City Road in Bristol

In the early 90s a young Jane and I were sitting in a café in our new neighbourhood in Bristol. I'd stayed for a while with Jane in her Halls of Residence, on the other side of Westbury Park, and now we rented a flat. A copy of the News Of The World tabloid newspaper lay on the table, the cover's headline was 'Britain's Worst Street Named,' and it turned out that it was City Road, the very road where we sat drinking tea.

You'd never have guessed, driving to view the flat with the estate agent (I remember that she was always startled) that it was such a bad place to be. Travelling there from the centre you leave the main road and pass the grand Brunswick Square, on to the pretty Portland Square and there, just around the corner was our new home in Cave Street. We didn't notice the police riot van that was sitting every day, all day on Cave Street, just in case. If we'd have gone for a walk in our new neighbourhood we would have seen that many of the houses still had metal screens on their windows even though the St Paul's riots had occurred over fifteen years before.

City Road, down which I'd walk to visit the nearest newsagents, was littered with drug dealers. I couldn't work out what their system was but every hour they would all disappear moments before a police van drove down the road. Perhaps, to avoid confrontation, the police chose to drive down the road at the same time every hour. The dealers became familiar faces and I began to say hello to the one at my end of the street. Now and again we would chat about life in St Paul's. He warned me that it was so terrible, and younger men so indifferent, that I would be mugged sooner or later if I kept walking down my route. He admitted that he wished that he'd never taken heroin.

Sure enough, after being there for a few months, I was mugged one night outside the bleak Department Of Health and Social Security office. I had gone for milk, the shop was shut, and returned with my twenty one pence.

I thought an insane woman was hugging me out of the blue but straight away realised what was going on when someone also grabbed me from behind. I struggled free, I was told to hand over my money, I threw the coins on the floor. A well to do looking couple were walking by on the other side of the street but ignored my call for help, threw a glance in my direction and hurried away.

The three young boys concurred to beat me up in the alleyway beside the DHSS office since I had nothing worth stealing, and one of them grabbed me from behind, attempting to drag me away from the road. I elbowed him and then either punched him or attempted to before taking an opportunity to run the short distance home.
Jane was out, with her friend Cookie I think. My heart was racing and I telephoned the police. The operator was really bad, really racist, telling me not to bother giving a description because 'they all look the same, don't they?'

For a few months I felt a bit sick whenever I passed gangs of teenagers. A couple of weeks after I was mugged, or almost mugged, a load of kids approached me and demanded a cigarette. I gave them one automatically, another asked and then another and I just couldn't say no, so I gave away the whole packet, and I was so broke in those days too.