Thirty Thousand Streets

Sunday, October 09, 2005

William Booth College/Crack Squirrels


Well, it was a nice crisp sunny Sunday today, so I hiked up Camberwell Grove to gawp at the William Booth college, which is basically the Salvation army international headquarters. It's f**ckin' huge. Big enough anyway to house a private army, so I rather like to imagine it as being like an MI6 training ground from a Bond film inside, replete with SA corporate ninjas abseiling down ropes, and brass bands with machine guns hidden in their instruments, though in reality it's probably given over to admin.

After that walked over to Ruskin park where I bumped into my friend's housemate who was also taking pictures, and we did a bit of trespassing to look at the fenced off bandstand, and mooched around looking at the various critters that live there e.g ducks, geese, drug crazed squirrels (bear with me here). Apparently she told me, there's a problem in South London with squirrels finding drugs that dealers have stashed in parks, gardens etc. and becoming addicted to crack. And if you don't believe me.. here's what the Guardian has to say about it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,2763,1587733,00.html

Personally - and I'm going out 'on a limb' here, but I rather suspect the average tree-rat isn't going to have time to get addicted to anything once it's wolfed down a rock of crack, being primarily concerned as it will be with overdosing massively and shuffling off this mortal coil.

Anyway. Did that then hooked up with a mate in the evening at BRB in Camberwell for one of their tasty pizzas, then went and watched as much of 80s 'classic' cocktail as I could stomach.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I used to be a crack squirrel.

Peter Gasston said...

The William Booth College was designed by the same architect (Giles Gilbert Scott) who created Battersea Power Station and the (now) Tate Modern, as well as designing the red telephone box. Pretty cool.

Unknown said...

Not a bad portfolio then. Now you mention it, you can see a similar style or theme running through all of them.

sigh9 said...

ahh the crack squirrels of ruskin park. If you stand still in front of them with a rustly packet of something they'll surround you and eventually run up your legs. Works best in the entrance down by Kings.

The Eyechild said...

I'll try that! Might not keep the rustly packet in my pocket though.

sigh9 said...

the squirrels in that park are well wierd, my girlfriend always says it feels like being mugged by hamsters.

There's an albino one there somewhere, or at least there was last year.

jhon said...

Albino very nice