I love the Afro-Caribbean food shops along the High Street with their interesting mixture of fruit and vegetables and the little cafes and restaurants with food I am not used to. I found another eel pie shop.
Peckham Rye is like a breath of country air in the middle of the city, a green common with old trees. There are beautiful Georgian cottages with jasmine and roses as well as intimidating concrete walkways and high-rise blocks.
So, the day after riots erupted in north London I thought nothing of going on the bus to Morrisons in Peckham even though I did not really need to. I had done my shopping and wandered round the arcade, wondering why the shops were putting up their shutters early. I was waiting at the bus stop with my shopping trolley when people came running down the road from the High Street. There were people with push chairs and small children, and an elderly man from Brixton, very upset, who was saying that he couldn't understand people behaving like that. Then a lot of very smart young black men came out of the hairdressers and went up towards the High Street and I realised that it was no good waiting for a bus which probably wouldn't get through whatever was happening up there. So I walked away, asking a local woman about other buses. Bermondsey suddenly felt a very long way away and I was not sure of the direction. I got on the next bus that came, just to get away, and, seeing a train station, got off, found my way back to London Bridge and home.
I knocked my neighbours' door and they had the TV on. The next couple of hours we just sat watching Croydon town centre going up in flames and madness on the streets. Being four floors up with two locked electronic gates between us and the ground felt like being in a fortress.
Next day I left London early, reaching Birmingham New Street just before the riots broke out there too. A few days later I was paying my respects on the Dudley Road where three innocent young men had lost their lives.
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