westid

2 responses to “An Unusual Problem”

1. 

   bogeye

   2023-01-22

   Let me tell you about Albert.
   Albert was very well known around the nearby town.
   Every Saturday, when all the mums would drag their offspring around the town to do the family shop (few had cars then) we would then walk back down to the bus station to get all the shopping home, there would be Albert, proud as punch, doing squat thrusts on the parallel bars that used to separate the queues for the various buses, going to various areas surrounding the town.
   I can still see his face to this day.
   White grey wispy hair, with a bobble hat half over it, a big beaming smile, with rosey cheeks, from over exposure to the outdoors, scruffy clothes with wellies, that were turned over at the top, so they had a whitish band around the top.

   He would smile and chat to all the people waiting for buses. The squat thrusts whilst holding himself up, were very popular with a tv program of the time (Brian Jacks Superstars) so I assume he had a tv and watched it.

   Surprising really, as Albert had no electricity where he lived. All the kids knew where he lived. He lived with his chickens in a chicken hut up in the fields behind our street.
   An old decrepit old shack of a hut, that stood on bricks (like a car that’s had it’s wheels nicked).
   He had no gas supply, no running water, no brick walls or windows, but he was always happy and cheery, he always spoke, he was a much loved local.
   Although his chicken wire hut was across the back from our house, we never saw him there, it was always around the town centre where we bumped into him.

   When I was about 8 years old, we were in line waiting for a bus home, after the shopping expedition. No sign of Albert.
   I asked mum, “I don’t know”
   A few weeks later I asked again, “Where’s Albert?”
   “I don’t know”
   I never saw Albert again.
   His hut remained there for about 6 months, not a sign of Albert or his beloved chickens. We went out to play one afternoon on the fields, the hut had completely gone.

   Why am I posting about Albert?
   Albert used to be a farmer, I know this as he told me once. He used to work at the run-down, derelict farm that we used to play on (we’d go conker hunting there when you were little) which was just across the field, alongside the old cinder track, from Albert’s hut.
   Now what I do know, is that developers took over the fields there, shortly after Albert was last seen, building one single house three fields over the other side of the land away from Albert’s hut, which was owned with the crumbled farmhouse that we used to play on. It stayed this way until many years later, just as the planning was about to run out, the developers returned to build houses on the land.
   There was a petition put up, but as one house was already built, the powers that be couldn’t stop it.

   Albert was as mad as a box of frogs, but completely harmless and well mannered. He spoke to everyone, I mean everyone. He was always full of beans, very happy with his lot.
   He had no friends as far as I know, I never saw him with anyone else, just on his own hanging around the town centre.
   I’d like to think that he was moved into secure housing and lived out his days doing push ups on real parallel bars, but I suspect not.

   If I met him again today, I’d have a chat with him and ask him about his life and how he came to be living in a chicken hut, in a field, in the middle of nowhere.
   Maybe it’s a generational thing, but people back then had more tolerance, the locals that would be deemed mad today, were known as “characters” back then.
   Albert meant no harm to anybody, he for what-ever reason, lived his life the way he did. He was happy.
   He may have been married and his wife left him or had children grown up and left, he could have been rich or very poor, he was eccentric, but funny with it.
   None of us knew his back story or where he came from.
   He was just, Albert.

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   1. 

      Monster Munch

      2023-01-23

      i remember a lovely old man who used to live downstairs while i were living over accrington. it was like the bury road flats but an accrington version of it. saint leger court, up behind the tesco petrol station. every afternoon when i regained consciousness it was this man – in a room beneath me – banging on the window at people walking past. “what time will it be?” i am grateful he seemed to have the same sleeping arrangement and i’m not one to be making a noise complaint… i could sleep through the bombing of dresden and quite comfortably at that, if a bit too warm for my taste

      anyway this old man had other tricks up his sleeve. he would sit in his bathroom because there’s a window right over the front he could lean out of. he sat in his bathroom as though it was some sort of kiosk… but to be fair to him he had some mates coming through. me and the friend i used to live with took the piss out of him but not in a malicious sort of way. he had a big grey beard except for the nicotine stains all over his tash

      then one day i’m heading out and he’s got his front door open. and i gagged a couple of times but thankfully got a strong stomach. i fancied one of his mates, but i know what sort of look you get off older women when you come it like that. anyway i come to know him as the guy downstairs who was smelly and shouted out of his window at people – if only so he could tell the time. i said that the smell was the “brown” (no reference to drugs) because of the stain on his tash on his top lip

      one day i’m lying on the floor staring up at the jumping dots that synchronised with my pulse on the ceiling. my friend had been in manchester for days, i was on my own. i could hear music coming from downstairs. i didn’t have a smartphone at the time because it was before i went to university, but as time went on i was just a space cadet realising i’ve got to know where these tunes are coming from, and what’s going on! so i went downstairs

      his door was wide open and i nearly projectiled all up the railing, so i went back into my room to get some fizzy ginger beer for the gag reflex, and went inside. he told me his name was geoff heys – but people call me isaac (i don’t know why). the tune i could hear in case anyone is wondering was “sweet wine” by cream, and i saved the lyrics on my phone for later (pre-shazam tactic) – we listened to “fresh cream” together and had a right laugh! i never understood a bloody word he was saying until that night. as we sat in this flat where he actually kept his bathroom clean but put his rubbish in the cupboards and drawers (there were maggots and all sorts all around us) – i didn’t need the ginger beer after a bit and he was in a bit of pain so we shared my tramadol out (i was big on tramadol at the time) and went on a bit of an adventure

      anyway by the time i went i couldn’t stand the album we were listening to (i found out what it was but i never listened to it for a long time after that) because it turned out to be the only music that he had. with the laughter and the tramadol we banged on the window and shouted at people together. silly old man, but i was in the mood for laughter at the time so i went with it

      anyway a short time later i’m waking up in the morning and there he’s going banging on the windows again. it was like my wake-up call in case i slept in. even though i was working bloody nights! he just kept banging and banging and that went on for a few days. anyway after he had been gone for ages, my mate who i lived with came back and told me the old man downstairs has died. i’m like oh no…

      then he tells me that isaac had been lying there for a couple of days before anyone found him. i remember calling him an ambulance for him but instead of an ambulance he calls ward C4 of royal blackburn hospital, and that was a while before i last saw him anyway. that level is a real tear-jerker if you ever have to go to that part of the hospital. anyway right, i know he had been lying there for a couple of days, but who was in his flat banging on the windows? he never said anything that particular time, he just kept banging on the windows like he usually did. no asking people for the time

      that was the last i saw and spoke of isaac for a long time

      that person when you last came to see me in hospital, who give you a load of grief. well before she started doing all the things that she gets on with now… we spent a bit of time together. i happened to be telling the same story and when i tell a story it’s usually word for word [can’t help it, not sorry] … she brings out a book to me, i’ve still got it in fact [somewhere]. it had a salutation on it, that was so badly written it was just the same as his bumbling accent – but it was signed isaac

      before that time, i believed that when people went away from you they disappeared. when you go back and you look for them hard enough they re-appear

      i can’t tell what is real and what is not anymore. but i will always miss isaac, the one person who didn’t make me shit scared of becoming an old man before i die; whom i fear may be turn out just the same

      but i’m half way there now, right? so just how bad could it be?
      come and stay at mine for a bit. sometimes i sit there and some ridiculous things, ridiculous people [and that’s considering i can be a bit eccentric myself], you wouldn’t believe it if i told you. no one does – and i’m surrounded by it 24h, 7d

      if it comes to it, and i must walk the path of the elderly people, i’m going to err on the side of madness; because there is no dignity in old age, or death. and that apparently is where all the misery comes from. i know another old person who lives by the house that i grew up in. he’s an horrible old disgrace but he pretends to be everyone’s friend – so that he isolates anyone who doesn’t like him, and that is the end of that. it’s a shame, because i like the place i grew up in. it’s not so happy a place now because the people are different. everything’s different

      i think if i never moved out of there, i could have made a difference. but circumstances took that out of my hands. well here i am now and here i stand! and i won’t let it happen again

      that’s what i mean though about the demise of character people. there’s only one colour now, green. there’s only one creed now, wealth. there is only one religion now, money.

      and it’s tearing this world apart. in my world? albert would have been mainstream, and i would have gotten to know him because i used to do things like that on the railings as well- maybe we would have challenged one another

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