It's been a decent end to an otherwise unproductive day, catching up with the GP, checking in on my uncle followed by another unproductive session in THE café.
However, on my way to tonight's gig, right across from my road, at my bus stop, a regularly drunk hustler was abusing locals. I've seen this woman a few times. In her hand she had this black can of some super strength lager, the John Player of the lager world.
She managed to chase one guy off who decided, wisely, to move onto the next northbound bus stop. He would actually miss the bus I eventually got on, despite breaking into a run, but I maintain he made the right choice.
After failing to get a rise out of another person at the stop, Drunk Woman spotted me and came over, spouting some nonsense about being a police officer from another dimension and being generally narky. I felt I'd already done enough by originally positioning myself some twenty metres away from her and the stop and thought there's no way I can back away even more. I held my ground, the abuse increased. I snapped and told her to step away, firmly, my confidence that this would resolve the situation hopelessly misplaced. She immediately struck my arm. I thought, ‘What on earth am I meant to do here?’ If it's a guy, the situation is very different and you could tackle it in a very different way. Potentially it could escalate quickly and end with a bad outcome. But this situation today could easily have gone badly wrong for me too. As she continued her abuse, with one rubbernecking member of the public smiling, I was sorely, briefly, tempted to knock the can out of her hand but I've no doubt she really would've flipped at that point.
This was a woman that wouldn't have been afraid of assaulting anyone, and certainly not the police. I wasn't even going to waste time contacting those guys. The streets these days and for some time now, belong to the angry and the desperate. This is London 2023.
The small off licences that keep selling alcohol to people that clearly have a problem do their communities a disservice.
Recently outside my local large Sainsbury's, a homeless guy turned up in a tent until they finally got rid of him. Camberwell and Brixton have huge numbers of homeless and beggers and the hustlers, and I make a distinction between them and the first two. This last group, often aggressive, are a real problem. A close friend said this is what happens after 13 years of the Tories. This is an increasingly ugly and desperate London.
Twitter: @1607WestEgg
FB: @DRTcomedy
Instagram: @1607westegg
TikTok: @1607WestEgg