a skip.



Since then, Southwark Environmental Services have been out to visit at least twice that I have observed. I spoke to them once during the week before last to give some background and encourage them to deal with the mess, because I was afraid that if it were just left, some opportunistic and unscrupulous builder (is there any other kind?) would be happy to add to the pile under dark of night. The second time I saw them, they appeared to be speaking to the owner, or at least to one of the guys doing the refurbishment work. Yet nothing happened.



I have had a couple of friends from the States staying with me for the past week, along with their young daughter, and being a decent person, I have ceded my bedroom and connected guest room to them. I have been sleeping in a sleeping bag in my living room at the front of the house. Yesterday, at about 3:30 AM, I was awoken by what sounded like a group of young men, talking and laughing very loudly in the street. In a minute or two, things quietened down, and I dropped off to sleep again, but soon I was disturbed by something I briefly mistook for raindrops hitting the ledge outside my open windows, but soon realized was the sound of fire.



Sure enough, the rubbish pile had been lit at the front left corner, next to the hoarding surrounding the partially completed new "aspirational" apartments being put up next door. I called the Fire Brigade immediately, and in my sleep-deprived stupor watched as the flames shot 15 feet or so in the air and spread rapidly towards the house, where a family with a couple of young boys and a baby live (fortunately with an entrance to the side and nowhere near the fire). I was just about to run across and awaken them when one of their windows broke loudly from the heat, a light came on upstairs, and one of their neighbors from next door made sure they were up and out.



By this time the hoarding around the new building was on fire, and the flames were licking the windows of the ground floor flat of the house. Fortunately the Fire Brigade turned up at this point, only five minutes or so after being called, because I think a couple of more minutes would have seen both the house and new building on fire. The next day police forensics did a thorough examination, and there was an officer outside most of the day, to whom I gave a statement of what I'd heard and seen.



However, the pile of partially burnt rubbish is still in front of the building, astonishingly, as a nice trophy, or perhaps a challenge to complete, for those responsible. Having failed to either remove the blight in the first place during the two weeks prior to the arson, or to force the property owner to do so, Southwark Council unwittingly allowed the shits responsible for this to put lives in danger via a stupid and pointless act of vandalism. My visitors, unlike many American tourists who visit London, will not be returning home with misconceptions of what a civilized place it is.