(no subject)

The corner shop that got firebombed this afternoon without apparent motive, killing one shopworker and injuring three others, isn’t the shop five doors down from my house; it’s the one maybe a hundred yards down the road, owned by the same people, sharing some of the staff, and which I used to go to for years until they opened the second one virtually next door to me. Although I don’t yet know if I know the man who died, I see these guys around all the time; mostly Pakistani, some Afghan, all, like anyone else, just getting on with making a living. I only found out about this as I was coming home this evening, and went to see the place as soon as I got back. Of course it’s nothing but a blackened ruin, but I had to see it for myself to believe it. It was a shit little shop, too, far too narrow even for the two aisles they crammed into it, along which I’ve idly browsed I don’t know how many times, and down which two men today ran for their lives to the back exit as two more leapt through the flames to the street out front. I know the small stock room they were running to, as well; dank and cramped and, though no-one yet knows why, with no exit after all. One of the men who was trapped in there might just make it. For the other it was a hell of a place, and a way, to die.