The Drugs Do Work

I've never really done drugs. I've always been too cautious, too constrained by my conscience and my many paranoias. Sure, I've had a puff on a cigarette and a couple of times tried marijuana... The cigarette was revolting; I couldn't see how it would ever be a pleasure and as for the weed, well, the first time had no effect whatsoever and the second just made me intensely incommunicative. Given my problem socially has always been a tendency to fall into the background and not say anything anyway I couldn't see any benefit from "loosening myself up" with a pot hit. Plus I just felt 12 times more paranoid the morning after than I normally would have done. I can remember immediately forcing myself to write a poem just to check that I hadn't lost any brain cells.

Yeah. That's how rock 'n' roll I am.

So drugs ain't for me and though I try not to attach any moral weight to that decision I can't help but fervently wish that my boys will steer well clear of such apothecarial dangers themselves and follow their father's route into abstemiousness and teetotalism.

My dreams always were impossible.

But other people can float their collective and individual boat how the hell they like.

Now, when I'm playing the man about town or just doing my day job I run into all sorts of people doing their thing around Leamington Spa. Most I now recognize on sight. The beardy homeless man. The sweary girl with her hair scraped up into a tortuous ponytail (council estate facelift). The Polish alcoholic ex-sniper guy (his story will have to wait for another time). And the little gnome-like hoody kid.

Last time I saw the hoody kid he was stoned out of his tiny skull, swaying in the wind outside the entrance doors of my workplace, with a blissed out expression on his face. He was so stoned he didn't even recognize that I was stone-cold sober and straight. He'd done enough blow for us both.

Normally he's a lippy, snarly little git but this day he was mellow. He was loved-up. I and everybody else was his mate. He looked at me with eyes hooded for once not with contempt but with languorous good vibes. He nodded and asked me if I'd ever smoked weed. Without waiting for my answer he went on to extol it's many virtues but without backing any of that up with biological fact. I was amused and merely told him to watch himself and suggested he might want to get himself to the privacy of his own home before the local rozzers picked him up.

I guess the weed had made us both kind of mellow and easier going that day.

Earlier this week, however, he was back. Sober. Straight. Back to his cocky, confrontational self. Standing a mere couple of inches from my face, staring silently into my eyes. Daring me to... What? I have no idea. Lamp him? Lay him out? Oh please. Not worth the time in the clink. This type of situation goes with the job and no longer bothers me as much as it used to. My ego is big enough to walk away from such obvious shite-hawking without suffering any loss of size.

But God was I tempted to go out and score him some skunk.

Some people are just far nicer when they disengage from their everyday personalities...

Letting Rip...

The call came through late yesterday afternoon. “Man unconscious on the floor of the baby change.”

I put the phone down with a weary sigh and performed a precautionary save of the revolutionary Word document I’d been working on all day which described a plan that, if implemented immediately, would save the council millions of pounds in these cash strapped times (sack ALL the managers and the executives. To be honest I’m not sure if my bosses will be willing to embrace this radical approach – curse them and their shortsightedness).

Great, I thought. Another vomit laced drunk with a scabby top lip and trainer bottoms that have failed to act as an emergency colostomy bag. I’ll have to call out the paramedics to scrape him off the floor.

I headed downstairs to investigate and for once was pleasantly surprised to find a young man in his early twenties merely asleep on the floor of our topnotch (cough!) baby change facilities. No smell of booze. No smell of vomit. No seepage of bum gravy warranting calls for BP to come in and clean up the immediate environment.

He was just asleep. Sound asleep. Breathing deeply and contentedly. His head lying on his carefully folded jacket and the nappy bin strategically placed between his head and the door so that should an unwary mother with a pewling toddler rush in to avail themselves of the baby changing mat he wouldn’t wake up to find his brains had been twatted out of his skull and splattered up the wall behind him.

Some considerable thought had obviously gone into this.

Although the phrase “let sleeping dogs lie” came into my head he just couldn’t stay there. This is a baby changing facility not a doss-house (Leamington’s drunks please take note).

So I tried to rouse him. I tried calling politely. I tried calling rudely. I tried shouting like Gerard Butler in 300 (this is not a youth hostel – THIS IS SPARTA!) but ol’ Rip Van Wrinkle wasn’t waking for anyone or anything. I even tried the old armpit poke but that had no effect whatsoever. He was so deeply asleep he was in danger of being kidnapped by 7 dwarves.

Part of me felt envious. As someone who is continually woken before 6am by my eldest boy bouncing action figures of the metal bars of his bunk bed I admired this youth's ability to shut out all external stimuli and remain furiously, passionately asleep.

Another part of me just thought he was a git and I therefore rang the police to see if a bit of politically incorrect truncheon action might encourage him to move on to his own bedroom or at least the nearest furniture store.

The police were amused and said they’d send someone out as “a priority but not an emergency”. I don’t blame them. It was plain this guy was in the best of health. He was just asleep. Asleep on the cold hard floor of a public amenity immersed in the sweltering odour of about 30 overflowing nappies.

While I waited for the police I thought I’d give waking Mr Sleepyhead another go. I returned to the baby change. I saw the sink in the corner and inspiration struck. A good handful of ice cold water was summarily dropped at great height straight onto Coma Boy’s head.

Boy did he wake up. I stepped back just in case he barked but he just looked nonplussed. He wiped his face and looked around at the immense puddle that had suddenly formed around him. I could see his brain formulating the question but thought it best not to be too forthcoming as to the source of the deluge.

I checked after his well being and suggested he move on. With much grunting (that surely only his mother could love) he concurred and shambled from the building a darn sight cleaner than when he came in.

I returned to the phone and called off the fuzz. I then returned to my Word document and felt... strangely buoyant. Strangely wired. It had been fun. I’d enjoyed it. Tipping water onto someone. Hmm.

Dear readers, I fear a cruel appetite has been awoken in me. Should you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods suffering from exhaustion or even narcolepsy don’t expect any sympathy or understanding from me. You see, I’m just waiting for the call. I have a large bucket under my desk now and a 2 litre bottle of water in the fridge. It’s chilling nicely.

And it has your name on it.

Manager Wanted: Apply Here

Whilst strutting back to work from my lunchbreak one day much in the manner of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever (only without the tin of paint) I came across an unexpected and rather fragrant piece of street theatre.

Though I’d like to think these boys were fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe I know for a fact they’ve not missed a single day of retching through the park gates for at least the last 3 months so I know they haven’t been as far north as Boots The Chemist let alone Scotland.

But there they were. 5 of them. A street drunk quintet all sitting on the steps of the KL Oriental Supermarket looking like a living, moving fly tip.

They’re a strange combo in terms of audience demographics but I can see they’re trying to cover all their potential bases. Their ages seem to range from mid 50’s down to early twenties. There was even a guy with a porkpie hat and a moustache who looked as if he’d been exhumed from the communal grave of 1960’s skiffle.

Now it’s not unusual to see one or other of these guys singing. Usually a bad Tom Jones (geddit?) or a raspy Shirley Bassey – occasionally a bit of Happy Mondays – but to see all of them performing as a single ensemble was quite frankly so jaw-droppingly amazing that I literally nearly dropped my... well... my jaw.

They were singing together. They were organized. They’d obviously rehearsed. Even worse / better one of them – the baby of the group (a 6 footer of around 25 but undoubtedly with the liver of a 65 year old French man) was attempting to provide percussion solely with his mouth. A human beat-box. Or in his case, a human beat-up-box.

Unfortunately he hadn’t quite mastered the art so all his spitting and raspberry blowing sounded less like a kick-drum and a snare and more like an elephant farting into a biscuit tin. With the addition that everyone in a 2ft radius of him was getting wet.

Best of all these guys weren’t singing into “air mics”. Oh no. Nothing so crass and amateurish. They were singing into their cans of Special Brew. Possibly this deepened the rich timbre that their vocal chords were producing and added a touch of reverb.

Anyway, I confess I had a Dick Rowe moment and briefly considered taking these boys on and seeing if I could steer them to fame and fortune. Or if not that then at least The X Factor (I’d love to see Simon Cowell getting rhythmically spat on) but what with my other commitments – Take That, Amy Winehouse and Jane McDonald – and a young family to raise I just don’t have the time or the energy to take on a boy band with so much genuine street cred and so many permanent health issues.

So I’m throwing it open to the blogging community. This could be your opportunity to get onto the ground level of the next big thing. A contact in Alcoholics Anonymous would be a plus as would a natural immunity to the combined odours of vomit and beer breath. A sponsorship deal with Heineken is already in the pipeline and A&E are expecting you.

Good luck.

Spare Change

Leamington Spa’s south end of town has traditionally been viewed as the “less well off” part of town. It has a dual reputation for both trouble and (paradoxically) community spirit. A lot if this reputation stems back 200 years or so when money was poured into developing the town north of the river during the boom time of the spas and everything south of the river – the original old town – was left, not so much to fester, but certainly to scrape the barrel for whatever it could find to keep itself going.

Leamington is still to this day filtered by this binary north-south divide. The town in its genetic make-up is bipolar.

The building where I work is on the very cusp of this divide (the river) and this possibly explains the huge proliferation of drunks and ne'er-do-wells who seem to gather in the vicinity. I cannot go out on a lunchbreak or head home without encountering weather-stained men and women, all with beards and ex army ponchos whose aura of alcohol and marijuana would be enough to make a vicar hallucinate Jimi Hendrix’s entire Woodstock playlist.

You have only to pass within 10 yards of them and a hand will come out asking for money while the other hand clutches the ubiquitous can of Special Brew even closer to their chest. “Got a spare 20p, mate, I need to make an urgent phone call?” seems to be the standard form of address.

I must be honest here and say I very rarely comply. I have so little change available and what I do have I’d rather retain for the use of my family. I feel guilty though. As I walk away ignoring them – for that is what I do – I feel I am doing wrong. The old Christian message of giving when somebody asks still burns brightly beneath the thin caul of my subconscious. On occasion my mind even throws up a quick image of me on the Day of Judgement, fluttering my hands with angst, trying to explain my habitual parsimony to St Peter. Look, I just wanted to buy some chocolate buttons for my two little boys...

But then reality kicks in – and I use it to back up my stance even more: they don’t want to make a phone call. They want to buy more beer. Or more weed. Or more [insert your poison of choice here].But really – do I have the right to attach a moral authority to any monies that I may or may not give to someone? Once it’s given surely it’s up to them how they spend it and what they spend it on? It’s no longer my business.

But such a dilemma is not the reason for this post.

The other day one of the drunken bearded men again accosted me for small change. This time however he was neither drunk nor stoned. He was sober. He was compos mentis. He was bright eyed if not bushy tailed. We had a conversation. I saw humour and kindness and a shy but charming personality behind his eyes. I gave him some money.

Why now and not other times? Why now and not when he is drunk or falling over his own inebriated feet? Am I making a judgement call about intemperance? Does dipsomania render him ineligible for charity?

I’ve thought about it a lot since that day. I think when he approached me I saw him for the first time as a person. The mask of drunkenness that so disfigures a human being had fallen away and I saw an individual. I’m not saying I could read his whole life story in every line of his face but for that one unguarded moment I could see all the hurt that had ever been done to him – and that had put him on the street in the first place – there in his eyes. We connected. One man to another. It was a shock. It was emotional. I felt sad for him.

Since then I have wondered whose mask is the more deplorable to wear. Whose mask is the bigger social evil?

Drunkenness; the desire for unending personal oblivion?

Or the hard eye of respectability that sees enough to judge but not to understand?