The Dead Yard

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Dawn over the turquoise shore of Africa and here, under the fractured light of a streetlamp, brought to earth like some hurricaned palm, I woke before the supine ocean amidst a sea of glass and upturned bus stands and the wreck of cars and looted stores.

The streets of Playa de las Americas were flowing with beer and black sewage and blood. Smoke hung above the seashore and the smell was of desolation, decay, the burning of tires and fuel oil. The noise of birds, diesel engines, a dirge-like siren, a helicopter, voices in Spanish over a loudspeaker- all of it more than enough hint of the breakdown in the fragile rules of the social contract.

I was sitting up and adjusting to the light and the growing heat when a kid hustled me under cover and the riot began again.

Five hundred British football hooligans, three hundred and fifty Irish fans, all of them on this island at the same time for a “friendly” match between Dublin’s Shamrock Rovers and London’s Millwall.

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