So, about the riot:
I saw tweets suggesting it at 8am.
I saw the BBM messages encouraging it at 4pm.
By the time I got home, there was a police cordon around most of Lewisham. Shops in Hither Green were shut.
On Manor Park, a group of kids (really, kids) swaggered with a huge bottle of Pimms. I wondered where the hell they’d got that from.
When I got to the A20, I saw which shop they’d looted it from. They’d smashed the shit out of everything around the Dirty South pub. The atmosphere was fucking horrible.
I took the photo above at about 9pm, after the mayhem had moved on to Catford. A lady coming from the Lee direction stopped me in the street. She said something like “They’ve smashed everything, it’s awful”.
The next day, this. All around the Dirty South – outside the area the police could protect – shops were looted. Down by the Lewisham Centre, burned out cars. I took a few photos of the damage, here.
And now what?