Next to Ness

Back in the late 1980s, I developed a really bad habit...

What were you doing in 1989? Rioting with the students in Paris? Standing up to tanks in China, pulling down walls in Berlin? Or were you like me? Pretending to be happy in a festering, dilapidated, hopelessly hopeless squat in the depths of Brixton with the oddest collection of people that ever sat down and complained that somebody else had taken the last of the milk?

And there I would have stayed if I hadn't poked my nose into somewhere it really shouldn't have been poked. Somewhere I had no reason or right to be. And found something that really shouldn't have been there either. A clash of cultures, a rancid old house, a stash of hippies and one very cute dog.

It was bound to end in tears.