Raf by Dave Wares

02/05/07

One Christmas, Raf dressed himself up in a Santa Claus outfit, walked into Fenwicks and chained himself to an action man display as a protest against the sale of war toys at Christmas.
Raf was never, ever going to be less than a righteous guy.

And yet my main memory of Raf wasn’t seeing him playing bass alongside Anth Irwin or making himself heard at some anti-fascist protest. No, the thing I remember most clearly was a snowball fight one night after a Bunker Committee meeting.

That evening, the Committee had just decided that a slightly oddball group of ‘Fantasy Gamers’ were allowed to continue renting their room, but that the three locks on their door and the blacked out windows suggested that they were up to something slightly more dubious than pushing plastic fairies about a monopoly board.

Something more than ‘gaming’ was going on and we’d need to keep and eye on them.

And then someone else got their application to rent a room knocked back ‘cos they banked at Barclays.

Which was a sin, as I recall.

But then it began snowing so we finished the meeting early and went outside and threw snowballs at each other for an hour. That was the thing about the Bunker, in between trying to change the world, we were really just a bunch of kids.




We’re all salary-twats and parents now, and we’ve mostly got mortgages and steady jobs and stuff.
Well, most of us.
One or two are in secure accommodation.

But in my minds eye, Raf is still out there somewhere, chaining himself to an object of oppression.

Unfurling a banner.