Do bed-sit neighbours count?
When I first moved to London, I rented a bedsit off some dodgy slumlord type (when I left, there was a bit of a dispute over getting my deposit back, a dispute the was quickly resolved when I pointed out that his home address was on the tenancy agreement and I would quite happily come round to collect it). Most of the other bedsiters were fairly sound, if a little weird, but one was really annoying. His name was Matt and he was 17. He was the first of his group of mates to move out of his parents, which meant his “crew” would treat the place like a youth club.

I would frequently come home from work to find about 15 school kids sitting on the stairs, smoking weed and trying to act hard. I was particularly impressed when I was asked “Oo I was peepin at, white bwoy?” by some 15 year old ginger kid.

Them hanging around the place didn’t bother me, since I quickly got into the habit of locking the door to my bedsit every time I left it – even when I went for a piss. What did bother me, was the music. Of the dozen or so kids who hung around the place, I would say half were either black or mixed race, the rest of them just thought they were black. So they listened to hip-hop. Unfortunately, they were all very much middle class (this being a relatively nice area of Finchley) so they only listened to radio-friendly, non-scary hip-hop and only three tracks thereof: “Stan”, “Still Dre” and “Forgot About Dre”. Now I didn’t mind these tracks, what I did object to was them being played on repeat for days on end, through a shitty little Alba portable stereo.

At first I asked them to turn it down, which they did for a while. Then I started basically getting told to fuck off – though they’d wait until the door was closed to actually tell me to fuck off.

Unfortunately for them, while they had a really crappy stereo, I did not. I had a relatively expensive CD player and amp and a massive set of speakers. So, as soon as the hip-hop went on, so would Pantera’s “Vulgar Display Of Power”. I’d stick wet tissue paper in my ears and whack the amp up to about 6, at which point the vibrations in my chest would be kinda painful. They’d normally fuck off somewhere else after a couple of minutes of thrash metal.

I also accidentally scared the shit out of them all. I needed something to cover up where the door should have been on my wardrobe. While wandering through Camden market, I spotted a flag-seller and realised these were the perfect size for the job. So I bought a Union Jack and pinned that in place. After it had hung there for a few days, the creases in it started to annoy me, so I decided to iron it. I was just slobbing out, so was wearing my slobbing out gear – a pair of blue jeans that were too tight to wear in public and a white t-shirt. So I stuck my feet in my boots (I’d taken to wearing para-boots to support a dodgy ankle) and wandered out onto the landing where the ironing board was set up. I was half way through getting the creases out when the “gang-stars” pilled up the stairs and came to a comedy halt, literally running into each other when the one at the front stopped. They all stared at me for a moment, then slowly filed past in silence, trying not to catch my eye. This puzzled me until I went back into my room and caught my reflection: big bovver boots, tight blue jeans, white t-shirt and a head freshly shaved down to a “1” all over, ironing a Union Jack – looking for all the world like a poster-boy for Combat18. They left me well alone after that…
(ScousersPet, Fri 2 Oct 2009, 9:57, 2 replies)

hahahahaha, accidental BNP'er in an instant
woo :)
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 2 Oct 2009, 10:23, closed)

The ginger gang-sta
did it for me. Nice one, sir.
( SpankyHanky, Fri 2 Oct 2009, 10:25, closed)