Back to the old house

I met Ian and Doug at the Dog and Ferret as planned. We sat outside, in the beer garden, where we had a good view of The Streets below us; a seemingly unimaginative name for the streets where we grew up, yet one which perfectly captured the estate’s anonymity and blandness.

“I can’t believe they’re knocking it down,” Ian said.

“About bloody time,” said Doug, “estates like that are just breeding grounds for crime.”

“They bred us,” I said.

“Oh yeah, we did okay, but in those days there was a work ethic, you were expected to get a job, learn a trade, get the fuck out of The Streets as fast as you could.”

“Not everyone got out,” said Ian, “Mugs, Fraser, Jambles.”

“Yeah, there were drugs and booze then, but only for a minority, it wasn’t compulsory like it is today, you were expected to work, get an honest living. There probably isn’t a single person living there now that isn’t on benefits.”

“There’s no-one on benefits now,” I said, “nobody there at all. Two days notice, that’s all they had to get out. It didn’t have to end like this.”

As I spoke we gazed down on the first of the bulldozers as it launched into a terrace house on the outskirts of the estate.

“I wonder where they put them all?” said Doug. None of us answered, we stood there in the pub garden, watching our past crumbling into rubble, wallowing in our memories.

We had met when we were four or five years old, neighbours in the same tower block. Those toddler-based friendships shaped our lives, for thirteen years we were as close as, well, as close as people crammed together in a tower block. Then as soon as we turned eighteen ‘voom’, we were off, launching ourselves into the wide world, only to see each other at birthdays, weddings, and reasonless pissups.

“Anyone want another beer?”, asked Doug, already on his way to the bar. He knew us so well.

“Funny to think this is all due to the tiger,” said Ian, when we were alone together.

“I never really understood the logic,” I said.

Ian shook his head in agreement. “S’posed to be something about laying a trap for the tiger once they’d cleared the estate.”

It still made no sense to me. How could they know that the tiger would come this way, when there are some many square miles of city it could take itself to. And what sort of trap could they only set here, not anywhere else in London.

The demolition continued below us. Ian got his phone out and took a photo just as a wrecking ball came crashing into our tower block. It’s the picture on my facebook page if you want to take a look.

“So that’s our childhood gone,” he said, “another part of our lives wiped out forever.”

“It’ll be our turn soon I said,” sharing his mood.

We stared silently as the wrecking ball finished the job and our home for our formative years was reduced to so much rubble and dust.

“They can take our houses but they’ll never take our beer,” Doug said cheerfully, returning hands-full with three pints of foaming bitter. Our mood lifted, maybe life would go on a bit longer after all.

“Watch out Doug,” shouted Ian, “there’s a tiger behind you.”

Doug turned round to look and me and Ian laughed hysterically.

“Gullible,” Ian chanted with childlike glee. The three of us would never grow up.