ex-London squatter taking a break

[Firma Odin]

... couldn't hack the big city, or maybe I did after all, time will tell …
five years all over the Boroughs of Babalon and now I'm back living with my parents in the countryside! I can't tell you how many times over the few months since returning to Germany I had random London street moments flash through my head. is it nostalgia or a haunting of ghosts...?
to think that when I crossed the channel in 2019 I didn't have a clue about what I was doing, as a person or as a magician or otherwise, and now I'm working hard on figuring out a spirit book for The Goddess Of The Streets Herself, Great And Generous Binderella — you wouldn't believe it if it was fiction, I barely believe it even now, but life has a way of working things out even after drugs and rough-sleeping and meeting and losing people day in, day out
in summary, glad to be here! ^^ hoping to stock up on PDFs and contribute what I can; London is a weird place to be squatting in, the government has a way of getting into your head that just might be conspiracy if there wasn't fact to back things up ¯\(ツ)/¯ saving that up for the grimoire tho, hoping to contribute simple and effective (aka practical) templates for defensive magic and invisibility spells, I've had some successes in that regard over the years (but also some failures) so there's lots of material to pore over, and maybe a video game to produce...

 

[searover]

Any insights on London squatting? Would love to hear more from the scene

 

[Firma Odin]

Any insights on London squatting? Would love to hear more from the scene

can't compare it to anywhere else cos I've never squatted in another country but it can be pretty difficult these days – sure there's lots of empties and if you get the right building it'll stay open for literally years, but the people in the scene can be pretty ... dangerous, I'd almost say.

it really is A Scene, it's "hip" and "trendy" to do an art show this and a protest squat that, but because there's so many people in it who have a home somewhere else and open (for a concrete example) a winter homeless shelter pretty much "as a second job" and then forget that if you decide to "run" a place by setting rules but then you're absent half the week? people will start taking advantage of each other fast. "squalitics" (squat politics) are known to cause conflict which is then labelled as "drama" even though vulnerable folks get hurt. one time a dude set his ex's room on fire (even though it had the fuse box in it??) just because he didn't like her singing in the hallway, thought she was making fun of him or something.

a few times I've also talked to people who squatted back in the 80s or 90s and all of them say it really isn't how it used to be. you used to get families and communities who look out for each other in a squat, now you get minor celebrities and fascists preying on vulnerable people who don't know how to handle drugs (that includes how I've been treated). not exaggerating on the fascist part either, it's sort of a joke to some people, so I don't know if they were serious when they fake(??)-supported reading Mein Kampf and voted in favour of anti-immigration laws and threatened to put up a swastika and also these people (I've met 3 or 4 I would say, in 5 years) seem to agree that "hey colonialism was bad, but at least we got a bunch of privileges out of it!"

so in summary, the fact that the legal situation allows for squats to happen does not make up for the fact that necessity brings toxic people into contact with folks who have nowhere else to go, are occasionally underage, and vulnerable to addiction and mental instability. there's barely any solidarity, and all the talk of politics that anarchists and communists engage in (based on books they read, not on their lives) rarely turns into practice. London squatting is a trend, and people take it for granted, and things go wrong very often.

sorry if this turned into a bit of a rant but I've seen and experienced some things that really shouldn't be happening haha. it's cyberpunk or sth, we've made it /s