Tramp

‘Spare any change mate?’ His beard was wild, bushy, red and full of bits. The natural colour in it wasn’t in sequence with his age surely, but I couldn’t see his hair for a black beanie hat with an emblem embedded with grime, I think it was for the 2003 Olympics in Ireland. He was thick set and stocky for a tramp, but quite short, like some kind of Celtic dwarf from Lord of The Rings. His face looked battle hardened, his eyes alert and assertive. He wore a mismatch of modern looking dirt engrained clothing, picked up from the Salvation Army, or some such no doubt. ‘Fraid not mate, I’ve got nothing on me, living on my credit card until I get paid, sorry.’ I replied. ‘You could get me a bacon balm though.’ He said; gesturing towards the Greggs he was stood outside. His manner was forthright, it seemed a little cheeky, sounded almost like he expected it from me, like it was my duty, perhaps he’d done his duty, and we, the passersby, were oblivious. His eyes were searching though, perhaps he became a little uncertain in hindsight, but I admired his spirit, it brought a smile to my face as I kept walking, and rounded the corner on my return to work. Now anybody who knows me knows that it is impossible for me to be that heartless, I torture myself with regret in such circumstances. Not only that, but having visited Venice recently, I’d seen a beggar just off San Marco’s square, as she became visible between the reams of people I was almost upon her, she was so grotesque that I was taken aback. I made the split second decision that a two euro coin was too much and kept walking, in hindsight it was a snippet to pay not to have suffered from the regret I felt for the rest of the day. It had been the last day of our break; we had been down to our last cash, every euro counted. Still, by the time we got to the airport two euro’s remained – idiot. I made a pledge that day; always give to at least one person per day on each day I was asked. I wasn’t that bad anyway, I’d given plenty of euro’s away on my Venice trip already, and did the same a lot at home, but I needed to put this incident right, some good had to come of it, in the name of the beggar who missed out sort of speak. I turned on my heel and went back, ‘bacon balm was it?’ ‘Yes,’ he hesitated, ‘and a coffee.’ I had to smile, cheeky bastard had spirit. I made my way into Greggs and joined the queue, eventually asking for a bacon balm, I was stopped there, ‘we don’t do bacon balms after 11.’ ‘Right, I’ll just go and see what else he wants, gesturing to the tramp outside, they pretended not to notice. ‘Sausage butty then pal.’ Man didn’t do please and thankyou’s, but I liked him all the same, I was determined to get him something. ‘Sausage butty please,’ the queue a little bigger this time. ‘None left,’ came the response. I shrugged as if to gesture, ‘you know the drill,’ and left the shop again. ‘Cheese and onion pasty then,’ the tramp ordered, rubbing his fingerless gloves together while spreading blackened fingertips and looking away. I got the sense it was me who was embarrassing him. ‘Cheese and onion pasty and a coffee, and throw in a sausage roll for the old bugger too, they look good.’ Service without a smile took place and I paid for the old boy’s breakfast on my bloody credit card, as per his wishes. I pressed the hot food into his chest outside and gave him his cup of coffee, ‘there you go mate, enjoy,’ I said, turning before he asked for sugar and sauce. There was a hint of a thank you in my wake, that’s more than I could have asked for; I didn’t have to think about it again, that's all I ask for.

Dens Were The Days

Push bikes and building sites, hikey dikes and apple fights, oh dens were the days.

Quality Street Today

No doubt about it, Victoria Station needed a new roof alright, damn thing looked ready to peel open like a sardine can. The amount of water came in too - you felt like a bloody sardine yourself some mornings. Still, there was a sense of history about the place; it hadn’t changed much, just deteriorated. I made the walk to Manchester Victoria every day, from one end of Deansgate at Castlefield, to the other at the Cathedral, behind which was the old station. I caught the tram from Victoria to Bury where I worked. I could have caught it in Castlefield where I lived, but I enjoyed the daily walk, and was the slimmest I’d been for a long while because of it. Often, if I was at court in the mornings, I’d go straight to the Civil Justice Centre just off the middle of Deansgate - then jump on a tram from Victoria afterwards. Today was such a day. Now, the unspoken perk of being a solicitor was not the money or the glamour, there was none of that, it was the tastes of freedom you got following an out of office commitment, nobody keeping tabs on you, provided you didn’t take the piss. It was therefore always a good opportunity to run a few errands or pick up a few bits in town, and I needed a haircut. It wasn’t until I was walking through Victoria that I remembered this, catching site of one of the old barber’s shops in there. The one I used on occasion was a one man band who had either shut down or gone away, so I thought I’d give the other a try. It was full of old boys chewing the fat, most of the chairs were occupied, but it soon became apparent that nobody was waiting for a haircut, except me, and I was ushered into the barber’s chair on entry. The place was as traditional as it got, a well used, well maintained working environment that could keep on providing a service for as long as it was serviced in the manner to which it was clearly accustomed. The tools were sharp and bold, and as old as the place itself, you didn’t see mahogany handled brushes with best silver tipped badger bristles, the handles shining with use, this was rare. You certainly didn’t see straight razors with three pin horn handles and double transverse stabilisers, barbers of the day favoured clippers, gangsters; guns. These old boys had a nice array of hats, if indeed they belonged to them, it could be they adorned the hat stand on display, but who was I to say, they’d all seen better days. They wore tatty suits like you might see down a bookies or propping the bar in Wetherspoon’s, some wore tracksuits, others jeans and jackets. The barber favoured a long pressed black smock with collar, pockets for his tools, grey trousers and brogues. His silver hair greased back neatly and not a day over seventy. A younger man walked in, he was of the same ilk, but all flash and bravado; there was talk of a scam’s workings, and of getting the Bentley in. Just quiet enough for me not to hear, although remarkably my barber did, giving filleted advice to which all took note, before he went about his business and then them to theirs. The younger fella left from the other door and the room fell silent. ‘I remember the day we put the Kray’s back on the train. Frankie Frazer had a bad day that day.’

Always Remember

It is extremely rare that the fantasy might live up to the reality, extremely.

On The Wagon

Alcohol is great when you're a kid, but not so when you're responsible for one. My love/hate relationship with booze is tipping more and more towards hate the less I use. Today I realised this when I wrote the following to a friend, 'I cannot tell you how much better my weekend was for not poisoning my spirit. So much happier, so much more energy, so much more done with a smile. Honestly, drinking is shite, it's for people who have nothing else going on.'

Hotel Corridors

High Wycombe, home for a year or so, just while I got my training contract completed at any rate. I hadn’t been able to find one in London, a training contract that is, and after a great deal of bar work and applications, things had gone tits up with my girlfriend of the time, who happened to be the nanny for the wealthy family providing the tidy little St John’s Wood apartment roof over our heads. The classic London pub I’d been working in, just around the corner, The Jolly Crocker, also closed its doors at about the same time, sold to a Thai restaurateur. Fortunately, I managed to get a few days squatting on her upper floors by the grace of the Maori girl who’d been running her, just while I got my shit together. So, I ended up in High Wycombe, my London days had lasted all of six months, it’d been a taste, but I wanted a bigger bite, and I absolutely took one. My job meant that I spent a lot of time between the Royal Courts of Justice and the gypsy sites of Buckinghamshire, these were planning application appeal cases, and we were at the forefront, well, at least my boss Jeremy Brown was, amazing man, blind too, but it didn’t stop him getting to Lord’s on the tube with only a stick, he loved to listen to the cricket, played it too, using a ball with a bell. The firm I worked for was in Chesham, right at the end of the Metropolitan line - so London in my book. It meant I got to sample the capital’s rat race and post work drinking culture first hand, if only a few days a week. I wrote out a list of things I still wanted to see, do and experience in London, I think I always knew deep down I was only passing through. It was only 45 minutes on the train from High Wycombe to London Euston, so I boxed off quite a lot at the weekends, although not quite as many as I needed to. My housemates were great, collectively we met quite a lot of people in High Wycombe, socially it was busy. My lucky break away came when I lost my driving licence following a young solicitor’s dinner in Rickmansworth, or some such place. It was on the Metropolitan line in any event, so I’d left my car in Chesham and taken the tube. The do was awful, so much so, I drank seven pints of Stella early in the evening and left. I got back to Chesham and slept in my car for a while, not long enough it seemed. The result was that I had to move to Chesham so I could walk to work, and therein lay some more stories for another time. From then on I was in London every weekend, mostly on my own. I couldn’t afford to stay over in London, my earnings were everything I deserved at the time, pretty poor, my fine was costing me too, and London isn’t cheap. I used to stay out all day exploring, visiting attractions, exhibitions and galleries, then party at night, often until after my last tube home. When I did get stranded with a skin full, I came up with an ingenious if rather cheeky way of staying off the streets for the night. I’d find myself a nice hotel with revolving or automatic doors that remained unlocked, then sweep in with my head up, confident and purposeful, as if I owned the place, straight to the lift and up, all the way to the top floor. Empty plates and fresh newspapers were a good sign, then on to an alcove or corridor off the main routes, curl up on often quite thick carpet, and sleep. Only once did I not wake up on my own accord and exit the hotel as if butter wouldn’t melt. Instead, I was shaken by my shoulder; it was the hotel duty manger, he asked if I was okay. I told him my name was Grant and that I had rowed with my girlfriend and left without my phone or key, forgetting my room number. Not bad for a young man woken abruptly with a hangover, but such are the powers of fear following shock to stoke up assertiveness. He escorted me downstairs to reception so that he could find my room number on the computer and set me up with a new key. Whilst he was engrossed in firing up the system, I simply walked out of the door and into the fresh morning sunshine in search of some breakfast, feeling better all the time; after all, I’d slept like a baby. Remarkably, considering everything that happened in that year, a lot of which I write about, I actually managed to qualify as a solicitor. But more importantly, I ticked everything off my list, and that was the source of everything that happened, experience is everything.

Religion In Conflict

Religion - suppression of God given instincts.

Self Righteous Misguided Codgers

I love to give old people a hard time when they're in the wrong, makes up for all those years of misguided ballockings. The angry outspoken codger is often not nearly as clever as they should be, it's a picture of justice being done to take them apart, they never expect it.

Multi-tasking

We can all multi-task, aslong as anger counts

226 Alfreton Road

Student digs; 226 Alfreton Road, Radford, Nottingham. My goodness that place was haunted, and mouse infested, still, we kept it on for 2 years because it had three floors with four bedroom flats on each, and there were always at least twelve of us, close mates that is, we’d mostly met in halls in our first year and had become an unruly band of brothers as such, our family away from family. In the first year there, I was in the middle flat, the nicer of the three, but in the second, I was on the top floor, the dope smoking, rodent laced, unfixed bar containing homage to the 70’s and student living. It was the late 90’s, but we picked up lots of 70’s jumble to decorate. The wallpaper was hanging off and there were lots of holes, so we re-decorated with cheap posters from the student union. The furniture was mostly collapsed, but comfy enough as you sank down into it, we even had one of my flatmate’s friends living on the sofa for several months, he’d just decided to stop going to Uni in Derby, but didn’t want to go home either. We had some tremendous times and great parties, most of us would get thrown out of the student union on a Friday or Saturday night, we were banned from a great deal of student pubs, but this was a city with more than 365 public houses, and a great deal of nightclubs. Unfortunately however, on the whole I think girls found us rather unapproachable, not many of us had much luck in the old gaff in the girl department. Not surprising really, we were a tight knit rowdy clique, more into doing buckets and booze, and waking on torn lino under kitchen furniture in a kebab, minutes before tutorial. From time to time a mad girl used to visit one of the lads, nicknamed 'Can't Talk,' on account of his speech impediment. He dated her at home and she’d followed him to Uni, it was an unhealthy relationship and often involved her stomping around the premises looking for him, we’d hide him away, she got wise to this eventually though, having found him in a broom cupboard all Hell broke loose and she beat him up with a mop, we never saw her again. Anyway, that’s all by and by, my story is about the address, and just a few of my unusual experiences therein. They all started for me when I got into that top flat, and in particular the room that had the loft door, I got up into the loft early into my stay, just to have a nosey really, check out it’s storage potential, it was black to touch and to see, I wish I hadn’t gone up there, seems I probably disturbed something too. There was little doubt that my room was the coldest, not something the previous occupant had complained about, but then he’d moved out of the house entirely, allowing a new occupant to move in and me to move upstairs. That was the only one of us ever to break off, and we didn’t really see him much after that. It was a big room and I had my stereo at the end near the door, directly underneath the loft hatch. The bed was up at the other end on the far wall with a large window in the back wall behind it. My stereo was equipped with motion sensors so that when you got close it would light up, start flashing and bid you hello via scrolling digital text. Without fail, every night at about 3-4am this began to happen, despite nobody being anywhere near it, it always woke me because of the intensity of the blinking lights, the only full night’s sleep I got was when I passed out somewhere else. Not long after, following a heavy night in, consisting of bongs and Nash Bridges, everyone passed out, I included, but I awoke to see it was that time of night again, and the television screen had turned to static. I decided to watch it for a while, my mind still exploring thoughts from the dope and projecting images into the fuzz. Alas, I’d had enough and decided to head to bed, I couldn’t find the remote so remained seated, looking for it in my mind’s eye, it was no good, no doubt under someone elsewhere, so I put my forearm up on the arm of the chair forming a right angle, stuck out my index finger towards the ceiling and brought down my arm quickly under its own weight. As soon as my finger lined up with the screen, it turned off, the television actually turned off, instantly. I looked at the lads quickly to see if anyone had witnessed it, they all slept on soundly. Can't Talk was in the room next door to me, he rarely did any work, but when he did, it was always last minute and through the night. His bedroom door right next to mine, they formed the corner together on the hall, mine was often slightly ajar because it wouldn’t shut properly. Towards one of his major deadlines, my immediate neighbour was pulling an all-nighter mid week, the kind where pro-plus and A3 take precedent over ecstasy and skins. The next morning he was telling me that between 3 and 4am his door kept being pushed open, at first he’d thought it’d just been us playing around, but he’d been out to investigate and no-one was stirring, every time he’d shut the door it was pushed open again. It got to Christmas that year and everyone went home for the holidays, I didn’t however, my work placement in Mansfield still had a couple of days to run, it meant staying in that enormous haunted house in the middle of one of the most crime ridden areas of the country for two more nights, alone. The first night wasn’t too bad; I rummaged under the cushions and found enough small change for a large donner kebab from Bash at Kebabish just up the road, he was next door to the most dangerous KFC in the country apparently. Bash was taking delivery of what looked like a bleeding severed head in a tesco bag over the counter, he handed over some notes in exchange from the till and took my order, the blue neon flashing in the window behind me and a small sorry looking plastic Christmas tree hiding the redundant fan on the fridge. Having enjoyed my supper at home, I fell asleep on the sofa following an enormous joint which would normally have been enough for four of us. It was the next night that I was troubled, I had my bags packed and ready to go by early evening, but I didn’t have any means of intoxication for the night ahead. It was a blowy night too and Nottingham shook. A city surrounded by forests, full of history, cursed galleons, medieval pubs, castles, caves and bloody ghosts! When I finally did get to sleep, it seemed like no time before I was torn out of it. The noise was extremely loud, banging and clattering, as if somebody was trying to break into the front doors and their life depended on it, to be fair my room was at the back of the property so it was clear to anybody from the front that all of the students had gone home for Christmas. There was a door at the bottom of the staircase leading up to our flat so I went down and locked it, there was no sign of anyone outside the porch below though. As I went back to my bedroom I noticed that my bedroom door was shut, it had never done that before. I went back to bed, bloody terrified and cold. Drifting in and out I suddenly awoke completely. I was wide awake too, my heart thumping, my eyes wide on my side, boring into the darkness against the wall. There was a presence, I could feel it alright, shivers worked down my neck and I lay rigid, waiting. The stereo lights came on and flashed blue against the wall in front of me. I'd fully expected it to happen, ‘arrgh fuck,’ I thought, ‘here we go.’ There was a heavy tapping on my covers, stopping and starting intermittently at the end of my bed, I could feel it unmistakably through the covers, I remained still. Next, the covers were ripped from me and onto the floor, so I leaped up in the dark and ran to the light switch next to the door, the whole length of the room was in pitch darkness as I went. I managed to get the light on first time and turn my head to look back at the scene, panic must have been written across my face, there was nothing there that I could see, but there was no doubt what had happened. I fled the property and slept in my car, not going back until the start of the next term and the arrival of my housemates. When I told them all what had happened over Christmas we agreed to meet in the Spread Eagle and head in together. I was glad we did, when we got there, there were tramps sleeping in the porch on piles of old post, no sign of any ghosts though, my covers remained on the floor; I put them back on the bed. I became infested with scabies soon after. We would regularly sit on that porch roof in the warmer months and watch the world go by. It was quite a height, second floor up, plus a tiled roof on top of that, got you elevated to about 15 feet, but it would only sit four with your legs dangling. You could access it from the landing window on the way up to the third floor flat, if you stayed up there long enough you’d see prostitutes working their beats, flaming mattresses and televisions flying from upper floor windows, gang beatings, drug dealing, and if you were up early enough on one particular morning, a 328i BMW belonging to my old pal’s father being towed out of the bus lane below and taken to the compound. Unfortunately, none of us were up for that and so it took a while to work out the car hadn’t been stolen, his dad back up in Carlisle thankfully none the wiser. Some good parties took place building up to the summer, I’d get a weekly wage every Friday from my work placement, it’d be gone after a greasy spoon at Sonia’s on the Sunday, still no fun drinking on your own. FA cup final day was coming up and we planned a big day as usual, we’d spent two previous years making a day of it, I had already a reputation for something happening to me on this day, the year before I’d fallen asleep on a cemetery wall and woken up on a grave, the year before that I’d let a fire extinguisher off in halls and been heavily fined. This time we had t-shirts printed with our nicknames on the back and a large letter each below to spell out Aspley House when we stood in a line; this was the house name of 226. We filled the baths with ice and beer, drank that, and then hit the town. It was a messy day, I don’t recall watching any football and when we did finally get home, most of the chaps went to bed. I’d made it through the day without any mishaps, so was raring to keep things going. Those left standing plonked themselves in our flat and promptly went to sleep. I got some frozen sausages out and put them under the grill on a low heat to defrost and then rolled a joint. Nobody was awake to join me so I went out to smoke it in the night air on the porch roof. I took one drag and put my arms out behind me to lean back and look at the stars. My left hand missed the roof and went off the edge; I followed head first, somehow completing a full summersault in mid air and unbelievably landing on my feet, which promptly gave way and sent me down onto my hands. Fortunately not long after one of the lads from the bottom flat was on his way up to borrow a cigarette, he looked out of the window and saw me, he immediately called an ambulance. The ambulance did eventually arrive and pulled up behind a police car, which had pulled up behind a pizza delivery bike, all of them stood around me in a heap on the floor. The hospital had teased me that I was going for a record number of breaks, turned out I needed a plate and screws in my right ankle, had very bad bruising to the bones of my left and had cracked my shoulder socket on the left too as I went down on to my hands. It meant I couldn’t use crutches so I spent the summer in a wheelchair like a Vietnam vet crunching cans and shooting an air pistol out the back door. Therein lie some more tails for another time, and although the wheelchair went back with buckled wheels and flat tyres, such are the tribulations and mistakes that can make a man better.