Tottenham Riot Aftermath

I've lived in Tottenham for almost six years. It's never been the best of areas, but it's not been too bad either.
If you've seen the news today though, you would have seen the lead story on the demonstration that turned into a riot last night.
Fortunately, we live 5-miniutes from the High Road and demonstration hasn't spilled over into our road and I hope tonight will be calmer on Tottenham streets.

We were up watching coverage of the riot on the 24-hour news channels last night and when we went to sleep, the helicopters were still hoovering over the area and it was the same sound that I awoke to this morning. The police copters had now been replaced with news copters though.

At noon, we went for a walk around the area to survey the damage. Paul wanted to make sure the local pet shop was safe, two of our cat were from there and we feel an affinity with the place. Most of the High Road was still cordoned off though, so we had to go through the back streets. Luckily, Paul found a nice CSO who told us all of the animals had been relocated last night and that the building is safe.

This photograph though is of a grand old building which was near to the school I used to work at. It was once a council building, but it's been a carpet shop for as long as I've known it. But by the time we reached it this afternoon, it was just a burnt out husk of a place. You could see the massive girders had collapsed into the building and the front walls were about to collapse into themselves too. It's such a shame, the architecture in Tottenham isn't very nice and this was one of the only nice buildings in the area.