>Ten days ago I was sitting outside a cafe in Islington.
>Thanks to a few years of working in a nightclub and a couple of years in Russia followed by episodes like the referendum, I have developed a greater than average degree of paranoia. This is almost always irritating but occasionally useful.
>Typing away on my computer, I sensed a scooter’s noise was too close.
>I looked up and my eyes locked on those of someone driving their scooter into my table in about one second’s time.
>Between a mask across his nose and a hat, all I could see was young black male eyes (~15-25). I think it extremely unlikely I could have identified him in a lineup.
>A second later his bike hit my table and he grabbed my laptop.
>I grabbed it back, we wrestled, he nearly fell off his bike and after a half second pause when I thought ‘fuckhesabouttogetoffhisbikehithimfirst’ he whizzed off down the pavement nearly smashing into someone on the pavement.
>This was seen by half a dozen people. Two were calling the cops within seconds.
>I stood on the street and cursed my stupidity in fighting over a laptop (no Carole, no evidence of global conspiracies there).
>The cops told both witnesses they would come.
>I hung around for an hour or so. They never came despite having been told the whole scene was captured on CCTV.
>A few days later, as I was typing on my laptop inside the same cafe, the same scene played out.
>I saw it through the window as a guy grabbed a laptop from a girl and whizzed off. She was sitting between two parents each with a small child. Both parents were rightly worried about the potential for such attacks to lead to a collision between escaping bike and toddler. My wife and I often sit there with our toddler.
>She called the cops and told them it would be on CCTV (I’d told her).
>The cops said they’d come.
>I hung around for an hour or so.
>They never came.
dominiccummings.com
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