» I witnessed a crime

MURDER! BASEMENTS! FOXES!
Some time around September 2 years ago I had just moved to St.Pauls in Bristol... a slightly rough area (well, it was knives rather than guns), but it was cheap and we were living in a Withnail-style 4 storey georgian mansion for £bugger all a month.
On the whole it was great, but there were a few unnerving moments during the year we lived there, but there were a couple that stuck in my mind...

my bedroom was in the basement, cold and damp with a large window beneath street level- outside of this window was a... how to describe it? a concrete subterranean balcony i suppose- which at night managed to amplify the assorted light screaming/ hellish cackles (crackles maybe?) of the crackheads who emerged from the shadows at about 1am. the acoustics meant it was like the screaming was INSIDE my room. especially the time I was woken up by an attempted rape in the garden opposite. the attacker even said, and I swear to god, " well if you don't have the money, you'll have to pay me some other way". I didn't know people actually said that. that's just a standard post-watershed ITV 'depraved mobster #3' line, isn't it?

so. the morning in question I remember waking to the crowing of the neighbourhood cockerel (yes. there was a cockerel somewhere in St.Pauls), then ambling upstairs to the first floor living room with a cup of tea to see about rolling a fag and finding the remote... when through the window I espied what must have been 20 white boiler suited coppers doing an eerily silent minute-detail search of my street where 100 yards either side of my house had been cordoned off.

there wasn't a body, but figured it must have been a murder with all the forensic folks and there may have been hideous still-wet pools of blood and 'help me oh god why won't you help me?' written in entrails... but I may have just made that up. anyway.
so I did what anyone else would do- woke everyone up, switched on every radio, computer, TV and internet receiving implement in the house to find out what was happening, and found out that some guy was quietly stabbed next to our corner shop. the thing was that we had been out that previous night, and we later found that minutes before we had closed the front door behind us (I remember looking at the time on my phone), the poor soul had been violently pushed off this mortal coil. it was made more poignant, however, that we had been spitting (as I believe the kids say) Beastie Boys lyrics quite loudly... throwing the hip-hoppin' arm shapes (oh god) and had been doing this all down the road.

I can only hope to god that as this man was being brutally slain, he didn't see the whitest, geekiest students in Bristol silhouetted against the clear night sky with me reciting 'get it together' word for word, carrying my high heels and maybe a kebab and not seeing a fucking thing.

there was a stabbing nearly every week after that for a little while... (not all fatal and all dealers I'm told. which apparantly doesn't warrant much media coverage). who knows what it was all about, but we soon got pretty jaded and only noticed because the corner shop would be closed and we'd have to go to the one further up on the main road.

the only time we ever actually stopped to notice anything was when one of the dealers we had seen a lot came up to my housemate looking a bit shifty and said something inaudible yet threatening; but my dear housemate (I shall call him Jamie, as I regularly do) looked straight over his shoulder, cried 'look! a fox!' waving his pointed finger with toddler-like enthusiasm. the 5 or so resident crack dealers on the corner then all started talking with similar enthusiasm about how "that was a big fox for 'round here" and "I've seen a few of em recently" etc. Jamie then ran in to tell the household about the fox sighting and so possibly avoided a mugging.
it makes you wonder..... are they dealers and crackheads? or do they have 'i-spy' wildlife or Bill Oddie books in their coats. maybe they're just aspiring misunderstood naturalists. in my world they are...

I'm off to re-lurk now.
in a far less stabby neighbourhood.
(Sat 16th Feb 2008, 23:29, More)

» Insults

.....
shortly after my boyfriend and i first got together, and the insults were still of the friendly punch-on-the-arm 'oh you're cute when you're angry" variety, he went too far and called me the first thing that popped into his head

"you.... fucking... LAZENBY"
"what? George Lazenby? you just called me....!? what the fuck?"

sure, george lazenby was Bond, but people don't really remember him for much more than being not as good as Sean Connery. what kind of a twisted mind uses that as an insult? the actor that had to follow Connery as Bond, and was vaguely disappointing.

shit.
(Fri 5th Oct 2007, 14:37, More)

» Will you go out with me?

my boyfriend...
is an inch shorter than me, 15 years older than me (i'm 25 and he's 40), has been married, has done too much acid, can't cook anything other than fish with steamed vegetables, owns 148 black band t-shirts but just one pair of jeans and he earns less than me.
when i was ill he brought me softcore porn to watch- this was about a week before we started dating. a brave move i thought.
it then took him a year or so to get drunk enough to tell me he fancied me... which consisted of him knocking on my door at around 1am, slurring something about my smile and making me laugh...
i woke up in his bed the next day (i was sober by the way, and can't entirely explain how he seduced me) and have woken up with him every other day or so for about 6 months now, and the bastard is making me fall in love with him.

he said he knew i was the girl for him when i quoted Brasseye as i poured him a pint (i was a barmaid you see.) and later called him a 'silly c*nt' whilst wearing a very tight skirt. this apparently is a magical combination for some men. or one man at least...

he isn't the man i pictured being with, and i tried not to like him that way for ages, being shallow enough to let his height bother me, but he's pretty amazing. very amazing.

silly cunt that he is.
(Sat 30th Aug 2008, 1:18, More)

» Your first cigarette

smokey puff puff
my first smoke was to impress some boy when i was 14.
i'm not entirely proud of that, but there's a certain way marlboro lights smoke tastes on balmy summer nights that takes me right back there....

i bloody love smoking.

the way that smoke tastes and hangs in the air on hot summer days is one of my favourite things

when i snuck out on to the roof of my parent's house to have a fag and watching the bats flitting in and out of the neighbours' trees the night before i left for uni.

the day not long ago that i bought a pack of marlboro lights and sat on my back door step chain-smoking, crying and listening to joni mitchell when i realised that i had to break up with my boyfriend of 3 years. (ok, well... that wasn't so fun.)

i would never have spoken to my best friend if we hadn't have both been smoking outside the art block.

oh, and being a bar wench, i would never get any breaks if i couldn't bugger off for a smoke and a natter with the Polish kitchen staff.

and there's nothing better in the world than the 5 minutes just before the bar i work in opens, when i'm standing out the front, wrapped up in a big jumper with a cigarette and a hot cup of tea clutched in 2 hands, watching people braving the frosty morning.

i even love the smoking ban (except when it's raining) because it gives you an excuse to leave situations or people you don't want to be sitting with, and you can go and just smoke and think. or flirt with other filthy smokers.

i'm not sure i would love it so much if my one remaining grandparent wasn't a man who smoked 60 a day for 50 years; and, due to TB after the war has smoked this bajillion fags with but one lung.

what a trooper.

but of course the number one reason i smoke is that i look so. fucking. cool.


i'll give up one day. when i give up being cool
(Thu 20th Mar 2008, 21:30, More)

» Worst Nicknames Ever

i don't know their real names...
first post. the post with the most

my geordie dad seems to have the nicknaming mad skills. the best i have ever come up with was 'Big Gay Dan' or 'Leukemia boy', but apparently my dad has a poetic soul.
his slack jawed chum unfortunately has but one tooth- i know him as 'Juanita' (one-eater.see?)
the indian man (lord help us) who stole his girlfriend 30 years ago is 'Mahatma-coat'.
my personal favourite- some poor unfortunate man at the local pub known to everyone as 'Spot' due to his rather large facial mole. he's been Spot all his life, until he had this monstrosity removed. (by god it was hairy) he is now -and will forever be- Spotless.


back to my cave then...
(Sat 20th May 2006, 18:36, More)