It began with a late evening door knock. The good residents of WhatsApp Street had their dishwashers whirring, their laptops recharging and their bicycles secured. Their craft beer bottles were rinsed for recycled, their houses triple locked-up for the night. Who was the mystery visitor? How should WhatsApp Street respond?
The group network ignited. Ned, Fred and Ted, who mostly discuss bins, gyms or asking neighbours to move cars so that the scaffolders coming tomorrow have room to park their truck, compared doorbell video stills, options for action and theories of social decay.
Ned said the incident should be reported – only by telling the Met would WhatsApp Street be deemed a crime hot spot and receive extra patrols.
Fred, perhaps sounding like his grandad, said you never see a police officer round here these days.
Ted explained that crime, although one hadn’t been committed, is the inevitable outcome of inequality, poverty and discrimination, and that only by addressing these underlying causes could it be reduced.
What are you thinking about Ned, Fred and Ted? Who are you seeing in your mind’s eye? Lightly-bearded professionals in their 30s who call each other “mate”? Don’t try to deny it – the cover-up is worse than the crime.
Still, fair play, the late evening knocker had been perturbing. Male and quite big, he had requested money or food, and done so insistently. And he had not reacted kindly to being turned down, muttering moral imprecations as he’d walked away. Rejected at another porch, he’d done the same. What if he came back and turned violent? What if he stuck around on WhatsApp Street, lurking, waiting to take revenge?
None of this is made up. It is evidenced, yeah? What the data say? So it seems mean to mock (like I did just then), especially as nothing Ned, Fred and Ted said was wrong. And there have been burglaries, too: loft conversion tarpaulin coverings breached, many valuables stolen. Not funny at all.
But if the nervousness on WhatsApp Street is justified, it isn’t new. Back in the day, fleecers and chancers popped by almost routinely, spinning yarns about having no change for their payment meters or saying their sister was ill in hospital and they needing the cab fare to get there. One fellow used to bed down in a WhatsApp Street front yard, snug against the privet, affronted when not asked in for breakfast. And before all that, long before, came the great 1980s security gate rash, when hinged portcullis equivalents of black cast iron spread along the entry portals of WhatsApp Street at a rate to rival the appearance of satellite dishes on council blocks.
Those were the days – days when the role of WhatsApp was played by Neighbourhood Watch, days when inequality, poverty and discrimination were an underlying cause of crime, days when you never saw a police officer on your London street. Days when, just like these days, it was much better to be on your side of your front door, even feeling nervous, than it was to be on the other side.
John Vane is a pen name used by Dave Hill, editor and publisher of On London. Buy his London novel Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times here, here or here.