So....are we all doomed or what?

There is a heavy sense of depression hanging around this morning. Three days of rioting have left everyone sleepless and slack-jawed. What the hell is happening? Is this the end of all things? Even the number of jokes buzzing around social media are a barmoeter of just how shocked everybody feels.

For me, and my sleepless head, I have that vague but overhanging sense of doom. My immediate reaction is to leave London, leave Britain, leave the planet, change species, blow my brains out. That said, recently I have had mounting woman-fuelled worries that have led me to want to leave London, leave Britain, leave the planet, change species, blow my brains out...so I may not be the best Test rat for this experiment.

Of course, nobody knows quite why this is happening. Why it's escalating is clear: The police are unable to keep the peace, the country seems a free-for-all, looting is inevitable. The politicians and police commissioners are largely way out of step (most Tuscan villas don't get BBC News 24). Headmasterly cries of 'unacceptable' and 'thuggery' are impotent and pointless. It's like putting Mubarak on the naughty step. Even Dianne Abbott, who has barged her way to the front of most interviews is using the language of 'disenfranchisement' and 'without a stake' and 'coalition cuts' which, whilst absolutely valid, will doubtless be scorned in the fury of rightwing, reactionary polemic which will inevitably follow all this.

It's tempting to get righteous about this: either from a leftish 'blame society' view or a rightwing 'blame the parents/ knock some heads together' frame of mind. For many this will be seen as the proof of all those Daily Mail scare stories: of a society that has lost respect, can't feed itself properly, has no morals, is being ripped apart by immigration, doesn't know what it stands for. Or maybe it's a bit more simple and bit less gruesome than all that.

Most societies are kept in check by law enforcement. In a large, liberal city where the forces of community, family and deference can't possibly keep people in check, centralised authority is a necessary evil. People don't like it, of course. For all the crowing about 'community liasions' and 'partnerships' the police are basically there to stop people from doing exactly what they want. For some parts of society, this may seem to impinge more on their freedoms than others. When you remove that force, people will do as they please. It's happened a million times in a million different societies, regardless of the culture, institutions and nicetities in place. An Indian fruitseller outside my house said "It shouldn't happen in this country." But we find ourselves particularly suseptible here. A majority of the trouble has been the looting of large department stores, the seizure of material goods, which young people have been told and fervently believe in an age of base materialism, will improve their lives and confer status but, rather cruelly, have high price tags attached. So will the rioting stop once all the shops have been looted? Probably not. The gate is open, the cork is out, the lamp is ungenied, the bag de-catted, the large jar of cliches has spilt onto the floor. A lot of troubled, restless young people have tasted a sense of power and catharsis which they'll be reluctant to give up.

The immediate solution is to impose curfew, roll out the troops and break the momentum of the disorder. People who despair now will find, for the most part, that life soon returns to normal  at a frightening rate. Once the news crews find something else to talk about, it'll be like it never happened. In the relentless redevelopment of London, no one will notice a bit more plastic sheeting and scaffolding. For some of course, the scars might last longer.

With all the speculation, all the miles and miles of columns and blogs, what could put an end to the rioting, anarchy, social discontent, materialism, amoralism, opportunism, criminality, injustice is a good, undemocratic, British showering. Trainers get ruined, plasma screens fizzle out, and tracksuit bottoms get clammy and tough to demolish shop fronts in. The rain won't wash away the problems, or collate the intangibles, but it will make everyone stop, say "Bloody typical" and return to a proper sense of Britishness - the unifying character we all seek to stitch this nation together: All of the rampaging malice, none of the weather to make staying outside for long a good idea.

Where were you while we were getting high? The row behind you, trying to ignore it.

I went to see Oasis at Wembley Stadium on Saturday. It was all a bit last minute and nicely discounted, but was a fantastic spectacle. If you pointed the speaker stacks in the stadium up at the sky and played the instrumental bit from 'Live and Let Die', the sonic blasts could probably take down a Boeing 747. Al Qaeda Wings fans take note. The visual displays are so flabbergastingly awesome that they were able to make Noel Gallagher's haircut look not shit. You also have to pay £4.00 for a pint of flat Carlsberg. It's a remarkable place.

The only problem with Oasis, other than the unashamed volume of plagiarism and monkey genetics (the boys are so simian that I thought we'd ended up at a Gorillaz concert - oh, the irony) is, when massed together, their fans could well be confused with the 'International Cunts Convention' - which was actually taking place next-door at Wembley Arena. A larger collection of coked up scallies, wideboys and mini-cab drivers was rarely witnessed. We used to export these types to Australia, now instead we intern them in Wembley Stadium for a few hours a night to give the rest of the UK a bit of a breather. Most spent much of the gig commuting back and forth to the bar to make sure they had drank the 12 pints necessary to exclude them of accusations of homosexuality. Even then, they must have actually ordered 14...allowing them the obligatory 2 extra to hurl at other people in the crowd. It's not all bad though. When Oasis finally appeared (after Kasabian and 'Kasaboasis, it's got a lady'), the scallywags were so delighted that they threw plastic pints up into the air like a staggered fireworks display, thus already outdoing the opening ceremony planned for the 2012 London Olympics.

Being a bit of a social anthropologist (i.e. sniffy) I observed the easy back and forth of the stadium savage. For example, at one point I was having a wee at one of the many overflowing piss troughs around the stadium when some girls walked in. One of the men standing next to me said. "Aaa cam there's so many gels saddenley come in?". "Well" said the toilet attendant, taking his cue: "Gels only go into the toilit in gwoops of fawa, dan't they" causing a ripple of mirth and wheezing amongst the gentlemen. Delighted by his own comic genius, the attendant continued. "Oi, gels. Get aaat, yeah? If you is gonna stay in ere, least you cud do is suck my cock!" The queue of full bladders broke into yet greater bouts of lung collapsing chucking was met with one of the 'gels' saying "Oi! Cheeky!" in a flirtatious, mock-outraged manner. Enjoying the mastery of both wit and 'the ladies' the Wembley Stadium official continued. "Cos, if you don't get aat soon, I'm sure the lads ere wouldn't mind taking it turns wiv ya" causing the lads to nod in grinning agreement and one of them to say "Phwoar" in a sinister, piggy-eyed Robin Askwith fashion. The girls simply giggled at this thinly veiled threat of gang rape and said something along the lines of "saucy", in the same euphemistic cockney way that foamingly psychopathic career criminals are described as "a little bit naughty". Before threats of skull sex were misinterpreted as bawdy chat up lines, I decided to scarper. I couldn't go by that point, anyway.

It wasn’t all terrifying sexual assault at Wembley. They also did food. As well as being predictably exorbitant, the marketing bods had also cottoned on to the idea of selling more meal comobs with the simple use of alliteration. Thus the menus consisted of ‘burger and a beer’, ‘pizza and a pint’, with ‘lucozade and langoustine’ and ‘whisky and a wagon wheel’ presumably being phased in at a later date.

A similar novelty was the feature, on our row, of a black guy dressed in a shiny suit, star-shaped sunglasses and a plastic cowboy hat passionately playing an inflatable purple guitar. We couldn’t decide if the guy was employed by the venue or was a slightly deranged day-release patient who had the burdening delusion that his efforts were central to the enjoyment of the 150,000 strong crowd and the success of the entire enterprise. However, the fact that we found him asleep in a nearby phone box after the gig suggested the latter. Not to poke fun at the flamboyantly dressed minstrel. He was 'fookin boss'!