new squat. maybe.

the door finally open after 5 hours of keeping sketch at the same bus stop, pretending to wait for a bus. surreptitiously warning D (who is inside the building, working on the door) if there are passersby who will hear the hammer or drill –

the entrance crunches with a honeycomb of glass underfoot –

of the 4 floors of this building, the birds have nested and ruined 2 and 3, there are tiny eggshells here and there – pigeons startle as we weave around corners with torchlight – they perch in abandoned filing cabinets, the smell is ripe –

an hour of torchy scouting, finding little except that the place has been gutted – no pipes, no sockets, no fusebox, the only intact toilet is on the top floor and even then it will need to be dug out from the rubble – this place has been stripped bare, pillaged, we recognise French Alex s tag on the walls, he has been here, but a while ago, the calendar in the office says August 2006, like a building trapped in amber –

around 0630 the 3 of us settle in the cleanest room to sleep for a few hours, laugh at the old days, Maury Road, and during the early morning I do not dream about giving birth and plane crashes like I had the night before but rather canal boats and trombones –

at midday there is a loud noise and D is up in a shot to investigate – it is a false alarm, they have not come for us yet – we change the locks – but still no water, no lecky – S goes to get coffee and we have a hearty picnick with mature cheese and cherry tomatoes – D heads off to work and the two remaining begin to clear the debris from the rooms – on the table that I have dug out I arrange the discoveries – a cloth bag from a festival in 2009, a dirty net curtain, a flower shaped tin, a fork –

after lunch the man who does not see us from the balcony across the street drinks a beer while his daughter plays between his legs –

dark comes so much earlier now – i buy candles and we light them high up, balanced on lightboxes and stubby salvageplanks of wood – the broken glass on the carpet shimmers in the candlelight – kristalnacht –