Reflections of the neighbourhood of my young adulthood

In a quieter darkened room
The dominoes hammered down
The Old West Indian men
Them that you see about town
Jamaican patois yelling "fresh mango" he's selling

The basement is a boomin'
The Wailers are a wailin
The rib cages are a vibratin'
The Ganja pungent 'n' pervadin'
Heavy with smoke 'n' raasclaat danger

A long plain wooden bar stands in the dimmed light
Behind two rottweilers snarling and stand guardin'
Red Stripe and Special Brew's a flowin'
And only at dawn of day do the people start to goin'

Back then "the Square" was a fairly dangerous place to live. I remember riot squad police deployed with dogs on each corner when there was a blues raid. I remember a riot was close to breaking out one night about 3am. I once found in my own hedge not a nest of lost eggs but a tin of sticks of hash hidden there by a local dealer I knew. The dealers would pester you while you go to the shop for milk. I was mugged once by two youths with knives. The street-walkers would beckon you and ask you for a cigarette, which I didn't really mind. The pubs were pumping with strong Jamaican accents (in contrast with the Derbyshire accent here - an accent I dispossedly speak myself). There were a lot of drug dealers (predominantly selling hashish), and some unpleasant pimps. The white people were mainly down to earth and friendly, some battered and bruised, like in any poor inner-city area.

And yet curiously I felt more at home there than I do here. Maybe it's just my mind that felt more at home in it's body...than it does now. However, that was back then. A time come and gone. Now, the powers-that-be have emptied the area of overt pushers and prostitutes. Now it has gone underground, and the drug of choice for the pushers isn't a £5 piece of hash, but (in their codes which the police will obviously know) a ten bag of Brown, B's, Brandy (Heroin); or a P4 of White, Whiskey (0.4 of a gramme of crack-cocaine). It might look a safer place to live, but eyes are deceiving. I don't know for sure; I may be wrong; I don't live there anymore. But I know people that do. Today, your sons and daughters, instead of buying a small amount of marijuana to smoke, their is an easy access to the hard drugs, that rob them of their spirit and soul.

Enough rambling. I'm not writing anything I'd keep if it was on paper, but I might as well post it on to my weblog as I've typed it, just so I feel I've not wasted the past hour.... ramble ramble, scramble

rambling thoughts in the early hours of December 2009