Apologies for the silence on the site in the last day or so — Kris has been in transit, while I’ve been distracted by dispiriting events close to home. The riots that have been plaguing London since Saturday night seemed to finally attract the full attention of international news networks today, but I’m not sure how effectively they can convey the queasy jumble of anger, confusion and dread afflicting most of the city’s residents, myself included.
Many of us, even, are scarcely getting the full impression: it’s hard enough to wrap one’s head around local misfortunes — last night, I was dryly informed via Twitter that a bus a mere half-mile from my house had gone up in flames — before taking in the full, discontinuous jigsaw of incident and loss, and moving on to ponder what this means on a broader (and longer-term) national and social level.
“It’s sad that so much damage is somehow being done with so little conviction,” I overheard a train passenger say this afternoon, a quote that seemed to me to sum up the stateless quality of the last couple of days.
As we’ve seen from the