The Dirty South Read Online Free

while we was both still at primary school that I first witnessed Noel shoplifting… I have to say most of it was my fault. Mum would always give me pocket money to go to school with that I was meant to spend on the way home. But I spent it on sweets before registration specifically to wind up the ghetto kids who didn’t have shit. Noel took this kind of thing to heart and most times chased me around the playground saying he was gonna jack me. One morning I teased Noel with an extra long Mars Bar and a packet of extra-cheesy Doritos. He ignored me. Back in class I made as much noise as I could with my Doritos bag but Noel still ignored me. This really fucked me off. On the trod home Noel was all quiet and shit. Then all of a sudden he ran into the sweet shop in Elm Park, grabbed three packets of barbecue-flavoured Golden Wonder crisps and ran like Linford Christie with a firework up his black ass. I was proper shocked…
    The theft was kinda stupid though. Noel and me had been in that shop nuff times and the Asian people behind the counterknew our parents. Bastards. It was where Cara bought her cigarettes. While Paps lectured me about the importance of paying for what you own, Cara was licking Noel with a Dutch Pot and a steel ladle. I said to my paps at the time, ‘Why you lecturing me? I didn’t t’ief nutten.’
    Two days after the sweet shop robbery, Noel came back to school with a cheap plaster on his forehead and for the first time I saw a bit of coolness in him. The lickings from his mother didn’t put him off and we made plans to ‘hit’ other sweet shops that were further away.
    By the time we were at secondary school, nicking sweets from local shops had got a bit boring. The buzz wasn’t the same. So we started to go up west after school in the hunt for clothes. Before we hit the shops I would lend some of my garms to Noel because I didn’t want him to walk into any clothes shop looking like the ghetto sufferer he was. We would try on a top or a pair of trainers and then we would simply leg it from the shop, jumping on the nearest bus. The security guards were mostly African and one or two of them would chase us for a while to look the part but give up. Once we got home, Noel had to hide his new garms and trainers under his bed ’cos if his mum found out it would have been Dutch Pot time. As for me, ’cos the inside of my wardrobe was looking sweet already, Mum didn’t notice my new garms. Davinia did though and I had to threaten her on a few occasions to keep her beak quiet. If Paps found out he would have lectured me ’til doomsday.
    On weekends, Noel would take his stolen garms out from under his bed, put them in a bag and come over to my place to put them on. Then we’d head out on road, looking buff in our garms and chirpsing chicks. We were only twelve or thirteen but it’s amazing the confidence new clothes can give you. We would hang out at Stockwell and New Park Road Youth Clubs, posing like we was in a hip hop video and tormenting those ghetto kids who were still wearing beat up trainers and cheap market clothes.
    â€˜Where you going with your cheap under-a-fiver jeans?’ Noel would tease. ‘They should make a law banning brothers wearingthat shit on road and confining your cheap black ass to your flat where your shit-poor mum can’t afford the motherfucking rent! You fucking pussy!’
    But we wanted more.
    As far back as I could remember, Noel’s mum smoked weed and so did my paps. Growing up I never thought nothing of it and it was normal to me as drinking a cup of tea or seeing a Kosovan kid get jacked. I didn’t even know it was an offence ’til I was fourteen. When I questioned Paps about his weed smoking he would say it was to ease the pains in his legs. I knew that was fuckery. Anyway, Noel and me, we wanted to try it. At school there were some older kids who smoked weed and they used to wrap their