Had summer holidays. Which consisted of days that turned to night without any transition after 198 hours. In the yard, withered grass covered with plastic bags as if to admonishingly remind the observer about the plastic waste in the world’s oceans. Against the fences leaned bored children with no money to go to a pool. Of which there were none anyway. Days during summer holidays began with a good breakfast—which very few of them received because either their mother was sleeping off her depression or had left for the filthy jobs that you got as a single mother, most of them related to cleaning, prostitution, caring for old people, or the packaging of some machine part or other. Many got white bread. White bread always did the trick if you spread it with mayonnaise. Sometimes that wasn’t available. In which case a stout-hearted gulp of water and then to steal something later. From the yard came the constant sound of balls being mindlessly kicked against a wall. The bleakness made it so the body wanted to lie down again almost immediately upon getting up; it couldn’t lie down, though, because it was too nervous. At some point the children went out to be with the others, to stand around or to kick balls against the wall. After a few hours, shortly before they smashed their heads against the concrete out of boredom, they left their block to go lean on a fence somewhere else and look at music videos. Their stars came from places that looked similar to Rochdale and had still managed to produce a life. Which meant gold chains, large cars, gold bags, Gucci, and collector’s sneakers.

What the children understood as a life had only to do with money. Money was what separated them from those in real cities, meaning Manchester, which they visited once in a while. Riding public transport without a ticket to go look at people strolling around Selfridges. They all dreamed of living in Selfridges, and they hated the people who drank tea there and bought porcelain dogs. The children belonged to the newly defined Generation Z. The end of the alphabet. The end of the food chain, well-researched, in order to better sell them products. They were the second wave of digital natives. Connected physically to digital technology, they’d become a performer generation through lack of perspective. The more crowded the world became and the more interchangeable people became, the more desperate was the desire to be seen. Even though there was no point.

DON, KAREN, HANNAH, AND PETER

Had of late only taken photos of themselves where they were unrecognizable, owing to the idea that they would probably want to become criminals later on.

Since then, only hoodie photos.

Since exceptions had been made to allow the army to take action against demonstrations.

Since there had been discussions about privatizing the police and the army.