Having had a relatively quiet upbringing in leafy suburbs I had not really encountered that many local nutters. Sorry, in these politically correct times we have to call them persons predisposed to sanity challenged moments or something don’t we? Back then they were the local nutter. Up until I was about eleven the most bonkers people I had met were the old tramp who seemed to live in the bus shelter on the seafront who would scream “GLEEEEEEEEEEGGGGHHHHHHH!!” at random tourists as they passed by or maybe the chap everyone knew as Stan when I visited my grandmother. He seemed to take great delight in roller skating around the shopping area. Nothing wrong with that except he was in his 50s and wore nothing but pair of satin hot pants and very little else. On cold days he might even wear a skin tight satin T-shirt. That he vaguely resembled Jimmy Saville made it all the more worrying.
However, all this was to change when I struck out on my own. It was 1984, I had just left school and was filling the time between A-level results and university by being a dole monkey in Thatchers Britain. Every couple of weeks would see me signing for my beer money at the local unemployment office like an 18 year old ‘Yosser’ Hughes and the journey to the dole office took me through an underpass that seemed to have been filled with druggies, dossers and the terminally deranged and a few who were all three. This was before care in the community had even been thought of too.
The first you would meet was the ‘Bride of Christ’, a woman in her fifties who wore a wedding dress and would approach you reading loudly from a bible, tell you that you were damned and then veer off at a tangent. If you avoided her you would almost certainly run into ‘Mr Pfffish’ and if your reactions were not up to scratch you would definitely end up face down on the pavement. ‘Mr Pfffish’ would emerge from nowhere and with his walking stick, hook your ankles from behind whilst screaming “PFFFISH!” in your ear. The drug addicts loved him as if they were quick they could be in and have your wallet, watch and loose change before you could get up. If you managed to get past both of them then you could guarantee that you would be targeted by the chap who seemed to have taken his lessons from Stan except instead of satin pants he wore the even more dodgy combination of a pair of leather briefs and a pair of jackboots. The local police must have just loved him.
However, all this was to change when I struck out on my own. It was 1984, I had just left school and was filling the time between A-level results and university by being a dole monkey in Thatchers Britain. Every couple of weeks would see me signing for my beer money at the local unemployment office like an 18 year old ‘Yosser’ Hughes and the journey to the dole office took me through an underpass that seemed to have been filled with druggies, dossers and the terminally deranged and a few who were all three. This was before care in the community had even been thought of too.
The first you would meet was the ‘Bride of Christ’, a woman in her fifties who wore a wedding dress and would approach you reading loudly from a bible, tell you that you were damned and then veer off at a tangent. If you avoided her you would almost certainly run into ‘Mr Pfffish’ and if your reactions were not up to scratch you would definitely end up face down on the pavement. ‘Mr Pfffish’ would emerge from nowhere and with his walking stick, hook your ankles from behind whilst screaming “PFFFISH!” in your ear. The drug addicts loved him as if they were quick they could be in and have your wallet, watch and loose change before you could get up. If you managed to get past both of them then you could guarantee that you would be targeted by the chap who seemed to have taken his lessons from Stan except instead of satin pants he wore the even more dodgy combination of a pair of leather briefs and a pair of jackboots. The local police must have just loved him.
However, the most spectacular was 'Mrs Beige', who, despite always wearing the same beige suit and would look at you and say "Whenever I see you, you're always wearing the same thing!" even if you happened to be wearing a neon pink cowboy outfit one week and a lime green clown suit the next, not that I sank to such sartorial depths. On approach she appeared perfectly normal barring the fact that her hair always looked like it had been styled by a couple of rutting badgers but as you drew close you realised there was something definitely wrong. It could have been the overpowering stench of stale wee or possibly the deranged glint in her eyes but whatever it was you tried to put a bit of distance between you and her.
Unluckily for me she either lived somewhere in the same neighbourhood as I did or her random perambulations took her through the area as one day as I was leaving the house she was by the gate and stopped me with:
"They're coming to get us you know!"
"Eh ?" says I thinking something on the lines of “Oh arsebiscuits!”
"Them! Sneaky yellow bastards!"
"Y'what ?"
"They're tunnelling underneath us now. The Chinese! Billions of the buggers, like ants they are. Always tunnelling! Armed to the teeth too!"
"What ? It's a long way from China. They would get a bit singed near the earths core!"
"Asbestos long johns, they're going to pop out in their little blue suits and take us over. Tunnelling they are. Right now, they might be ready to jump out on us and rape us all. But I'm ready for them!"
At this point ‘Mrs Beige’ pulled a butter knife from her pocket which to be fair might have done some damage given enough time and possibly the non-intervention of the rest of the billions of Chinese who were about to emerge in a warlike frenzy. Unable to stop laughing any more I made a hasty run for it leaving her to defend the UK to the last. Oddly enough she vanished soon after. For years I thought maybe she had been kidnapped to silence her in case she revealed any more of the Fu Manchu-like evil plot to world safety. In the end I found out from a friend who had worked for social services at the time that she had been sectioned for everyone’s safety after a fracas at the local Chinese takeaway involving a chip fork and two of the local forces finest. The world of the local nutter seemed a little less interesting without her but at least the Lotus Garden could serve their number 34s in peace.
"Eh ?" says I thinking something on the lines of “Oh arsebiscuits!”
"Them! Sneaky yellow bastards!"
"Y'what ?"
"They're tunnelling underneath us now. The Chinese! Billions of the buggers, like ants they are. Always tunnelling! Armed to the teeth too!"
"What ? It's a long way from China. They would get a bit singed near the earths core!"
"Asbestos long johns, they're going to pop out in their little blue suits and take us over. Tunnelling they are. Right now, they might be ready to jump out on us and rape us all. But I'm ready for them!"
At this point ‘Mrs Beige’ pulled a butter knife from her pocket which to be fair might have done some damage given enough time and possibly the non-intervention of the rest of the billions of Chinese who were about to emerge in a warlike frenzy. Unable to stop laughing any more I made a hasty run for it leaving her to defend the UK to the last. Oddly enough she vanished soon after. For years I thought maybe she had been kidnapped to silence her in case she revealed any more of the Fu Manchu-like evil plot to world safety. In the end I found out from a friend who had worked for social services at the time that she had been sectioned for everyone’s safety after a fracas at the local Chinese takeaway involving a chip fork and two of the local forces finest. The world of the local nutter seemed a little less interesting without her but at least the Lotus Garden could serve their number 34s in peace.
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