travelling folk
A few years ago, I had the idea of writing a non-fiction book about life among the travellers (also known officially as Roma, gyppos and pikeys). So I went to my nearest caravan encampment and persuaded them to let me join them, learning their ways and living their life.

And thus it was that I spent a year living in a caravan among these dark-skinned and wily folk. I rutted bestially with teenage girls who reeked of pheremones and greasy hair; I learned to course hares; I stole from building sites and sold lucky pegs to noonday shoppers in Stoke on Trent. I learned to strip a Ford Cortina Mark II engine down to its components and mastered a variety of traditional folk tunes on my biscuit-tin double bass. I also caught a range of curious venereal diseases and had a Nike tattoo on my neck.

When my year was up, I had reams of notes and a new fondness for the travelling folk who we so often dismiss as theiving gypsy bastards. Those notes, and the hundreds of photos I'd taken, were to be my passport to fame and a publishing deal.

Little did I know that when my mother was a young girl, she had been kidnapped by the peripatetic overseers of a touring fairs and forced to sell candyfloss across the Midlands. Before she knew it, she had herself become a pikey. She made a vow there and then that if any child of hers became associated with the dusky tarmac-layers, she'd dissuade them with extreme prejudice.

So she burned all my materials. And since I now had a criminal record, I was forced to make a living by illegally cutting down trees on council property.

There's no escaping fate, as my Romany brethren taught me.
(frankspencer, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 21:56, 1 reply)

That's fucking hilarious
I suspect you are basing your character on someone who's been in the press recently but that stands alone.. just what I needed tonight - cheers!
(lost, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 23:27, closed)