London, My Home

How can London be burning?  

It's all over the news.  It's in every paper.  On every person's lips: London's Burning.  The nursery rhyme has come back to haunt us all, and I've never felt this sense of unease.  My friends that don't originate from London think it's all a hoot, but I find it horrifying that my home town, my roots are in flames.  

I went back today.  At first I didn't notice the difference.  I attempted to venture to familiar old locations but was warded off by police tape, and literal standstills at Underground stations.  When rush hour hit, several lines were either wholly or partially suspended, trains overloaded with business people and shrill conductors trying to maintain order.

The riots started days ago, and yet they still seem to continue, and have now spread up through and fast into Birmingham and Leeds.  And this is somehow connected with the shooting of one man in Tottenham, a neighbourhood that has now become some kind of nouvea war zone full of flame and destruction.  Madness.  The beginning of madness.

I fled, back to my Humdrum countryside convincing myself that, everyone will see sense soon enough.  This will die down, London's seen worse.  It's just such a shock that after everything, it's so easy to resort back to the desperate violent riots that occurred in the 80s and 90s.  Will this event be history?  Will this be a turning point?

Maybe I was right.  You can't go back.  I just never considered that I couldn't go back to the one place I considered home.