Squatters

Sometimes in life, you and 15 of your closest friends, just have to find a boarded up nightclub, break in, then move-in and live there on a permanent basis without any of your neighbors knowing.  Yes, there was a large group of squatters living 100 yards from our front door in complete secrecy.  That is, until they got drunk and one of them fell off the roof onto the sidewalk, we think possibly assisted by another angry squatter.

Kristin and I were walking home a few Saturday nights ago around 11:30 after a lovely Italian dinner just East on Old Brompton, when what to our wondering eyes would appear but six police cars and three ambulances with lights a blazing very near.  The medics were working on a young man in a stretcher rather diligently and detectives from the New Scotland Yard were quizzing the crowd, which consisted primarily of hippie dreadlocks and hemp necklaces, about what they had seen.  We couldn’t procure any real Intel from the scene but Kristin hypothesized we were in the company of squatters and that a rooftop accident was likely in the cards.

The next morning, we ran into a police officer guarding the door of the club, and two hippie girls sleeping on the sidewalk right next to him.  Oh that’s pretty cool, I thought sarcastically, happy that this was not occurring while my in-laws were in town.  The police officer wouldn’t divulge any information, owing to the fact that he was “guarding a crime scene and could not speak about it,” which he then followed up with “but you live on this street? Ya you have nothing to worry about.”  Oh that’s pretty cool, again I thought, unimpressed with the overall conversation and the hippie girls taking repeated slugs of some sort of alcohol wrapped in bags throughout my questioning.  As the self-appointed leader of the Earl’s Court flat renters association, I deserved better treatment damnit!!

It was only the following day, when we found out from a wily locksmith on our street that apparently somebody had been pushed off the roof of the building.  Hey, just another day in London.

Let’s fast-forward a month now…as we’re getting home from dinner one evening while Debbie and George were in town, again, the corner of our street was the talk of Earl’s Court, as a number of police cars (and the SWAT team!) broke into the club to kick out a NEW group of squatters!  Grant and I are both looking forward to the day that they FINALLY turn the abandoned eye sore into flats (as our estate agent had ensured us, the day we agreed to rent out our flat).