HM doesn't like to dwell on the darker and more unsavoury elements of his chosen local but the last few days have thrown up a few first-hand examples of why you are more likely to take a bullet in Hackney than anywhere else in the UK. Firstly, we kid you not, a Merc with windscreen intact and five bullet holes sprayed across, guarded by a uniform plod. Then two days later a new crime scene, deliniated by blue and white incident tape in the road opposite and by the way the street is being picked for evidence by overalled experts, you can be sure another foot-soldier has hit the dust.

The landlord and the letter

Generally it was a poor show at the protest outside the town hall on Mare Street yesterday - lets just put it down to bigger events occupying peoples minds. Nice drums though to remind the councilors (conspirators) that we were there. There will be a new track using some sound samples @ www.mp3.com/HACKNEY soon.

SOMETIMES all of this stuff gets put into perspective.

HM started the day signing on (no problems there) and then returning home to write two letters to the Housing Benefit office - one to the appeals officer and one just to cover things with the 'benefit team' themselves. HM was pleased with these efforts, both to assertain, why £30.83 is being deducted from the Housing Benefit. All this is fine until reports come through of events in America....

Any thoughts of it being dangerous to live in Hackney goes right out the window - foundations are shaken and not just those of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Someone says this is the second Pearl Harbour and they might just not be that wrong. Whoever has exposed this vulnerability has certainly hit the target and who would you want less at the controls than George W Bush. Just heard him say he was going to launch a full enquiry .. great Georgey boy ... looks like there's more to come but thank god there were no nukes or chemical weapons .. all yer Star Wars systems could't have stopped this one Bushy.. so think again!

In the meantime no doubt we should keep especially stringent in London, though can't see anyone crashing a plane into Hackney Town Hall just yet.

Back on the Housing Benefit trail. Out @ 6.00am to join the queue and HM gets best position yet ..No.37 and has a few good chats into the bargain. Details later!

Today is spent ...'waiting' - @ The doctors, where HM's GP is replaced by a philosophising Jean Luca Vialli lookalike... who advises his patient to.... "go and see your GP"
BUT I AM!!
Then the afternoon is spent back at the Job Centre trying to get back into this confounded system. This weekend is lining up to be a cacophany of christening / England vs. Germany / and looking up old pals. see ya Monday!

continuing blue!