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It's got "the teenage thugs from the new estates" and our photographs and names
The answer to my own question, yesterday, of how long before Ealing's businesses decide it's back to business-as-usual was, surprisingly "virtually no time at all".
Coming out of Ealing Broadway station at around six o'clock last night I was mildly alarmed to be confronted with a small fleet of riot vans (borrowed, I think, from Hertfordshire police). However, it was immediately obvious that they were part of the new police strategy of massive, visible presence and were not in any way indicative of actual riot.
Most of the shops I pictured yesterday morning had got their windows out again, and were open as normal. I had to hop on a bus and hurry up to another stint of hall-painting, or I'd have been tempted to pop into one of them for a quick meal. (Note for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ebee: don't panic, Hare & Tortoise has got new windows and appears to be otherwise undamaged. It was serving dinner as usual last night.)
Reports from across the capital last night suggest that wherever two or three are gathered together, the police will show up and ask them to stop it and go home. And, as far as I'm aware, that worked pretty well.
Flicking occasionally to TheWestLondoner as I painted ceiling-edges, I was slightly amused to note a few reports that basically went "Something is on fire in Area X, confirming. Something is definitely on fire in Area X. Fire crews are in attendance. Oh, actually, it's just a normal fire. The sort the fire crews are out dealing with all the time." Similarly a Tesco was reported as smashed, before being scaled back to being the victim of a perfectly ordinary, old-fashioned, non-riot-related ram-raid. (Do people still do ram-raids? How 80s.) Other than that, it followed a rough cycle of "London is calm. There might be a mild disturbance in... oh, wait, all dispersed by police. London is calm." I heard very few sirens all evening.
This morning, Ealing felt normal again. I'm still unsure to what extent it's all in my imagination, but it seemed that people had breathed out and decided to get on with life. There are still a few shops boarded up near Haven Green, but few enough that the place looks about right.
William Hill, Tesco and the chemist remain boarded up, though the latter two were both already open (the chemist had a notice up again yesterday, advertising that it would close early at the strangely precise time of 6:40pm). I guess that people will still buy bread and fill prescriptions with boarded windows; restaurants need to entice people in, so they have more incentive to shrug off their shutters as soon as possible. The solicitor's broken window is still boarded, but now sports a large notice with a picture of a broom and an offer to "help you clean up your legal problems".
I've still not had time to make the trip down to the area that was worst hit. I don't know how much damage the building fires did, but imagine that might take rather longer to get itself back together.
Of course, if I were a rioter intent on causing fear and panic, now's exactly the time I'd strike again. If I were writing the plot, now's when the shit would really hit the fan. So let's not relax too much ;)
Coming out of Ealing Broadway station at around six o'clock last night I was mildly alarmed to be confronted with a small fleet of riot vans (borrowed, I think, from Hertfordshire police). However, it was immediately obvious that they were part of the new police strategy of massive, visible presence and were not in any way indicative of actual riot.
Most of the shops I pictured yesterday morning had got their windows out again, and were open as normal. I had to hop on a bus and hurry up to another stint of hall-painting, or I'd have been tempted to pop into one of them for a quick meal. (Note for
ebee: don't panic, Hare & Tortoise has got new windows and appears to be otherwise undamaged. It was serving dinner as usual last night.)Reports from across the capital last night suggest that wherever two or three are gathered together, the police will show up and ask them to stop it and go home. And, as far as I'm aware, that worked pretty well.
Flicking occasionally to TheWestLondoner as I painted ceiling-edges, I was slightly amused to note a few reports that basically went "Something is on fire in Area X, confirming. Something is definitely on fire in Area X. Fire crews are in attendance. Oh, actually, it's just a normal fire. The sort the fire crews are out dealing with all the time." Similarly a Tesco was reported as smashed, before being scaled back to being the victim of a perfectly ordinary, old-fashioned, non-riot-related ram-raid. (Do people still do ram-raids? How 80s.) Other than that, it followed a rough cycle of "London is calm. There might be a mild disturbance in... oh, wait, all dispersed by police. London is calm." I heard very few sirens all evening.
This morning, Ealing felt normal again. I'm still unsure to what extent it's all in my imagination, but it seemed that people had breathed out and decided to get on with life. There are still a few shops boarded up near Haven Green, but few enough that the place looks about right.
William Hill, Tesco and the chemist remain boarded up, though the latter two were both already open (the chemist had a notice up again yesterday, advertising that it would close early at the strangely precise time of 6:40pm). I guess that people will still buy bread and fill prescriptions with boarded windows; restaurants need to entice people in, so they have more incentive to shrug off their shutters as soon as possible. The solicitor's broken window is still boarded, but now sports a large notice with a picture of a broom and an offer to "help you clean up your legal problems".
I've still not had time to make the trip down to the area that was worst hit. I don't know how much damage the building fires did, but imagine that might take rather longer to get itself back together.
Of course, if I were a rioter intent on causing fear and panic, now's exactly the time I'd strike again. If I were writing the plot, now's when the shit would really hit the fan. So let's not relax too much ;)