Jimmy
I used to work in a camping shop in town, very dull and quiet little place where nothing of worth ever really happened. I'd been there a few weeks and was chatting with a co-worker one afternoon when this little old chap with a gargantuan cider nose shuffled in. He walked up to me at the counter, stood looking at me and just stared and smiled.

"Hello, can I help?" I smiled back.

Nothing.

"I....are you ok?" I asked, a bit perturbed. At this point I hear the other girl I was working giggling a bit. "He wants you to give him something", she said. "Like what?" "A leaflet, anything" she explained.

Mildly confused, I gave him one of our sale leaflets, he grinned like a kid at Christmas, nodded, and walked out the shop. I asked my co-worker what the fuck just happened, and she simply said "that's Jimmy".

Jimmy is an old alcoholic who wanders around Kidderminster collecting bits of crap from shops. He's mute, but thoroughly cheerful, and would come into the shop almost weekly to collect a bit of paper, an elastic band, whatever. One day we gave him some size cubes and he was over the moon. Sometimes he'd show us what he'd got from the other places, I'll never forget the day he showed us a Guinness t-shirt he'd been given from one of the pubs, he just looked so proud of it. Christ knows what the inside of his house must have looked like. He was utterly harmless and always really happy and friendly and everyone who worked in the town knew and loved him.

One day he disappeared, and we read in the paper that a bunch of kids had beaten him up while he was wandering around town and landed him in hospital. It was heartbreaking and we were really worried about him for ages. Then one day I was walking past the local Wetherspoons and I saw him in there, with what I assume was his carer, pint in hand looking as happy as ever. He never did come back in the shop but I can only assume that hospitalisation led to some proper care for the chap.
( SugarSpunSister Yeah, whatever, Sat 29 Sep 2012, 13:33, 6 replies)

Sorry to burst your bubble,
But 'carers' don't take alcoholics to pubs. Other alcoholics do.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Sat 29 Sep 2012, 13:37, closed)

You can't just stop a long-term alcoholic drinking
He'd have to be weaned off it, otherwise it would probably kill him
( SugarSpunSister Yeah, whatever, Sat 29 Sep 2012, 13:38, closed)

I did care work and I took people to pubs.

edit - Oh I see your point, yeah, I'd probably nave a moral problem with taking an alcoholic I was caring for to a pub.
( quackpipe swings like a pendulum do, Sat 29 Sep 2012, 20:24, closed)

An alcoholic carer?

(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sat 29 Sep 2012, 20:35, closed)

The 'shakes' kill

( Jahled Three shades of black, Sat 29 Sep 2012, 23:46, closed)

It's spelled "sheiks"
And anyway that's a grave slur on the vast majority of peace-loving Moslems.
(ubergeekian, Sun 30 Sep 2012, 16:52, closed)