Run with this traveler as she flees from the cops while sightseeing the "real" England.
We’re under siege. I’ve never been under siege before and I’m not entirely sure how I should be reacting to it. Helping to barricade the gates? Finding weapons? Trying to get out?
At the moment I just feel numb. I don’t think I can be trusted to travel the world. All I’ve done is spent a few weeks studying in England and look where I end up. Trapped in a grey British industrial estate with several hundred drugged up kids who are currently in the process of arming themselves with iron bars against a small army of riot police gathering outside.
How the fuck did I end up here?
I look back, through a disorientating haze of dirt, blaring techno and suspicious white powders snorted through rolled up five pound notes, and come up with this memory:
It’s Saturday night and I go out to check the nightlife of Norwich. I wind up in a grimy little bar where loud jungle is playing, two out of three people have dreadlocks, and everybody disappears out back every five minutes to smoke another joint.
I fit right in.
There’s one boy I get talking to at the bar. He has the most amazing blue eyes that ebb and change like the ocean. He asks me what I’ve seen in England and I describe a castle I visited. You guys haven’t been conquered in nearly 1000 years I say. You have such a rich history. I like that. He smirks and says nothing.
When the bar closes, he’s waiting for me in the parking lot with his friends. Want to see a bit of the real England?
Sure I do.
So we drive and drive into the night, and get lost, and find ourselves again, and smoke joints, and get lost again, and snort lines of ketamine, and eventually end up here. Great Yarmouth, they tell me.
The rave is pumping. A solid mass of people rises and falls to the bass blasting from a tall stack of speakers. Half of them are dreadlocked hippies, the other are white gangster types in tracksuits and baseball caps. All of them are high. Pale faces with rolling eyes come and go in the darkness. I lose track of the boy with the ocean eyes. I join the crush against the speakers and blend in with the bass.
When the sun rises I see we’re in some kind of industrial estate, surrounded on three sides by warehouses. The only way to drive in and out is a massive iron fence-gate opposite the speakers. The area is filled up with cars and vans.
I’m by the speakers when the shouting starts. Police! Riot police, man! Fucking loads of them!
I don’t know whose decision it was to lock and barricade the gates. But the decision has been made and there’s no going back now.
We’re under siege.
All around me, people are dragging piles of wood and metal across the padlocked gates. Others are climbing up on the barricade and raining bottles and abuse onto the police below.
I think of castles.
Through the murder holes, the inhabitants of the castle could pour boiling oil and drop heavy stones onto the heads of their attackers.
I smirk and say nothing.
I wander towards the gate. Somehow, through the noise, all I hear is silence. The speakers are blaring, people are shouting, but the air feels frozen. Everyone is scared, and excited, and tense with the longing for something to happen that we know can never end well.
At the gate, I get a hand up onto the barricade from a kid in a blue tracksuit and gelled hair who looks about 12. He has a circle of white powder encrusted around one nostril and is incapable of completing a sentence without spitting violently at my feet, but otherwise seems relatively coherent.
I balance on the pile of wood and metal and look down at the lines of police gathering below. Every one is dressed completely in black, their faces obscured by riot helmets. Each carries a baton, and a large rectangular riot shield. There is something chilling and deadly in the way they are forming ranks, turning their faceless heads towards us. Their silent efficiency is infinitely more frightening than the waving arms and slurred swearing of the kids on the gate.
I think of Boudicca, and the last battle of the Celtic queen against the Romans.
The greater numbers and zeal of the barbarian hordes was no match for the superior organization of the highly trained Roman army.
I smirk and say nothing.
They are preparing for something. Orders are being given. Shields are being raised.
The front row of police interlock their shields to form an unbroken wall. The rows behind raise their shields over their heads to create a ceiling. Then they begin to move forwards.
“It’s the tortoise formation,” I tell the kid who looks 12. “The Romans used it to storm castles.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
The ravers scream and hurl bottles, which merely bounce off the wall of shields. The tortoise keeps moving. We brace ourselves for the crash.
Flesh collides with shield, collides with metal, collides with flesh. The barricade shakes. The first battle is on.
The more hardcore of the ravers are armed with long metal poles. They jam them through the gate like spears, seeking out the gaps in the wall of shields. The rain of bottles continues. For the first time, I see the faces of the policemen through the curved Perspex of their visors. Their eyes are screwed up, their teeth gritted as they push forwards. And just centimeters away, I see the mad ecstasy and fury in the eyes of the ravers as they push back. Hot blood versus cold.
For several minutes the gate rattles and warps as the army and the barbarians fight for control. But it holds. The tortoise withdraws, the air thick with taunts and jeers behind it.
“We fuckin’ won, mate!” shouts the kid. “They fuckin’ retreated!”
“Really? We won? You think they’ll leave?”
The kid looks at me like I’m retarded.
“Nah. They’ll get in soon. Then we’re fucked, everyone knows that. They’re fuckin’ pissed, man. They been trying to stop this rig doing parties for years. It’s gonna be messy. Nice fight though.” And he hurls an empty can at the ignonimously retreating tortoise.
I climb down and wander back among the cars. Celebration is in the air, people cracking open beer cans to toast the cops’ humiliation. But the tension remains, heavy and stifling. The kid is right. Everyone here knows there’s only one way this can end.
“Hey! Kat!”
I turn round to see a couple of guys beckoning to me from one of the cars. I recognize them from the bar in Norwich, although it seems a lifetime ago.
“Come smoke a joint with us man. It’s fucking crazy out there.”
“Thanks. I’ve been over by the gate; it’s getting real violent.”
The guys look distressed. They’re proper old-school hippies – all dreadlocks and hemp clothing. They look like they’d be much happier sitting round a campfire somewhere, eating tofu and singing songs about world peace.
“So much aggression, man” one keeps saying. The other shakes his head mournfully.
“You came with Jamie, didn’t you?” one asks. Cute boy with the ocean eyes. I nod.
“You’ll be going back with him?”
“I guess.”
“Can you give him this? He left it in the car when he was here earlier. He was pretty fucked. And I don’t want this in my car when the police get in. They got dogs and everything, man.”
He puts something in my hand. A plastic bag.
Another memory comes back to me:
We’re outside the bar, in the parking lot in Norwich. Jamie’s in some shady negotiation with another guy in a hoodie and a baseball cap. Money changes hands. A bag changes hands. Jamie winks at me. Good money on these he tells me. 200 quid profit if I sell ‘em all.
I look at the bag. It’s full of little white pills with logos on them. My heart sinks. I don’t want this shit on my hands right now either. I sigh and shove the bag in my pocket. I just have to find ocean-eyes and get rid of them. A couple of joints and I’ll go.
We put the locks down and smoke in semi-silence. Soft tendrils of smoke surround us and cushion us. The sounds from outside are softened. Tension fades. Muscles relax. There’s just us, and the car, and soothing, calming smoke. Here, we could be anywhere.
We’re so lost in our little bubble; it takes a while to realize that the tone of the noise outside has changed. The constant background level of muffled shouting has picked up to become urgent, frantic. Panicked. But it’s not coming from behind us, from the gate. It’s coming from ahead. And through the shouting start to come screams, and the sound of smashing glass.
The noise washes towards us like a wave. Fast. Much too fast for three stoned hippies to react to in time. Before our clouded brains have managed to process what is happening, the wave breaks over our heads and everything falls apart.
Four figures surround the car, armored and faceless like black Storm Troopers. They’re pulling at the door handles and one is screaming:
“Open the doors! Get out the car or we’ll smash all your fucking windows!”
I fumble with the lock and half fall out of the car. The bag of pills is suddenly the heaviest thing in the world, weighing me down like lead. Before I can steady myself, a riot shield is brought crashing into my shoulder and I stumble.
“Move!” I hear. “MOVE!”
It’s easier said than done. I’m caught up in a sea of cars and running figures, and everywhere I look there are more police. Move where?
The riot shield is pushed into me again and I hear the barking of dogs. The only thing to do, I figure, is to run and to keep running.
I launch myself into the torrent of people and let it carry me towards the entrance. Pieces of the barricade are scattered everywhere and the ravers are fighting to drag the gate open. Beyond that, a line of police lies waiting. Our fortress has become our prison.
Never be complacent. Always guard your rear.
These guys should visit more castles.
There’s some crazy bastards in a big green 4WD determined to make a break for it. I see them through the windscreen – hoods pulled down, faces set. There’s about 20 police converging on them screaming at them to stop, but they’ve got a car like a fucking tank and they keep going, scattering cops and ravers on either side.
They reach the gate, but by now there’s no space for people to move out the way. They’re forced to slow to a crawl, leaning on the horn and screaming silent words through the glass. The engine revs and for a second I think they’re going to plough on through, but in the same second a cop comes up on the side and smashes a baton straight through the window.
I can’t stay and watch this. I’ve got my own problems.
I fight my way forwards. I crash into a guy supporting a girl, and I realize she’s bleeding from the head. Bottles are flying. Batons are flying. I smell tear gas. I’m at the gate.
There’s still the wall of police, but the line has been broken. They can’t stop the tide of ravers and they’re no longer really trying. I bounce off a riot shield, dodge another, and then I’m through. I can breathe. I can run.
I keep running, past lines of parked police vans and solitary coppers on walkie-talkies. Out of the industrial estate and onto anonymous grey roads lined with scrappy pieces of grass and windowless buildings. I keep running until the noise of the riot fades to silence behind me and all I can hear is the dull hum of distant traffic.
I reach a gas station and slow to a stop. I lean forward with my hands on my knees; panting, hurting. Adrenaline is throbbing through me and I find myself laughing breathlessly, half hiccoughing as I struggle to get air back into my lungs. A couple of old guys at the pumps eye me suspiciously and I straighten up but can’t seem to stop laughing.
So this is the real England then. So much for buttered scones and tea with the fucking Queen.
I decide I’ve earned myself a couple of pills.
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