The tale of G
G is someone that I knew for a brief period.

To look at him, you'd just think he was nuts. He lives in a small basement flat not far from me. He has grey, wirey hair, and on the rare occasions that he ventures outside he stumbles around slowly, smelling vaugely of piss.

Unfortunately there is a sad tale to his misfortune. He graduated from university sometime in the early 80s with some sort of engineering degree. He ended up in with the tree-squatting, militant hippy fraternity.

His story was that he was at a protest, in a tree-house that he built, and someone set fire to the tree; he was trapped inside. Some people think that he did it himself, and it was a botched suicide attempt. No-one really knows - he had everything to live for, including a little daughter and a girlfriend.

The fire hurt him badly. His skin was so damaged that he can no longer go outside in the sun, and his eyes are hypersensitive to light. His hands are fused together, making many simple tasks difficult.

If you go into his flat you would never think he'd been anything other than what he is now. His windows are completely covered with tinfoil, to keep the heat out - his only solace is a mountain of old VCR's, TV's, computers and other various bits and pieces.

His house is absolutely squalid. The bath contains a boiler, and has done for the last 5 years. Presumably that means that he never washes or showers. You would think so, from the way he smells.

He sits on his arse, day after day, smoking resin, drinking Tesco value cola and playing Solitaire on his ancient Windows 95 PC. The lights are always off in his house (most of them don't even seem to work). His walls are plastered with glow-in-the-dark stars, which he seems to be obsessed with. Sometimes he builds pointless contraptions out of his mountain of stuff, and tries to give them to people.

He doesn't seem to have any friends to speak of - my former circle just seem to put up with him every now and again.

Once we dragged him to a rave somewhere in the Lake district. My only memory of him is that he sidled up to us with plastic bags on his feet, pissed himself, and then started crying.

Every time I see him, my thoughts are a cross between 'Poor bloke' and 'Nutter'.

The saddest thing is that he once had a life.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 11:40, Reply)