Paddington IS NOT All Marmalade and Bears-Summer 1990

I found this young man, out for the count in the sleazy streets of Paddington 1990, totally in his own world, sat cross leged like a Buddhist monk. The photo was taken with a used Nikon Rebel SS 250. The house was empty but the lights left on maybe to discourage squatters, or maybe he even lived there, just came out for a breather. Note the remnants of flowers. IT was a big old place and once belonged, maybe still did, to the mega-rich. It was a bit rough in partsof this area, with a lot of social ills, and this certainly aint Paddington Bear. Paddington has seen it all. I used to drop in to a lot of squats, the quality of people could be variable, but it was all about survival. Friendships were forged, I stayed a while in some. It was quite comical that here we were, in some of the richest areas in one of the richest cities in the world, liviing hand to mouth, definitely anarchism, definitely Bohemiam. Paddington isn’t all marmalade and bears. It was survival, anarchism, bohemia. I dropped into squats that were chapels of resistance. The quality of people varied, but the spirit was constant: hand-to-mouth, hash-fuelled, and hilariously defiant. There was runaways, two murderers, wandering artists, nurses, cops probably, in our midst.We didn't hang out with beggars and we didn't beg either. Thatchers 'greed is good' doctrine didn't touch us, even if we wanted it do it wouldn't have.We were the detritus of London. But we had enough, proof being, I'm still here. We got to know the hookers and the elderly Caribbean Johns that knocked about them, some of whom had contracted HIV. There was naturally a lot of drug dealers but we were sensible enough not to buy on tic. Deals were done in scummy burger bars, nothing intraveous, though tow of my friends, no longer here, were slaves to the hypodermic. You might dread a knock on the oak panelled doors from the cops or worse, bailiffs, if you let it get to you, but everything was offset by smoking copious quantities of hash. The parties were legendary, even the neighbours came to parties that went on for three days. Most people worked but would never earn enough to put a deposit down on a gutter pipe in one of these places. It seems we've come full circle agaim, with poverty, life seems at times like water sloughing down a plug hole. I wonder and hope he made it out of the cyclone.