The familiar clarion of “the Bawlly” (the scrap-metal collector) has followed me this past couple of days. This is the sound of a wrecked and strangulated trumpet piercing the air over otherwise quiet neighbourhoods…. followed by a damaged voice imparting what I can only assume to be “Old Iron!”.

The Bawlly has always plied his trade in these parts. As a kid there’d be a sinister edgyness to his arrival. From a back garden you could never quite tell from which street he was calling and it was better to hide or run inside to avoid what felt like a dark presence. Part gypsy-traveller, part kiddy-catcher; grubby-faced, Dickensian ne’er-do-wells sitting atop an old wagon, drawn by a shaggy pit-hoss. In reality these strangers from another time and place were Black Country scrap metal-merchants, aboard a flat-bed truck, but they might as well have been from another country. Their 8mph street-wanderings clearly paid off. I have a vivid memory of dad running out of the house in his bare feet and ‘jamas to apprehend the Bawlly. Then watching, incredulous, as the back-half of a Mark One Mini was man-handled onto the truck, joining fridges, rusty garden swings and dug-up fragments of air-raid shelter.

This week, the sound of the Bawlly signifies the start of austere times. Summer is truly dead. Kids are back to school, the skies have turned grey and there’s a faint rustling of tumbleweed as a lean-looking Autumn stretches before me. A breather is welcome after a busy few months, but it’s now time to cast the net, seek new work opportunities and develop ideas for new projects.

Following yesterday’s tragic news of the deaths of three men on Dudley Rd., here is video edit of the grieving communities coming together to discuss their response;

Birmingham Vigil: “The three who died, died nobly. Don’t riot in their name” – video, via The Guardian, 11th Aug ’11

A Peace protest is planned for sunday 14th August, meeting in Summerfield Park, 3pm.

For a view of the local events as they are unfolding: The Birmingham Riots 2011 – Casey Rain Blog

Messages have been coming in from distant friends across the globe, saddened and bewildered at the news images depicting urban Blighty in 2011: Gangs of young looters, seemingly buoyed by a collective mob mentality, ransacking the high streets of our cities and towns, knowing somehow that there is insufficient power on the part of the Police, or anyone, to stop them.

Perhaps, in due course, history will attribute these events to a broader socio-economic crisis prompted by the global financial meltdown and its consequences? But that’s difficult to see as the evidence suggests that the ‘disenfranchised’ are forgoing bread and books and reaching instead for mobile phones, skategear and flatscreen TVs -basically all the consumer stuff that the advertising relentlessly tells them they need to have. Yes, the looting is driven not by frustration but an ideology of greed and opportunism. (Nobody has any money… but the shops are full of stuff, stuff and yet more stuff that people want… and if they don’t want it they’ll know someone else who does.)

Because it’s been demonstrated that the policing has been ineffectual, groups of vigilantes have been appearing on the streets to defend their businesses and their communities (sales of baseball bats are reported to be escalating). Almost inevitably, a tragedy occured last night on the Dudley Road, when 3 Brit-Asian men were ploughed into by a car whilst trying to defend their shops. The ether is then full of suggestion that gangs of men from other cities will travel from here and elsewhere to battle the looters (who have clearly got wind of this and moved on to surprise a different town).

There is a sense of unreality about the whole scenario…like it’s being played out on a stolen Xbox, like it’s a simulated Zombie movie. Apart from the fact, of course, that communities are being trashed, reputations shattered and lives destroyed. Desperate and sad times.

Zoe Williams in The Guardian, attempts to unravel the Psychology of Looting