Break the bank. Go mad. Splash out. Lose control. These are the things we encourage in this country, this ‘Great’ Britain of ours. Go drinking on the King’s Road so we can pretend we’re posh bastards with cash to burn. Why? To put on an act, to make believe a life. Slouching round Chelsea with an exaggerated swagger like you’ve just done a shoot for Calvin Klein. Don’t-care-when-I-get-there attitude, won’t get out of bed for less that 5k-cut the bullshit! Reality check.
If only people knew how much I was really worth; I am either a millionaire who inherited a fortune, unbeknownst to anyone, or I’m skint with barely a tenner to my name. Which is more interesting, more exciting? Trying to survive in London when you’ve got nothing makes for a lot of fun. Jumping the tube morning and evening, running the risk the pigs will be camped at the top of the escalator’s to your stop one day, hitting you with a fine that you can’t afford to pay else you wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. Scraping enough together to be able to eat for the week-Sainsbury’s Basics has got a lot going for it make no mistake, feeding the poor of the nation.
There’s a surprising amount you can get away with in this majestic, filthy capital of ours. Everywhere you look down-and-outs exist, ones who have fallen off the wagon, the allure of the city proving their downfall. Their transgression? The hope of a better life that gives way all too easily to the harsh reality of getting smashed. Whatever your vice is: gangs, parties, drugs, alcohol, knives, guns, it’s easy to be sucked into the wrong crowd.
Let me paint a scene for you: At a party you’re pissed, offered a line, you need some fresh air and a cigarette, you stumble outside lost in the haze as the fix rushes through your veins. Suddenly you’re going under, not from the drug, but under a hail of blows that you didn’t see coming from the gang that materialises around you, as if from the thin air you try to gulp down, hoping it’ll sober you up, and quickly. But that’s a mistake, and it’s going to cost you dearly. Because now you’re seeing clearly and feeling more confident as you drunkenly weigh up your chances of taking these youngsters, stand up for yourself and teach them a lesson. Not in London.
You wade into them, arms flailing, failing to see the glint of the flashing knife until it’s too late, helpless to react as it rushes up to meet your forearm, slicing into the flesh with surprising ease. Blood spurts forcefully out of the narrow, agonising wound, warm, comforting if only for the briefest of seconds before realisation sinks in that this is just the start. You look into the eyes of those deranged kids, high on something, just kids you want to shout, and you see vicious hatred imprinted on their minds.
This botched mugging is about to get worse simply because you fought back; you have enraged the disaffected youth, and they are going to make you pay. Adrenaline disperses the pain in your arm; the brain depresses the distress signal that flickers the body into action. The will to live heightens your senses, manipulating your arms and legs into instinctive action. Although severely impaired, your left hand acts as a shield whilst the right lashes out, hoping to deter the vultures in Adidas that encircle you, fixing you with their twisted grins of amusement, the thrill of the chase. Like a wounded animal you fight on in desperation, all the while being backed into a dark alley by the gang, away from civilisation, if you can call it that.
Quietly pleading now, realising the futility of reasoning with these debased human beings, their final act happens so fast; they were simply toying with you before. A pincer movement, a blur of hands and feet and metal whirling as one towards you, and, impossible to withstand, you collapse under the flurry of blows to your head and chest. In those last few agonising seconds you are acutely aware of the contrast between your own sheer horror, and the calm, remorseless nature of the boy that stands over you, whose name you will never know, as he plunges the knife deep into your chest.
There is no escape from this madness of the capital, this disease that afflicts the big smoke, which on this night has chosen you as its latest victim.
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