When keeping it real goes wrong....

At the top of my road. A woman was murdered in her workplace. I saw the police and crime scene Saturday night when I went to catch a cab to meet the girls for a drink in Brixton. They had the tape and a big tent up and there were a dozen people milling about, so I knew it was a murder. The next day I saw one of our reporters up there.

Incidents such as these happening right on my doorstep do not fill me with confidence, especially when it comes to my daughter walking around on her own, even just to local shops - which is right near the crime scene.

My friends always rinse me because I will happily take night bus, walk street late at night and generally do my thing with little fear. But trust me my street instincts are intact. When you grow up in the hood - you always take that hood mentality with you, but obviously you only expose it when you need to.

Recently this woman at work was jarring me so much, as Wong says 'I let the street come out in me'. It's like that Dave Chappelle sketch 'When keeping it real goes wrong'. You always get those people at work, and you know you shouldn't rise to it, but on the wrong day, lack of sleep, food or sex makes you short-tempered and the real you is closer to the surface than usual. Speaky-spokey Butterfly done left the house.

Anyway this woman, let's call her The Hurricane (can you work out her name), decided from dot that she didn't like me or my lovely friend at work Irish Dave. I only realised this when my news editor told me that the bitch had complained we were both bullying her? What the fuck?!? I think I had worked two shifts with her by that point, and she had only been there three weeks. This didn't really bother me - but when she was being blatantly rude, obstreperous (there's a word for you to look up), difficult and argumentative while we were working together, it started to bother me.

I thought to myself - this bitch is trying to take food out of my pickney's mouth. If I asked her to do something she would ignore me, or act like I was harassing her, but she wasn't like this with other people. Anyway, I made sure I was polite, and kept it professional, while she continued to be a cow. But then one night, when my colleague asked her to do another story - she said 'oh I've done 9 stories and BJ has only done 1' the mist descended and the street came out in me. I said to her 'Why you watching me, don't watch me. Watch what you're doing. I've only done three stories because I've had to spend the rest of the time re-checking everything that you do.' Bitch.

We had a bit of a set to one night in the newsroom. It was one of those passive aggressive arguments, where no one raises their voice, but everyone knows that you are arguing. Thankfully the paper had gone to press and the newsroom was half-empty, but those that were still there were riveted. I said 'why are you so hostile, and she said 'you were rude to me the very first week'.

'So why didn't you come to me and say something instead of carrying on like this for the next five weeks.' She said 'oh maybe I'm just tired'. Bitch I know all about being tired, I worked nights for a straight month when I started, never finished on time and didn't complain. Then after going to bed at either 2 or 3am I would get up at 7am to cook breakfast just so I could see my child who was fast forgetting what her mummy looked like. Yes, I know about tiredness.

Luckily for me, no one has any complaints with my work, and I get on fine with the rest of my team. And the fact that she accused Irish Dave of fucking with her completely weakened her case because he is wicked, and everyone thinks he's cool. But I knew she was getting to him when he texted me referring to her as 'slagface'. Ha ha.

Anyway, the bitch decided she couldn't handle the nights and decided to leave. Thank the Lord for that. Funnily enough, there were no leaving drinks for her, and no whip-round.