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.