Camden drunk

Being the tight-ass bastard that I am, I took the bus the other day.

From Camden up to Swiss Cottage. It was around 5.30pm and it was busy. I was going to stand downstairs, but a drunk got on and started this awful unintelligible ‘singing’. Just a collection of loud moans really. If he’d been asleep you would have assumed he was having a nightmare. But it made several women jump when he suddenly started up with this din.

He was too close for comfort, so I went upstairs to get out of his way. He was probably in his late 50s and looked Irish (they often do). He was wearing a funny hat – a bit like a Dutch seaman’s cap, but it still had the price tag dangling off the back of it. He'd either just bought it or just nicked it.

I wasn’t upstairs for more than a minute, when the bugger came up there and sat down in the middle of the bus. He started up once more, and immediately a huge great big seriously low-temperature spade, dreadlocks tied down under a big red knitted hanky or something, two rows in front, turned back to him, and putting his authoritive finger up, said, “shut the fuck up”.

The drunk continued and immediately the brother again said “Shut the fuck up. Don’t say anything. Just be quiet and shut the fuck up.”



He stayed quiet for a while, and then he moved to the back of the bus where I was. Bastard. Why do they always do that? He was quiet for a while, but then started up with the wailing again. This time several of us told him to shut the fuck up. I warned him that he would have to deal with the big black guy if he didn’t stop, because he was going to get mighty pissed off with him. He shut up again and then got off the bus.

It reminded me, after I’d threatened him with the black bloke, how when I was really young I remember my Auntie threatening one of her kids while we were waiting in the car. It was Exeter in the early 60s and you just didn’t see black people in those parts in those days. But one crossed the road in front of us and my auntie said “If you don’t behave, that black man will come and get you”. The car went quiet and all were behaved impeccably from then on.

Nothing like being threatened with a visit from a black dude to bring about the fear of God in a child in rural Devon. Or a Camden drunk for that matter.

Then today, I was standing in the street in Kingsbury, NW London, with the sound of police sirens in the background, when another drunk stumbles past shouting, “Fuck the Old Bill. Fuck the Old Bill, mate”.

It's a funny old world......