Ifs and Butts

Hey, I have a Blogger account. Maybe this will keep me from hours of trawling through Facebook snooping on seemingly younger, fresher faced, more socially engaged people. I swear the Mighty "Book" just breeds jealousy and contempt. Thing is, If I find myself having a sneeky glance at an ex's or 'enemies' page, other people must do the same. This makes me think maybe I should just create some fake fantastically exciting life for myself to show off. I could even start photoshopping all my pictures- "a little thinner here", "few less spots here", "just paste a few beautiful people into the background here and extend my arm out to make it look like im in their gang....". Yeah. Its certainly winning idea, I'll get right onto that when I've got a bit of time...

I live in a flat which has a set of old stairs going up to the front door. Although my boyfriend and I have only lived in this house for 5 monthes, I'm beginning to become suspicious about this stair-way. When we first began living here we had our own tramp who was obviously here long before us and had made the bottom of our stairs his daily hang out. Wind, rain, snow, day in, day out he was there with his trusty can of larger and grubby white puffer jacket, resembelling a down and out Mitchelin Man.
We named him The Bum and developed a bizarre affection for him.

During late night visits to the toilet I would often glance out of the back window and still see him sitting there at 3 or 4am, his white puffer highlighted by the street lights.

I guess we didn't mind his presence, but sometimes his presence proved embarressing, more for him and his obvious lack of social skills. If you were approaching the stairs, usually laden with shopping bags, obviously wanting to get past, he would make no effort to move unless you specifically voiced the order to him. He would usually reply with a grant (he wasnt a talkin man) and would attempt to shuffle to one side of the stairs with no sense of shame, allowing you enough space to just squeeze by.

I remember one particuarly funny occassion where my boyfriend's brother had come round to visit with his 3 year old son, who was too scared to come up the stairs because of The Bum "guarding"the way -"Daddy, i don't like the man.."

The possibilty of The Bum having some sort of twisted loyalty towards us often crossed my mind. Maybe he had been a bodyguard in his previous life. Before it all went wrong... and he was banished to the back streets and park benches of Seaford....

Regardless of all his, I havent seen The Bum for monthes now, at least not sitting on our steps. We occassionally see him grunting his way around town looking confused in his NHS horn-rimmed glasses, but he is certainly not the permenant feature he used to be.

Anyway, It must have been About a month ago, I came home and noticed something had been Smeared on the bannister of our stairs. Being the inquisitive fool i am, I sniffed it and sure enough it was shit.. not sure what kind, but shit all the same. Ths disturbed me deeply, so much so that the remnants are still there as I couldnt bring myself to wash it off. People leaving he house are often accompanied by me shouting -"Dont use the right hand bannister... its shitty" Sometimes I "forget" to mention it.

Writing this has lead me to think that maybe its The Bums revenge or something along those lines? It may just be my over suspicious mind, but he looks a dirty bastard so I wouldnt put it past him. I was reminiscing over the last time I saw him, and remember coming home from a particularly large shopping trip- so large that i had 'stolen' the trolley from Morrisons, and pushed it from one side of town to the other as means of transport for the huge quanitity of food. Upon reaching the stairs, only to be greeted by Bum, like so many times previously, I had to ask him to move. I seem to remember my boyfriend coming to my rescue and politely, but firmly telling Bum that he was to sit somewhere else from now on. I think this was the last time I saw him on the stairs and feel a lump of cold emotion raising in my throat..... no, not really.

If the shit smearing was his method of revenge, I feel sad that he felt it necessary to 'punish' us. For what? If only he'd hear us considering giving him a microwaved Christmas Dinner for One when we noticed him shivering on the stairs in december. If only he had been aware of our plans to furnish him with a paper chistmas hat and a shot of sherry on Christmas day. If only he knew we had our own pet name for him, and that through the undertones of mockery and morbid fascination, we were actually strangely attached to this character....

There are also, as we noticed yesterday, an extrememly large amount of fag butts at the bottom of our stairs. I assume they are sourced from the back doors of the shops in broad street where the staff pop out for a smoke. I think the main offender is Chris Hatchitt Plumbing. We're not keen on them in there, they all seem to be thick, just out of school chavs. My boyfriend and I refer to them as Chris CatShit.

Things like this dont normally bother me, and i hadn't honestly noticed the extent of the fagage before but there were literally hundreds, just thrown on the floor. The irony was that they had been mainly discarded right under an allocated outside ashtray stuck to the wall.

My boyfriend started sweeping them up, probably to stop me whinging, but also because a random broom had been left leaning against the offending door. As it was a sunday,we didn't expect aybody to be in the shop, so we're joking around loudly abot Chris CatShit and what filthy bastards they employ. After accumulating a disgustingly large pile of butts and dust, my boyfriend started hitting the door with the broom, over emphasising the gesture for my amusement, shouting -"Oi You Dirty Fuckers!.."
As we were walking away a stern young girl poked her head out quite viciously

-"what do you want?"

Boyfriend- "Put your butts in the ashtray, thats what its there for. Look how many there are!"

The door just closed and we went inside, but when I went back out later I noticed all the fags had been cleared up. It was a joyous day and I was filled with a overwhelming sense of duty and pride for my surroundings...

Piece by piece we seem to be erradictating the dirt from this town, stoned super heros with a warped sense of justice- sortin' the garbage, takin' out the trash of this neighbourhood!

I find that fantasy quite appealing anyway...