As if it’s a real thing.

I’m not a complete fucktard.  I check the road before walking out onto it, I’ve worked out that this is the most effective way of not dying.

That’s what I did yesterday.  On Collins St. I’d hit all my favourite pop culture nerd hang outs, had lunch with a mate, fixed my camera and was off to take photos of street art in my city of Melbourne.

But before I could do that I was stopped by a young pretty humourless police officer who wanted to know why I’d jaywalked.

“Did I?”

“Yes, you were the only person to walk before the green man appeared”.

“OK”.

“Well, why did you do it?”

“Probably because no cars were coming and I don’t live in a city where you’re fined for safely crossing a road”.

A month ago had I said this, I would have been fine.  A month ago most Australians treated me like I was a Pom.  My pronunciation of certain words was pommy enough to convince aussies I wasn’t one of them.

Now it’s a different story.  My Australian accent has returned, so much so that this police officer didn’t even believe I’d been living in the UK.  Then when I showed her my brand new Australia license (which I just got to hand in for a UK one when I returned to London) she definitely wasn’t buying my shit.

My shit was, rarely for me, completely true.

I now cross the road not completely automatically, but fairly close to it, far more than my Australian friends do.  And when traveling with my film crew, which were 2 poms, 2 aussies and myself, you could see the difference as the aussies often hung back.

This isn’t a hard and fast rule, my wife doesn’t cross in the UK, but in Melbourne people seem to cross the street less and less illegally with the thought they can be fined.

I’ve always thought fining people for jaywalking is a stupid thing to do.  People who get killed jaywalking are just proving that natural selection works.

I decided on not telling the police officer any of this.

On all three occasions when she asked why I’d done it, I informed her that I’d forgotten it was even a law here, I’d been living in London for years and if I don’t see any cars, I cross the road, as people all across the world do when not under fear of a fine.

You could see she didn’t believe me.

She took my details down so she could send me a fine in the mail, being careful not to say whether I’d been fined or not.

She did say that if the fine were sent, it would go to my Australian address, and I told her it would have to make it by Friday, as after that I’d be back in the UK and unable to pay it.

If I do get a fine for safely crossing a road when no cars were around, it was that comment in my recently refreshed Australian accent that will do it for me.

Last night I entered London and the closest thing I saw to violence was a young guy casually walking down the street with a bandana in his hand.  Other than that, an a few sirens, London was eerily quiet.  It wasn’t until I was woken by youths (that seems to be the word used for the rioters no matter what their age is) coming home at around 3 in the morning.  A old West Indian accented woman abused them for being involved in the foolishness.

Today I was a bit pissed off to find that my wife’s work was open. That was because she works in Croydon.  She works in an office and not a store, but with stores there still smoldering, most not opening (including the banks) and a shopping centre apparently being shut down, I’d rather she just wasn’t there at all.

Being that I hadn’t made my trip to Brum for the cricket, I figured I better take a look around my local area, and with what happened in Brixton fairly well covered, I thought I’d head down the road to Camberwell which I also live only 10 minutes from. On my way down I stopped at my local café, I half expected all the shops there to be smashed up, but they were all ok, although only a third of them were open.

In the café I had a chat with the owner, who was very angry.  I couldn’t get to the bottom of what exactly happened because a yelly old woman joined in the conversation, but it sounded like there were a bunch of youths around at the front of the café, but they ended up making their way toward Camberwell.

I made my way down towards Camberwell the same way the rioters had the night before.  On the way down a couple of shops looked like they’d be smashed up, but it was hard to tell. They’d been completely boarded up with wood, perhaps it was a precaution, but it sort of looked like there was some damage.   Other shops were just shuttered up.

It seems ridiculous, but when I actually got to Camberwell, I was happy that the place where I get my vinyl, rat records, looked ok. However, right opposite a goldsmith place had been smashed up, but not broken into.  The further I got into Camberwell the more you noticed that while there was a window that had been cracked every few shops, none seemed to have been broken into.   Unlike in some of the other centres, Camberwell doesn’t really have many shops like currys, JD sports and the like, but it was the phone stores and goldsmith that it looked like they tried the hardest to break into.

The people in Camberwell seem to fit into three categories.

The scared were just on constant look out, looking around them waiting for something to happen.  They were also the ones who were running around, causing more panic, as everytime someone ran, all three groups of people would stare, half expecting something to kick off.

The business as normal people seemed quite oblivious to what was going on.  There was jogging, some people sitting in a Camberwell café sipping coffee as the pub down the road was boarding up its windows, and one woman was really upset she couldn’t shop at Morrisons without even seeming to understand why it was shut.

Then there were the people on the green. Some were kids, some were youths and there were more than a few adults.  All of them looked very relaxed.  Perhaps they always stay there, and I just never look over at the green all that much.  But it just felt all that more sinister.  And Camberwell can often feel sinister, I’ve seen many a copper chasing a kid there, and there is always a strong police presence.

It was 2 O’Clock by this stage, and far less than half the shops were closed.  The Morrisons was shut, a bunch of wooden crates were up against the window in perhaps the lamest attempt to stop people from rioting I could think of.

With Morrisons and another supermarket shut, I suddenly realised that if this keeps going, then we will run out of food at home.  So I went looking for some milk and bread.

Even though there is generally not a shortage of places to buy food in Camberwell, with half the places shut or boarded up, I couldn’t find any bread or milk.  Eventually I found the CO-OP open, barely.  All their shutters were down, except for the one that let you into the door. I walked in half expecting to see people rioting, but instead saw a shop that was largely empty as people either walked in and then walked out, or went around looking for anything they could.

It was panic shopping.  All except the man buying his lotto ticket.

Everything in the cool shelves was gone.  There was fresh produce on the ground and people were just jumping over it.  No fruit, bread, or meat was anywhere.  In the cold shelves all that was left was big blocks of cheese.  There was a crowd around the frozen section, so like the others I just grabeed a few things that I could freeze as well, just incase things just happened.  And somewhere on the ground I found a loaf of bread.

I paid for the last loaf of bread with the very scared assistant manager, and then headed back out of Camberwell.

The one thing I didn’t see today was any police.  Not one.  Every couple of minutes a cop car spread through Camberwell, but none of them seemed to be close to stopping.  Camberwell wasn’t lawless, I didn’t see any actual laws being broken, but it felt off, and it’s hard to feel too comfortable as shopkeepers close their shutters at 230 in the afternoon and some are nailing wooden boards on their windows.

I’m posting this late today, and other than a few sirens, I’ve got no reason to believe that Camberwell has gone off tonight.  It just seems like it might have been spared of the majority of the carnage. Now all I can hope is that old man who braved Camberwell off feleing and the obscene shopping scenes at the CO-OP wins with his lotto ticket.  Like Camberwell did last night.

I’d like to think this was an elaborate ruse for a brothel or drug dealer.

I’m an optimist.

Anyway, this is the Onion Shed of Stockwell.

They don’t make Onion sheds like this anymore.

Luckily there was a review on there that told me everything I needed to know.

There is something special about someone who says this much about a battery, and then apologise for not saying more.

So I had to read some of his other reviews.

I don’t own this, but I have so much reviewing to give.

Then, as if this reviewer hadn’t done enough, he gave just a little bit more.

If you want to read more, there is much more to read.

But I’ll get to all that later.

For now I’m going to try and upload a few photos of the South London I see.

So here is the first one.

I checked for the other shoe, but there was only one.

Another friend of mine is doing a blog of just stuff she sees on her commute. Check it out.

Bicester is a word that has been designed for people not from the UK to pronounce badly.

The train was reasonably full on the way there, but coming into Bicester station there seemed to be no real town to speak of. Just a station, and some roads.

I fully expected to get off with 3 or 4 other people and just wait for my lift. I was the only person on my carriage that was even getting off at Bicester.

When I did get off, the station suddenly turned into the busiest in the UK.

Most of the other carriages had hundreds of people getting off, mostly Asian (Asian Asian, not subbie Asian).

While I was trying to work out where I needed to go, they all just filed into a line at the bus stop, and then were ushered onto the bus one by one. When one bus was full, another would pull up like some Army drill and the people would continue to get on.

Eventually all the buses were full, and yet the people still stayed in the line, waiting to be taken to who knows where.

Then after 5 or 10 minutes more buses turned up and the whole thing started up again. Another train arrived, and they all still automatically knew what to do.

I was baffled. Other than a handful of locals, which is all I expected, I couldn’t see why all these people knew what to do, and where the hell they were being bussed.

Immediately I came up with the most logical explanation, this was a cult. There was no other explanation, these people were too well organised and behaved, what else would they be doing out here.

I got closer to them, and tried to listen to any conversations that would help me. Unfortunately few of them spoke in English, so that helped me very little.

Then I checked out the bus, and that is when I lost interest, it wasn’t a cult, it was for some super outlet shopping centre or something. Boring.

But, think about it, if you were running a cult, what would be a better cover than having a shopping mall in the middle of nowhere in some place that most people pronounce incorrectly.

Genius.

And I think it is fairly important.

Sri Lanka is not very American.

It was perhaps the first place I have ever been that didn’t feel like it had been roughly mounted by the great thronging testosterone of the United States.

Australia, England, South Africa, Poland and France are the places I’ve been for long enough to study this Americanism up close, and it is easy to see.

Not just in fast food, but in music, TV, fashion.

Somehow Sri Lanka has less of it. Almost none in fact.

Most of the music that was played on radio that I heard was from England. The only rap or hip hop I heard was Sinahalese, and that was only once.

I saw one person wearing a basketball singlet the whole time I was there. I never saw a yankees cap, no Hollywood style adverts, and even nike and things like nike were nowhere to be seen.

There was no graffitti, no real mention of American culture on the streets at all and even the advertising had little Amercanisms in them.

I can remember only one American program on the TV at any time, and that was a film, that I have forgotten the name of.

Even in the cities it seemed that America had little impact.

The only constant reminder of America was coke. There was a lot of coke.

It everyway it felt way more like an English and Indian hybrid that had once visited America but not really liked it.

With it’s history and proximity to India it makes sense to be that sort of hybrid, but Australia feels way more American than English, so while the English is still there, it has been covered and added to by Americans.

In Sri Lanka, they just seem to have ignored the Americans.

They have done this to such an extent that they even banned Akon (oddly popular hip-hop squeaker) from touring them.

I respect this very Americanless society.

Word up to my Lankan homies.

It is truly an urban wonderland.

Peckham is largely a market pretending to be a suburb.

The smell of rotting food is right there in the evenings, and disgustingly in the mornings so is the stench of fresh food.

At night the foxes eat out of the bins.

There are usually seventy different kind of bananas on show.

And the place is always packed with people.

One day, on a particularly people heavy day, I saw someone walking up the footpath with what looked like a large shopping trolley with a dead body in it.

It wasn’t, it was just a trolley of meat.

Now this was just a normal shopping trolley that could have been used by any supermarket in the world, and instead some butcher type fellow was transporting uncovered meats around the streets of peckham.

It was mad, and yet glorious.

I’m not sure how many vegans live in Peckham, but it would have been worth following this guy around just to see if one walked past it, shrieked and ran away.

Perhaps the fresh air from the 14 buses that drive through there smokes the meat.

It was big chunks of meat of too, like limbs of lamb or something.

The other moment I cherished was when the service finished one morning at the Peckham Rye Lane Chapel.

A weird little place wedged into Peckham between cheap phones and cheap booze.

I must have timed it perfectly as all the men from the church came out.

All old black dudes, all dressed like they were about to head to a Harlem speak easy in the 30s.

I’ve never seen so many classy hats in one place.

Almost everyone of them had a three piece suit on, and several were sporting very pimp daddy walking sticks.

I can only assume this was a men’s only service, or even a mens breakfast.

I’m not sure how I would go about getting invited into this, but I want it, and then I want to know where they all buy their clothes and hats.

On top of meat and well dressed spiritual men, Peckham also has a miracle centre, and not enough suburbs do.

But they could be, if a boy band got involved.

Especially the runner up to an x factor from a few years ago.

The band is JLS, 4 young guys whose general appeal is that you could take them all home to mum, I spose they can sing, but I can’t recall what they sound like to verify that.

Being that they are a boy band, the average age of their fans must be about 12.

So them on condoms is an interesting choice.

Obviously teen pregnancy is a big deal, but it isn’t until a boy band (in the old days weren’t boy bands responsible for teen pregnancies?) puts their face on a condom – not literally – that you really notice the problem.

In the UK I haven’t noticed too many teen mothers, although I don’t go looking for them anymore.

While JLS are putting rubbers on youngsters with questionable music taste, what about kids who like good music.

Why not have a Fugazi condom for punk fans?

Since Fugazi once had an album called red medicine, you could probably get them involved with the STD side of it as well.

Ofcourse my major problem with the JLS condoms is it ruins my fantasy that all guys in boy bands are completely sexless.

It might not sound that exciting, but Kandy adds Elephants, lots and lots of fully blinged up Elephants.

What you end up with is a few kids dancing, some fire twirling, and hours and hours of Elephants.

We must have been sitting out there for almost 5 hours in total.

Others stood in the rain.

Some watched from Pizza Hut.

But, it was a long haul.

Also, for Perahera, there is no alcohol permitted.

Now, I get that for religion’s sake alcohol sometimes gets the shaft, but if you are going to ask me me to be in my chair 90 minutes before an event and then have it start late, I think we should relax on the whole drinking thing.

But, Perahera was cool, plus I got to eat a late night buffet afterwards, which is always nice.

So here are the photos of blinged up elephants, teeth and fire.

The rain as we waited undercover.

While waiting for it to start I was taking hundreds of pictures of the guys selling the bright toys.

Then the fire twirlers came out.

Then the elephants came out.

And there were also some dancers.

The whole album is here.

Perahera is definitely an event, although I would suggest that you eat a pizza hut meal while they are being offered earlier in the night, as those Elephants move fucking slowly, and our event had over a hundred, I believe other perahera events have more.

And when you get hungry you start to abuse the slow moving elephants.