Happy Snaps

This time last year on a Bank Holiday Monday, I went swimming in the local swimming baths at York Halls in Bethnal Green - as I do three times a week.

After tearing up the pool with a few lengths of crawl, I emerged and went to the changing rooms. Standing in the cubicle I looked down at my wrinkly feet and cycling rucksack on the floor....but was just a little surprised, when I saw what appeared to be a naked, upturned 'eye' come sliding towards me, floating under the partition - like a lone globed eyeball, eyeing me up suspiciously...it took a few seconds before I realised that I was looking at an upturned digital camera...

I smirked downwards, puzzled and faintly amused. Aha, I thought, bound to be some kid pulling a prank and up to no good....so I stood, naked on the seat and took a look over the partition. Imagine my surprise when I saw the top of a young man's head. Even from that angle I could tell that he must have been about 21 or so and surprisingly, quite fit and in good shape - not your stereotypical idea of a sad sex criminal. From above I could see that he was flicking through the images on his digital camera. I panicked slightly...and went into a cold sweat...mind racing, wondering what to do, how long had he been in there, had he been there all day? was he photographing children or just adults? Should I shout out a loud warning to everyone else in the changing room or should I simply run to reception and get them to call the fuzz? After all, Bethnal Green Police station was only 100 yds away, across the road.

Suddenly, I had a plan. Fumbling around for my mobile phone in my jacket pocket, I jumped up on the seat and called down to the unsuspecting rascal...startled, he glanced up at me, red-faced. Click! "Snap, gotcha" I shouted at him..."You've been 'ad mate."

And with that I ran out of the changing rooms to call the Police....

The Moral of the Story is....always take a camera with you when you go out...you never know when it might come in handy.

Wild Goose Chase

As most people know, the prostitutes residing in Borough, outside the walls of the city of London, during the 16th-19th century, were regarded as 'wild geese', living 'beyond the pale'.

Here in the East End we have our own fair share of vagabonds, rascals, scallywags, miscreants, vagrants, foe, pimps, prostitutes and waifs...life would be less colourful without them and let's face it, they add to the value of the property market in E1...

Last summer was a casing point. One evening, as I was walking home along Deal Street, where I live, I stumbled across a woman who was blatantly leaning on a concrete ballard at the end of our row of cottages. Fully made-up, smartly dressed with a belted khaki raincoat and a handbag over the top, hair neatly tied back, she presented the illusion of respectability.

But something didn't feel quite right about the manner of her anxious gaze which contrasted with the affected, casually relaxed pose. And why was that car sitting with its engine on across the road, with the door to the passenger seat open? and a man in a leather jacket slouched in the driving seat?

As I passed her, I couldn't resist politely asking her what she was doing there, plying her trade on a road where children went to school and people came home from work...She looked me brazenly in the eye and said,

"I'm waiting for some one."

"Aren't we all", I said. But couldn't resist a dig. "Look, I'm not happy about you inviting your customers down my road when I have to come home in the dark. So why don't you just clear off and go and work somewhere else instead?"

She looked affronted, offended but the voice was still calm.

"I'm waiting for some one."

"Well, you can't do it here. If you don't clear off in five, I'm calling the cops."

With that I went inside and shut my front door. Next thing I heard was,

"Ere, Derek, She won't let me, she won't let me do it, the bloomin' coaarrgh, the bloomin' cow..she won't let me, it's no use...we're gonna have to go."

As the car pulled up alongside her she got in. I cam out of my front door and yelled, "Go on. Clear off. You're not wanted round here."

She mouthed the words "You're dead" back at me through the glass and made a slitting motion with her hand...

I laughed in her gaze and said, "Ooh, I'm scared. Is that all you've got? There were people more scary than you at my secondary school." And immediately felt infantile for saying it.

She screamed a seamless babble of obscenities back at me through the receding car window.

Later that month, my neighbours over the road had a Bengali wedding, which meant suspending strip lights from the roof of their house, all around it's four walls. The white lights were on night and day, flashing and giving a gently reassuring aura to the street...

Interestingly, after two months of hassle, we had no more bother from prostitutes or pimps that Summer. They just mysteriously disappeared.

I'm going to propose that we all pool some money to pay the neighbour's electricity bill so that he can keep those lights on again all summer. Light as a deterrent...It's a government ASBO proposal in the making. Should be rolled out across the country.

Easter Crack Bunnies

Last night at around 11.15pm, my neighbour noticed that the long-running crack addict who frequents our garden...was digging in the flowerpots, looking for somewhere to bury his rocks of crack and syringes....presumably to dig them up later on, like the Easter bunny. Weirdly, we also have a couple of squirrels that live in the tallest tree in our garden, who were no doubt looking on with interest and anxiety (like extras from a Douglas Adams novel), concerned that he might also dig up some of their nuts by mistake....

The last time this creature came to visit was during the Summer....when he turned over our recycling bin and used it as a latrine...before proceeding to run around our communal back garden, holding a garden broom aloft, shaking it at the sky, like a mad thing.  He tried to prise a few windows open with the broom, until my neighbours who were in upstairs, saw him and went to investigate. A chase ensued, like the keystone cops, with Jamie and Claire, my neighbours running after this pathetic bedraggled specimen...round and round the garden. He ran ahead, beltless, trousers round his ankles....until finally, Claire came over all Glaswegian, and lost her temper.  Something snapped. She rammed him up against the garden fence with the rake and held him there..while Jamie called the police on his phone.

The Police eventually turn up an hour later....by which time Gollum had run off in a panic, having left his bag behind. The Police opened the miscreant's bag, to reveal nothing less than two boxes of crunchy nut cornflakes, a large bag of smack and some unused syringes....

An hour later, the wastrel's head appeared over our garden wall again, cheeks drawn, eyes like two limpid pools (there's no one home)...plaintively he asks, "Where is my bag. Have you got it? I need my bag.  The food it in it's for me mum...."

"The Police took it with them back to the Station"

"Which station did they take it to?"

"What, you want to go round there?" 

And with that the crunchy nutter stumbled off ......