Docklands returns to business as usual

By Giles Broadbent on April 4, 2009 1:05 PM |

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Saturday. Business as usual around Royal Victoria Dock. The community is reclaiming their corner of the world from the media, the police, the politicians and the protesters.

The sea cadets are practising figure-of-eight manoeuvres in their high powered RIBs, replacing the police boats that had been patrolling day and night.

"Two days and it's all gone," said the newsagent, smiling. In the background, the clank of metal poles as the scaffolding comes down, the drapes and coverings that prettified the Excel for the world's leaders disappearing to reveal the skeletal hangar beneath.

In the Excel centre itself, all is neat and calm. Not yellow zones, no red zones, no vast partitions, no fretting officials.

A young man in an apron behind a coffee stand cups his head in his hands waiting for trade. Two days ago, he was standing on the most secure piece of turf on these isles. Now there's just me, a couple of people buying lunch at Square Pie and a cagouled foursome of seniors taking snaps.

Meanwhile behind black curtains in one of the exhibition spaces, entrepreneurial guru T Harv Eker is hyping up the hopeful, filling them full of gusto and spirit for an onslaught on the economy. Millionaire Minds sounds nice - but, hey, we were all trillionaires here a couple of days back.

And next door, less than a dozen people sit amid a sea of chairs as an indecipherable blur of words torrents from the stage.

On the screen a couple of routine red-bricked terraced houses up for the highest bidder. Someone's buying something. Someone somewhere is making money.

Outside again, and there's a faint smell of the musty riverside. They've drained water from the moat outside Warehouse W and the pigeons are picking through the freshly-revealed palm-sized slates for titbits.

Along the way, two trucks arrive to take away the mesh fences that were never really tested.

At the mouth of the estate a solitary flag is wedged between the hoardings surrounding the protesters' pen. Blood On Your Hands, it reads in spattered red. Whose blood, whose hands will stay a mystery now. The circus has moved on to Strasbourg.

The only squabble left is between the fair-weather Canadian geese and the resident swans, disputing prime dockside territory in anticipation of bread.

The sun breaks through the thin layer of fog. Normality returns. The joggers and the dog walkers complete their circuits once again.