Roach
Road, Hackney Wick
29th September 2001
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So, Saturday and I was in London for the cannabis demo. It was a dead cert to have been a huge event, then the Sept 11th attack on New York happened and everything changed. Anyway, a thousand or so people did turn up and we had a demo, walking through strangely empty West End streets, streets normally crowded with tourists. London had the air, well, if not of a ghost town, that's saying too much, but certainly of a place just going through the motions, it was all very strange. There was a party on that night though, and unlike normal squat parties, the location of this one was no secret during the day. News was of a large traveler site in Hackney wick. So around 9.00pm I meet up with Spar and after a couple of beers we head off to Hackney. This site is huge, a whole factory covering acres of ground with several warehouse type buildings and in each one, several rigs, I lost count at 10 or so. |
The whole place was like a small town - indeed the new Riverside complex in Norwich looks very similar. Deep inside the complex was a bar up a flight of steps with an illuminated sign over the door: "The Aardvark", we started off in there. Well, I've never been in a squat like this place, its clean, there's video screens and a nice light rig and of course another system, This lot are from South London and the music showed that, very funky, groovy, verging on Soul but with a healthy mix of house beats.
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Elsewhere I recognised Stinky Pink and I bumped in to several members of HEADFUK and Nick (Ronin) played a live set.
This was a huge party, I'm useless at guessing numbers (especially in the state of mind I was in at the time) but from the top of one set of stairs there was a view over the bonfire where there must have been a few hundred people just in that area so there must have been several thousand people there all told at the peak.
One strange thing though - no Italians. London parties were full of Italian squatters selling drugs a year or so ago, I had noticed less of them at the last North London squat party I went to in April, now there were almost none.
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It was a well organised party and I saw no darkside at all unless you count the crack smoking, especially in one unused room. There was free water, although I didn't manage to find the tap all night but it was easy enough to get a drink off people.
Then I met Jane.
One of the things I was told about the squats when I first started going to them is that the most wonderful things can happen. You'd better believe it. 16 or 17 years ago - 1984 actually - a young girl called Jane went to Wymondham college, a boarding school outside of Norwich. This school was (is) a very strict place, run on the lines of private schools, its a very strange place.
This young girl hit the system hard and after a mere 7 weeks, was "asked to leave", she was very unimpressed with the place. After that, she left the education system altogether and "dropped out", living rough in London and eventually drifting into the squat scene.
When she was at the school though, she came into my office to use the photocopier, I was the library technician there. It seems the subject of how to deal with the "system" came up and I gave her some kind of advice.
We never saw each other again until that Saturday night. I was standing next to the fire when she came up to me and asked me if I ever worked in Norwich. She recognised me after 16 years, of course I didn't recognise her, after all we couldn't have met many times at all.
It was short encounter, we'll never meet again, and it was only after it happened I realised how utterly unlikely it was. It seems I made quite an impression on quite a few kids at that school in the four years I worked there.
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The outside fire. During the night this area was crowded, this is where I met Jane. To the left was a covered area with comfy seats and a sound system playing D&B and other chilled music |
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It was good to meet up with some of the party people again though, I know a lot of decent people through these parties. I also met Elly, the girl I first met in the original pub squat back in 1999. She's still OK, thin as a rake, but OK..
I left at around 11.00am, a bit early but I had to get home and feed the cat. Some party.