London's Burning

Warning: the following post is my attempt at being an actual journalist. Feel free to stop reading now!

In Croydon, the mayhem of Monday night has been replaced by a strange silence. People are gathering by police cordons looking on at the rubble that were once buildings. The normally bustling streets are now empty of cars and shoppers, instead occupied by police and road sweepers, debris still littering the pavements. At Reeves Corner, the scene of the fire whose image has become synonymous with the riots, forensic officers are hard at work and behind the cordons cameras from the country’s media stand in a line.

Smoke could be seen from our road. 

The source of all the smoke.

On the tram home from my little excursion one passenger regaled the rest of the carriage with stories of looting, including how she saw a boy run down the street with a flat screen TV under each arm, bump into a lamppost and fall over, smashing the TVs. Karma?! But this sharing of stories shows that most people here, decent people, cannot understand the mindless criminality that took place in our town on Monday night. Obviously Croydon has a reputation for being a bit stabby and both my dad and I remarked earlier that day that it wouldn’t be long before Croydon got in on the act. However, I don't think anyone could have predicted that it would be to such a great extent. All a bit scary, really! Anyway, the clean up of Croydon has now begun, but it'll take a long time for the damage to be repaired. I'm hoping that the repairs miraculously turn the town into a place of beauty. Doubtful. So, instead I'll be trying to persuade my parents to move, preferably to Dorset where they can set up a little tea room - an idea inspired by a recent visit to the area with friends. 

The landlord of this pub was on Sky News and now has an appreciation society on Facebook. I think he's the man in blue.

In other news, today, when not pretending to be a journalist, I made a cheesecake! The recipe told me to put 900g of cream cheese in it, but that much cheese scared me so I made up my own recipe. Fortunately, it turned out nicely (surprisingly) and went down well at the weekly Buckley family dinner!

Slice of cheesecake - in case it wasn't already clear...

Hopefully my next post won't be quite as riot-y!

Freedom

Sorry about the gap between posts, life has been pretty busy since exams finished! Right now I’m back in Croydon for a few days of home comforts before returning to Reading for the final week or two. I quite like coming home as I can always rely on nothing having changed no matter how stressful the past few weeks of revision and exams have been. True to form, in the last few days my parents have been trying to fatten me up for Christmas, stocking up the fridge with 8 different types of cheese, a crate of Diet Coke and ridiculous amounts of chocolate, and keeping me up-to-date with any recent neighbourhood developments. At the moment there are a few electricity company vans stationed down the road and despite much not-so-covert surveillance on my dad’s part we are still unsure what they’re doing here. It seems that the requirements to live in our area are that you either have to be over 80 years of age or a compulsive dog walker, therefore the sudden appearance of 5 (yes, 5!) vans and a digger is quite exciting! It’s also one of the reasons that I have decided that moving out as soon as possible is probably a good idea...

In other news, after finishing exams I went to see QI being filmed in London. I was fairly hungover but after eating what felt like an entire loaf of bread for lunch I began to feel much more human and so Janine and I joined the queue for QI. Although the queue was fairly lengthy we were too excited to really care, the pique of excitement being when we saw what looked like Joan Collins pass by in a car. We don’t know whether or not it was in fact her, however we are maintaining that it was. Anyway, the actual filming of the programme was really fun and we got to see Sean Lock, Bill Bailey and Nina Conti, a fairly unknown ventriloquist who was actually quite good. Of course, Stephen Fry was there, along with Alan Davies, who was the main reason I wanted to go really, as I've loved him ever since the age of 8, when I first set eyes on him in Jonathan Creek. Probably not something I should really admit to but I'm sure my loyal readers (Janine and Jess) already know this. So, all in all it was a good day out, one that I’d recommend, so much so that I’ve applied for more tickets, although I feel like I might be pushing my luck a bit on this one!

Stamp, just to prove that we did go.

The Bennets, the Brontës and the Buckleys

With exams fast approaching I thought it about time I gave into peer pressure and jumped on the blogging band wagon. After all, I do love a bit of procrastination. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be writing about as, to be honest, not much happens in my life, but seeing as I’ll probably have a grand total of about 4 readers I think it’ll be ok...

As it’s the Easter holidays I’m back home in sunny Croydon, which means I’ve being seeing quite a bit of my family. We had a family dinner this week – cooked by me, with the review: ‘ooh, there are lots of different flavours... It’s certainly not bland, anyway.’ Thanks, Dad. So, during this dinner my mum pointed out an article that she had read that day saying that families in which there are four daughters are the most trying. And for those of you that don’t know, that is in fact my family. Anyway, my parents and my eldest sister (not entirely sure when she became an authority on this) agreed emphatically with the article, which got me thinking.

When I tell people that I’ve got three sisters I normally get one of two reactions, the first being that of sympathy for my father and the second, more common, the impression that our childhood was one never ending sleepover. To the first reaction, I’d say that I suppose I feel a little sorry for my dad too, and to the second, I can assure you, this was not the case and at times we fought like cats and dogs; there was even, on one occasion, an incident of knife crime! (Not as bad as it sounds, but we did grow up in Croydon after all!) But, despite these things there were so many good times, good times that I often neglect to reflect on. Some of my favourite memories are of us building dens out of furniture, throwing water bombs and doing three-legged races in the garden during summer, excitedly waking each other up on Christmas morning with cries of 'he's been!', midnight Pizza Hut orders and car journeys singing about Cecil the caterpillar. We’re all pretty much grown up now though, ( I say pretty much, when in actual fact  what I mean is a lot grown up: one is married and another engaged) and although from time to time we still bicker, I find it amazing how easily we all come back together and fall back into our roles as sisters.

So, despite what this article said and my parents agreeing with it (really, they’ve only got themselves to blame!), I wouldn’t change things for the world. And, although I spend a lot of my time complaining about them (especially ‘the baby’), my sisters are some of my closest friends, they know just what to say to make me laugh, to make me cry,  to make me see sense and, most importantly, to annoy me...

Right, I’ve rambled on long enough for my first post. Just so you know, future posts won’t be anywhere near as sentimental as this, thankfully! But I’m sure now I’ve finally got a blog I’ll be chatting on about rubbish on a fairly regular basis.