This is another in the series of background essays for one of the characters in Cockney Kung Fu. Hope you enjoy it. This was previously posted on the Cockney Kung Fu mailer over at www.tinylette.com/CockneyKungFu - sign up for more...
I've had a few ideas to spread the story out and thought that this would be the perfect venue to test a few ideas. This one is based on a few experiences that I had as a teenager growing up. It also jumps out from a minor character who appears a few times in the first arc of the story.
The Life and Times of the Aylesbury Estate.
I got locked up, I was a wreck, I flew like a bird on drugs and I bit the world on it's arse. Breathe deep. For this is London, SE17 in the 1980s.
My Dad was in prison. there was no way of saying it the easy way. He was always a bully of a man. never obsessed with his family he threw himself in to fights down the pub, chasing skirts and class B drugs and following Millwall. It all went wrong one season when a fight broke out with another team and someone died. My Dad took the blame and is doing a life term of imprisonment. Mum sees him every week. Me? Yeah, I never go. Can't face it.
The only good thing that came from it is that I got a bit of credibility on the estate.
My estate of choice was the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth, South London. Crammed between the equally rabbit warren like Heygate Estate and Burgess Park we were something of a stain on anyone's map. Arguably the most densely populated area in the whole of Europe it consisted of around 2,700 flats and around 7,000 people. We were the forgotten people. Wedged between the white Londoners of Bermondsey, the toffee nosed bankers of London Bridge and the politically charged area of Brixton. We were a hybrid of many of these things and maybe, just maybe a load of families trying to survive and carve out something to come home to at the end of a hard day.
Inner city living is a challenge in even the most normalised of circumstances. This place made an art form of slamming diverse and disparate people next to each other in hot, dirty and sweaty shoe boxes. It was like putting all the hard cunts you knew in a saucepan on the stove and watching with glee as it boiled over again and again until it exploded. At least in an ant colony they work together, we actively worked against each other.
I got locked up, I was a wreck, I flew like a bird on drugs and I bit the world on it's arse. Breathe deep. For this is London, SE17 in the 1980s.
My Dad was in prison. there was no way of saying it the easy way. He was always a bully of a man. never obsessed with his family he threw himself in to fights down the pub, chasing skirts and class B drugs and following Millwall. It all went wrong one season when a fight broke out with another team and someone died. My Dad took the blame and is doing a life term of imprisonment. Mum sees him every week. Me? Yeah, I never go. Can't face it.
The only good thing that came from it is that I got a bit of credibility on the estate.
My estate of choice was the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth, South London. Crammed between the equally rabbit warren like Heygate Estate and Burgess Park we were something of a stain on anyone's map. Arguably the most densely populated area in the whole of Europe it consisted of around 2,700 flats and around 7,000 people. We were the forgotten people. Wedged between the white Londoners of Bermondsey, the toffee nosed bankers of London Bridge and the politically charged area of Brixton. We were a hybrid of many of these things and maybe, just maybe a load of families trying to survive and carve out something to come home to at the end of a hard day.
Inner city living is a challenge in even the most normalised of circumstances. This place made an art form of slamming diverse and disparate people next to each other in hot, dirty and sweaty shoe boxes. It was like putting all the hard cunts you knew in a saucepan on the stove and watching with glee as it boiled over again and again until it exploded. At least in an ant colony they work together, we actively worked against each other.
My Dad was in prison. there was no way of saying it the easy way. He was always a bully of a man. never obsessed with his family he threw himself in to fights down the pub, chasing skirts and class B drugs and following Millwall. It all went wrong one season when a fight broke out with another team and someone died. My Dad took the blame and is doing a life term of imprisonment. Mum sees him every week. Me? Yeah, I never go. Can't face it.
The only good thing that came from it is that I got a bit of credibility on the estate.
My estate of choice was the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth, South London. Crammed between the equally rabbit warren like Heygate Estate and Burgess Park we were something of a stain on anyone's map. Arguably the most densely populated area in the whole of Europe it consisted of around 2,700 flats and around 7,000 people. We were the forgotten people. Wedged between the white Londoners of Bermondsey, the toffee nosed bankers of London Bridge and the politically charged area of Brixton. We were a hybrid of many of these things and maybe, just maybe a load of families trying to survive and carve out something to come home to at the end of a hard day.
Inner city living is a challenge in even the most normalised of circumstances. This place made an art form of slamming diverse and disparate people next to each other in hot, dirty and sweaty shoe boxes. It was like putting all the hard cunts you knew in a saucepan on the stove and watching with glee as it boiled over again and again until it exploded. At least in an ant colony they work together, we actively worked against each other.
You'd see the odd cop during the day. The uniform wearers would occasionally wander the walkways. We knew not to speak to them as nobody needed the reputation of being a grass. Then you'd see early in the early morning a van pull up and a crowd of fat fuckers roll out and boot the door in of the nearest squat. Looking for what they could find and carting the scum bags away. My mum said that they did a good job but not to tell my Dad she had said so.
My pals and me were pushed into a combination of never caring and never fearing. It was almost a survival technique. There were some dangerous places in the eyes of people you passed on the balconies. Many of the skag heads had the look of a zombie movie, shambling and looking for the smallest opportunity to steal or beg to support their habits. Even the average Estate dweller had to have a side they could turn to when attempting a fight or flight moment. Alternatively nasty, aggressive, self serving and desperate.
As I got older I was tempted by the darker side of this South London urban living. I went to warehouse parties at the Elephant and Castle and took acid and danced my face off. They were always raided by the old bill and shut down but not before we sought that brief escape. I tried over and over to make reality only a daydream. I'll admit to trying heroin, but never thankfully injecting. I would chase the black treacle on foil in the noise of a punk filled record playing bedroom. My mum said that the block was smelling like kippers but I think she probably suspected. I walked about drained of vigour for a while on heroin. In different ways I found a sanctuary in chemical excess. Bought from ferret like chancers who were known far and wide as the scrotes and grasses of the estate - I suppose that is how they survived, hand to mouth.
For my teenage years I felt like my mates did. We were nobodies. We had no hope of moving on with our lives. What was there for us out there anyway?
And that is when Millwall came calling for me too....
To be continued.
Hope you enjoyed that. Please let me know if you have any thoughts. And, as always, may thanks for reading.
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