Tuesday 9 August 2011

Looking for the Lost Riots

Facebook rumours, Google searches, the police outside Churchill Shopping Square.
Somewhere in Brighton there is a riot, but nobody knows where.
I receive a message from a friend saying that there are rioters who plan to gather at 18:30 (very precise) on The Level at Brighton. Other people say that the nexus of the Brighton riots will be down London Road. I suppose there might be riots - there are across the country.
At the moment though, Brighton continues as normal, but everyone waits, looking for the lost riots. Perhaps like some tulpa, everyones combined excitement may create a riot, some psychic upheaval of unrest. Spectral hoodies on some shadowy and unreal estate, a shadow Brighton somewhere on the astral plane.
I imagine these phantom rioters not in the summer warmth of today, but on a cold and rainy autumn afternoon. Driving wet from dead-grey skies. Thin figures hiding jaundiced limbs in rag, and hoods pulled blind over faces like executioners shrouds, grim reaper headgear. Dismantling the night-side of Brighton, deconstructing this queen of slaughtering places.
Or perhaps not.
It reminds me of those skinhead rumours in the 1980s when I was at school. A pre-internet viral campaign, a word of mouth epidemic. There would be tales of how the skinheads were 'coming from South London' and had 'already done over Mellow Lane West'. Someone might have sighted some of them at 'Hillingdon shops'. They might have come 'hidden in vans'. The skinheads, of course, never appeared. I suppose there might be an uprising in Brighton, there is elsewhere, but now, as the sounds of seagulls and cries from the taxi rank intermingle, there is not.
We check facebook and the Argus website, searching for updates, looking for the location of these lost riots.