And in the news...

An old friend of Dave's and mine from down Finsbury Park has been arrested on terrorism charges... See here at News of the World (NOTW doesn't maintain an article archive, so it's now linked to a blog that quotes the whole article, minus pictures) or see the man speak on SocialistWanker.com featured videos...

Some friends have been raving in a millionaire mansion and got themselves on the front page of the Standard... Good reporting from The Times, contrasted to the cheap sensationalism of "littered with broken glass and used syringes and needles" (there were none) of the Evening Standard...

And here is a local newspaper report of the house I knocked down with the power of my will (see scaling north face) , in the Islington Gazette...

FOUR men were lucky to escape with their lives when a former crackhouse and squatters' den collapsed without warning.

A thunder-like boom was heard and clouds of dust filled the air when the floors in the four-storey house suddenly came crashing down.

(Earlier on realgem, stories from the old house, when it was still standing: Squatting stories, or, the alchemist of Camden Road, a photo of the house, Squatting stories 2, or, sexual problems of the disabled, which has some of the house's history. Between the story of SPOD and our arrival there, the house had indeed been a crack house, in case you thought the people mentioned in the Islington Gazette article were us... Needles, crackpipes, condoms thick on the floor, with little junkie nests, filthy mattresses surrounded by drug detritus, in the corners of the rooms... That was a fuck of a cleaning job... Oh, it was civilised enough there, for a "squatter's den", and when we left, only my room was littered with the odd needle... Jan-May 2005, realgem was published from the nicest, most comfortable apartment on the top floor of that old house... I almost miss it, if it weren't for the people and the memories... The office furniture manager is hopefully referring to the previous occupants in the article, who were bad crack niggers who had taken it over from some homeless working girls... They were removed by armed police and the place bricked up to rot...

Yes, I do believe buildings pick up energies, and once you've pieced the story of the Camden Rd house together, you will understand when I say its aura was tainted... Paulette blames that house for how things fucked up between us, and to me, it meant this...)