oh for the gift of brevity! shortwinded-ness a virtue
written some long ago lunch hour
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once upon a sometimes, i hitched a ride in a camper van from the european juggling festival in Verona, all the way up to Amsterdam.
the bloke who was driving said come and stay in my friends squat,
so we rocked up to this huge ominous Victorian Institution looking building.
When we arrived a 10 year old boy dashed over and gave us a note
he said ‘give this to them inside, it’s from my mother’
So we handed it over as we entered.
It was a note warning the squatters that the police were going to evict them the next day!
we felt like the prophets of doom. Don’t shoot the messenger!
The situation was that teh squat had been open for 14 years or so, and if they occupied it for a further week, under Dutch law it could never be evicted
The squat itself was horrible, not like our lovely Prague home, this place obviously once been great, but over the last couple of years had fallen apart through squabbles and now consisted of a few junkies, living in dank, miserable rooms.
Long ago, the building had been an orphanage and had a really sad, unhappy vibe about it, a place haunted by the ghostly children of it’s past.
That evening we were all sitting about in the squat bar, having a few farewell to teh squat tequillas, when in burst this mad, horrible amphetamine fuelled pirate of a man.
He was obsessed with defending the place and boss ordered everybody about, build the barricades!
I quickly grew tired of that authority and went outside to sleep in the van
Next Morning, got woken at about 7:00, piling out of vans were 100 black clad Dutch Riot squad complete with shields and batons.
Within moments they’d smashed down the door and surged inside.
There were the isolated squeals of a scuffle, but most of the squatters were half asleep and sleepy, sheepishly stumbling out into the street. A few with scarves draped over their face’s
for a minute an anarchist flag, waved above the building, stark against the skyline.
rapidly hauled down. All over.
That evevning we came back to pick up the van. The entire site of the orphanage had been flattened. The bulldozers had been called in. and within hours reduced the place to a pile of rubble. awesome. The Dutch are thorough.
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hmmm… so I guess you won’t be staying there then!
