Electric Pig

This house on the corner of my road used to be my local neighbourhood’s most well-regarded crackhouse.

As far as I have been able to find out, a family lived used to live there, in what I imagine was once a really beautiful house, but the children grew up and moved out, and the old lady that was left died a few years ago. Since then apparently, the family have been arguing over what should happen to the house. It seems some wanted to sell it, others to develop it into apartments, and others to take over it’s possession themselves. Feelings were obviously high, and the family’s dispersal around the world has meant that the process has taken several years.

As the deliberations crept forward, the house began to rot. Soon, windows were smashed, the garden became a local dump from old fridges and cookers, and the front door and corridor were the most accessible urinal for quite some distance. Realizing the suitability of the place for their needs, the local crackheads gradually moved in. You could pick them out with the bent-forward, slightly desperate way they approached the house, and the twitchy, sucked-in way they left it. Their use meant the decomposition of the house accelerated. Rats patrolled the garden and worried the cats. Strange figures lurked in the shadows around the house at night.

At about 7.00 one evening last winter, the little girl in the house between mine and the crackhouse heard noises on the roof above her. She called her Dad, who went outside to see two figures run over their roof and climb back through one of the crackhouse’s windows. In the next morning’s light, he climbed onto the roof and realized that they had been stealing the slate tiles from his roof, and, judging from the amount gone, had been doing it for sometime. I saw him sitting in his garden for a few nights after that, lit by the light coming through the window from his house, armed with a cricket bat, a mug of coffee and a torch. They didn’t come back.

Suddenly about 4 weeks ago, workmen appeared at the house and started the huge task of cleaning the detritus from inside. Displaying great community spirit and environmental sensitivity, theiy proceeded to empty the contents of the house into the garden, and then set it alight. It burnt throughout the day for 2 weeks (they were kind enough to extinguish the fire in the early evening). When they finished this task, they attached a heavy gate and lock system to the front door, boarded up the windows, and left. Looking over the garden wall every now and again, I sometimes see their van parked in the middle of the garden, but they are never around.

Inevitably, the crackheads moved on. Sometimes I see them in the early mornings waiting outside the KFC on Uxbridge Road, gloomy figures from the night, out of place in the morning sunshine.

Photo taken in the weird volcanic-ash sunset, 15.04.2010. Hasselblad 500c/m, Zeiss 85mm Planar, f.11, Fuji PRO400H.