fictional estate

I have just moved to London Fields. I like the idea of living in a place named after a Martin Amis novel.

But the area of London Fields where I live bears no resemblance to the place in Amis’s novel: there are no Keith Talents here – except for the gallery of the same name in the street next to mine – only Freya Glints in bug-eyed shades or Josh Brokers in Carhartt. It’s the habit of a writer to fictionalise what they encounter, or to rewrite it at least - to reshape experience into something coherent, significant even – a reflex which explains my activities on this blog. But this reflex is redundant when it seems as though everyone around me has already fictionalised themselves, given themselves a character, a story. I do this myself. As we step out into Broadway Market we are all as aware of this as we are of our privilege which we wear with self-conscious nonchalance, slouching on battered leather sofas in cafes with our feet up on the furniture, trying to read one another.

It’s different on the estate where I live, a council-owned low-rise red brick block. The sections of communal walkway look like strips from a reel of film, I think as I sit out on my balcony looking across at people passing or down on the stories unfolding below me.

The other day some boys were digging in a mud-filled ditch. They found a dog’s skull which they stuck on a stick and brandished, charging into a group of small girls who scattered, screaming.

I watch the mothers of these kids, prematurely aged, young grandmothers already, hanging out their washing. I watch their teenaged sons, hanging around, on the watch for something I can’t see. I make up stories too about this – about what I can’t see out here: the men. The teenage girls.

P tells me that the idea of theatre balconies arose from the desire of the rich and powerful to put themselves on display. They were not so interested in the action onstage: after all, balconies afford only a limited view.

But when P and I sit on our balcony and watch the activities of our neighbours, to whom we have ascribed whole life stories, characters, relationships, names, we watch as though invisible ourselves: it has never occurred to me until now that people might be watching us in turn, that people might have names for us. Everyone on the estate looks too involved in the daily business of living to bother looking up.

Yesterday, very early in the morning our household was woken by a loud, jubilant calling. A man stood out on his balcony, calling out to nobody we could see. He might have been calling to God. It was so early in the morning we guessed he’d been up all night. We could not understand what he was saying but it seemed to make a kind of sense to him because every now and then he would laugh. It was like music. We went out on the balcony to watch him and found that our neighbours were doing the same. No one was asking him to be quiet. Everyone was listening as though he were performing for us. But then a police car pulled up. Two policemen emerged, then disappeared into the block, reappearing on the balcony alongside the man. He was quiet then, almost meek. And then someone on a nearby balcony shouted out to the police, Hey you, white boy. I’m watching you. Don’t you bully him, I am watching you.

The man and his police escorts disappeared from the balcony.

Then an old man, immaculately dressed, leaning on a cane, hobbled into view. P joked that he looked like an extra, that he seemed to have emerged in response to a director calling out, “Cue old man with cane”.

After that, a police-van pulled up. The doors were opened. The inside of the van looked like a space for holding animals. And then the doors were shut and the ignition turned on. Perhaps, we thought, the man had quietened down so that there was no need for the van after all. It looked as though it were leaving. But no, it simply reversed and backed up close to the entrance of the block, making it easier to get the man inside, making it impossible for anyone watching from their balcony to see the man being put inside.

I write this blog in order to exert some control over the things that happen to me and around me, or at least to give myself the illusion of control.

But sometimes stories write themselves and I can only watch.