One song I’d want to have played at my funeral is ‘Rise Up’ by Clio Campbell. I think it’s absolutely genius – a bouncy pop number underpinned by real bite and anger. It hasn’t necessarily aged well in that it’s got those big synthy chords which were very typical of the late Eighties and early Nineties, but it’s actually a really complex piece of music underneath the bubblegum sound. I sometimes can’t quite believe she was only in her early twenties when she wrote it!

The lyrics are about the poll tax riots and the idea of communities coming together to resist a specific injustice; however, unfortunately, given the world we live in they ring just as true today and could be applied to any number of contemporary international events.

I remember being a little girl and watching her on Top of the Pops [Campbell famously refused to mime the lyrics of her song, instead shouting an anti-poll tax slogan over the backing track until the producers cut her segment] and being blown away, as my dad tutted about her ‘uppity behaviour’. What was amazing about that moment for me was that there was this young, pretty woman, absolutely refusing to behave like all the other young, pretty women on Top of the Pops. I’m fairly sure she started something in me!

SAMMI

Brixton, 2018

Spider was the only one who even thought to stay in Brixton after it all fell apart, and the only one Sam even sees occasionally now (if she didn’t count Fran’s byline picture popping up above a column on trans politics in the Guardian every now and then). Usually she avoided his eye. Here he was, leading a three-crusty protest outside the arches where the squat had been. She had to pass the arches to take Elliot to football practice on the days she didn’t have the car, and usually she kept her head down, eyes on the pavement, and walked quickly past. If you see a thing every day, sometimes you can render it nothing, force it into the background by sheer overexposure.

Elliot, who was refusing to hold her hand, slowed down to watch the protest, a small sneer forming round his mouth. Spider’s dreads were frazzled and grey now, his face a worn little nut cracked with years of hard living, and he was waving a sign. RESIST GENTRIFICATION, it said, in splotchy neon lettering. KEEP BRIXTON WEIRD.

Brixton was never weird, mate, she thought to herself. Brixton thinks you’re weird.

‘Ha! Freaks!’ muttered Elliot.

‘What did you say, mister?’

The boy looked back at her, his face weighing up the options. He doubled down. Poor choice, kid.

‘I said – FREAKS.’

His little defiant chin. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him across the road towards the protest, as he squirmed and shouted trying to get out of her grip. She kept him with her as they approached Spider.

‘Hello, Spider.’