It was 8am this morning when I first saw Sophie and Ella’s clean-up call trending on Twitter. I duly trotted down to Clapham Junction to find the whole area wreathed in smoke and in lockdown. With only four of us there so far, and the police busily trying to restore order, there wasn’t anything we could do at that moment.
And so I ventured down there again later in the morning, joining a procession of locals carrying brooms and bags in wheelbarrows. Dress code: hoodless tops, Marigolds and brooms. I spent a cathartic hour with two other girls cleaning up the streets behind Debenhams. We bagged scores of coat hangers (sizes 40 and 42 most popular), empty BlackBerry boxes, shoe boxes, lots of drinks cartons and bottles (looting’s obviously thirsty work). Some spectators fretted that we were removing “evidence”, but the police confirmed that only Clapham Junction’s main drag remained off-limits to the clean-up operation.
My fellow cleaners said “they’d” been trying to take the sunbeds out of the tanning salon, and they has removed all the hairdryers from Headmasters — where shall I get my blow-dries now? The spookiest rumour was that parents were ferrying their aberrant kids and the booty home in cars.
At midday — as I walked up Lavender Hill to my middle class, but now fragile-feeling, enclave — there was a burst of spontaneous applause when a police car passed. And they are giving out free coffee at the Battersea Arts Centre. It’s an extreme way to get out that inner community spirit, but that spirit is certainly blossoming today.
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