Troubled Mouse

After his unexpected arrival, Mouse was with us the duration of our time in Mayfair. His behaviour was exemplary throughout, and he made himself much more useful than I ever did.

His beautiful Spanish girlfriend stayed with us too. He said she had "Gypsy blood" but when I spoke to her she told me her father worked in a bank. Her English wasn't good, but her cooking was much better, and so we were happy to have her around. Their first night - before they could return to their last squat to collect their bedding - they slept wrapped in the Mexican flag.

One night, one of the artists in our group invited her to his exhibition in Shoreditch, and they cycled off together. Mouse stayed home and was upset when she wasn't back early. He tried calling her but she didn't answer. So he phoned the Artist and said "If you touch my girlfriend, you're dead". Discussing this the next afternoon, he acknowledged he'd been irrationally jealous. He bought her an enormous bouquet of flowers.

That evening, with the flowers propped up in the hallway, she went missing again. Mouse tried every room and she wasn't in any of them, until the only room left was the Artist's bedroom. The door was locked. "I'm going to count to ten" he said "And then I'm going to smash the door down!"

A lot can be done in ten seconds, and so when the door burst open the Artist and the Gypsy girl were at opposite sides of the room, and certainly weren't fucking up against the window. And there were tears, and a few things got broken, but nobody actually got stabbed; and Mouse and his girlfriend are still together.

The next day Dan and I directed our anger at the Artist, who was smirking unrepetently, but finally seemed to accept that, for the sake of the group, he oughtn't to do it again.

A few days later, Mouse moved most of his belongings back to East London. We didn't see him again before we were evicted.

Last week the Spanish girl called us in tears. After an unsuccessful attempt to sign on, Mouse got into a fight with a security guard at the Jobcentre. He's now in Brixton Prison awaiting sentencing. And so, despite his best efforts, trouble finds him again.