I nip into Morrison's for some onions, and then wait for my bus, on a Brighton Street fairly well-known for its cast of 'local characters'. A fat red-faced man in a tracksuit has just been accosted by an old chum, a beige skull with blue-glaze junkie eyes and knee-socks. "I seen you here on Saturday morning", says the Skull, as the bus arrives and we all begin to board.
"You never seen me, not Saturday," says Fatty. "Cos I took the big overdose on Friday night!" He announces the last sentence with a certain amount of pride.
"Why ain't you dead, then?" asks the Skull.
"Cos I took too much to kill me!"
"That's bollocks, 'ow can you take too much overdose to kill you?What you take?"
"Them pills I been on seven years. Strongest ones you can get! I took twelve packets and it was too much too kill me, they said."
"What were they, then? Temazepan?"
"BOLLOCKS were they Temazzies! I said they was the strongest ones you can get! Temazzies, shit."
"Tramodol, then? Anyway it's bollocks, why didn't you jump off Beachy Head? If you wanna kill yourself, that's what you wanna do, jump off Beachy Head."
"I shouldn't be bleedin' ALIVE! Cos I took twelve packets and I drunk 36 fackin' CANS an' ALL!! 36!!"
"Well you must have been sick all over yourself and pissed like a fackin horse."
"Then I got knocked down by a car, yesterday."
"You got bleedin' knocked down? What you break?"
"NAFFIN. it never done a bleedin' thing."
"You're fackin unlucky, mate, you are. I ain't sittin next to you."
And so the Skull adjourns to the front of the bus and gives the female driver full low-down about the skank who just ripped him off for a tenner that her gave her to buy tobacco, and when he chased her she went al schizo and screamed and that, so he got his hand in her bag and pulls out a Halifax Gold card that she must have ripped off some punter last night, so nice one, in the end, as it happens.
Fatty sits miserably alone, but as I get up to ring the bell for my stop he leans across the aisle to me, and very quietly, he wolf-whistles.
©Ishouldbeworking 2011
10 comments:
I adore the way you write your observations. People watching is the best sport there is.
You must have been so flattered.
Still got it, ISBW!
I thought we'd start with lunch at Terre a Terre, and just see how it goes from there.
Temptress.
Reminds me of some of the nights I spent on Greyhound buses.
Grab you coat luv you've pulled :-) I bet you were so flattered by his admiration of you ;-)
Oh lord some bad memories there... to be reminded of the nonsense of active addiction is a regular for me, I was talking to a guy last Friday who whilst having the conversation with me kept breaking off for side conversations with the "other guy in the room"... there wasn't anyone else there - poor lad he is determined this is his last detox - I hope he makes it. There but for the grace of God and all that.
One thing I can relate to in all that is the bizarreness of some of the stories - are they true? You live in a world so mad who knows? However, I can remember days I drank 30+ pints walked out the pub and drove home - now the memory is no doubt warped by drink but it is as clear as day even if it makes no feasible sense.
I stood behind a quite young bloke in a newsagent/cheap booze shop a couple of weeks ago, and watched him buy 16 cans of Stella, 1.5 litres of Diamond White, and (as an afterthought), a pair of the rank bottles of wine on offer (two for a fiver). It was 10.30 in the morning. The bloke behind the till must have noticed my horrified face as he informed me that his customer would be back the following morning for the same again 'if that lot gets him through today'.
I can believe it all.
Nice to be liked isn't it? :)
I like the inverted logic of taking too much of something to kill oneself, as if lethal dosages are on a bell curve. Poor lad, sounds like the weedy one at school trying to big himself up (which by all accounts he hs as done, but in the wrong way).
Spot on - if he'd been seven he'd have been bragging at top volume about making himself sick on "sixty eight sherbet fountains and five hundred Black Jacks and fifty litres of Sunny D."
wonderful sharp observation...
Thank you very much! That's very kind. They were a bit of a gift, to be honest...though I don't think the bus driver would agree with me.
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