The Peckham Experiment by Guy Ware

Author:Guy Ware
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salt Publishing Limited
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

It took almost four years, in the end. Which, frankly, was a bit of a miracle in itself.

It would have made sense to do Rochester House first, given it was empty. It was the obvious place to start. We could have made it safe, made it better than ever, made it lovely and filled it with everyone from Congreve House, then sorted Congreve out, moved tenants from Marvell to Congreve, then Dryden to Marvell, the tenants from Rochester into Dryden and – bingo! – job done, complete. Everyone would have moved, but most of them just once, and – no. Bee said everyone, EVERYONE must end up living in the flat they’d started in.

Not everyone.

As usual, the argument began at home, in Bee and JJ’s kitchen before it ever reached the town hall. I said, What difference does it make? ~These are people’s homes, Charlie. ~Since April, I said. Two months. They’ll be decanted out longer than they’ll have been in them to begin with. ~Decanted? They’re people, not wine. ~You know what I mean. They’ll have a flat, it’ll be exactly the same as the flat they left. ~Except it won’t be their home. ~This makes no sense, it will be their home, that’s exactly what it will be. I looked to JJ, who was not looking at either of us. I said, it’s a system build, they’re all the same: that’s the point. ~People aren’t, she said, that’s the point. And I gave up. She was wrong, but she was on a mission and I wasn’t going to change her mind. As usual, JJ said pretty much nothing. He would put things right; that was his job. She persuaded Cllr Simpson who persuaded Cllr Easton who persuaded or instructed JJ – who, it’s fair to say, probably did not put up much of a fight, so … we wound up leaving Rochester House till last, doing the blocks in the wrong order, an order that made no sense, that was more complicated, and slower, that made people move more often and gummed up the waiting lists, while leaving, at any given time, the occupants of two blocks and all the surrounding low-rise to wake up every morning for the best part of four years to the sight of Rochester House, partially collapsed and covered in scaffolding: every morning, every evening, a reminder that perhaps not everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, an object lesson in human fallibility, in the limits of rational systems to protect us from all risk, in the frailty of human life, a brutalist memorial to those who’d died, which was no doubt very salutary and good for their immortal souls and all, but must, frankly, have been a bit of a bummer.

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