More idioms

Said to me today.

“…he put his bleeding strawberry tart into that gig”

“…everybody’s got a manor”

Both said by the same man, call him M, who I bumped into in a pub in Lewisham. Used to know him a long time ago. Not really know him. Friend of a friend. We recognised each other, though couldn’t remember names. He used to go to Lewisham Labour Club, when it had a bar. We talked about people we used to know for a while. “Do you remember X?” “Whatever happened to Y?” “They’ve got a kid now”

M is in a bad way. Homeless, mentally ill, alcoholic (his self-description). Says he’s sleeping in a park

And I feel guilty. Because I decided the moment I met him that I’m not going to offer him a floor to sleep on. That I’m not going to ask him back to my place. That I’m not goign to give him money if he asks for it. Not that he did ask for any of those things – this is mostly in my head. Is this Christian charity? Is this going the extra mile? Buying an alcoholic a couple of pints of Guiness? Because I think I have my own problems. Because I have a daugher who lives with me in our little flat and she has her own problems, so I can use my duty to care for her as an excuse not the help someone else. I’ve done that before.

Years and years ago when she was still small a man knocked on the door on a snowy night. He wasnt dressed for outdoors. Very light clothes, little more than pyjamas. It was well below freezing and show was falling. I invited him in and gave him some tea and beans on toast. I was making it anyway. He said he had escaped from a mental hospital.

But I ended up asking him to leave. More or less forcing him to leave. My daughter was asleep in the next room. I was not going to go to sleep myself with him there in the same house as her. I said I would phone someone for him. Call the hospital, call a doctor, call the police, anyone. He said there was no-one and in the end I made him go. Because, or at least partly because, he engaged some of my prejudices (not ones I’ll list on the Net where Nothing is Forgotten). And I’ve felt guilty ever since. Well, I have on the rare occasions I’ve remembered it.

And M (who did not ask for more than I drink but I instantly found myself thinking how I would react if he did) engages some of the same prejudices. I defend myself. He said he was sleeping in the park, but he must have somewhere to go, at least to leave some stuff. His clothes did not look or smell like those that have been slept in for days (his breath, on the other nostril…) He wasn’t toting bags, like people who sleep in the street often do.

But, but… WWJD? Don’t ask me, but I heard a sermon on the Good Samaritan this morning. So I can guess.

Idiom trouvee

Overheard today:

“Any salmon around?”

“What?”

“Have you got any salmon?”

“What? Fish? I don’t know what you are talking about”

“Have you got any snout?”

[X gives Y a cigarette]

“What’s salmon got to do with it?”

“Snout. Salmon and trout, snout. Its Old School. I thought you’d know.”

Pissed on by a Russian

To the pub for a quick one at closing time. There are a few more folk about that this time last week, and there is one man I don’t remember seeing before. Rather odd-looking. Small, dark, not very clean, looks a little drunk or stoned. Shifty-eyed I would call him if I was a crap novellist. Well I’m not any kind of novellist at all but if I was one maybe I would be crap, so I’ll say he was shifty-eyed. And from what little I can hear from the other side of the bar, doesn’t speak English.

Chat to J for a few minutes and then I go to the toilet. Small man is in there urinating. As I walk behind him he is finishing, apparently shaking himself to get the last drops off, and he turns round and faces me, still hanging out. And gets piss all over the place, mostly on the floor, but some on my hand and arm. Only a few sprinklings, not a torrent, but its not very nice. And he stands there looking at me with his willy in his hand and a very strange expression on his face.

I don’t know what to do. Its not a social situation that Miss Manners advises on. My fist though, egged on by the strange and not very pleasant expression, is that he’s trying to pick a fight and wants me to react aggressively. My second is that he’s totally pissed and incapable. I go into a cubical, bolt the door, don’t come out till he’s gone, and take care to wash my hands very thoroughly

A few minutes later we go out the back to smoke a fag. Z. is there talking to one of the locals, S, another small man who often looks a bit aggressive. Very jerky movements and determined look on his face. Odd bloke comes out and smokes then says “sorry” to S in very broken English. I suspect he doesn’t mean that he’s apologising for anything but he;’s just trying to start a conversation and can’t handle the language.

And all of a sudden we are nearly in a you-looking-at-me-mate situation.

“What are you apologising to me for? You aint don’t nothing bad to me. If you’ve done something wrong you did it to yourself, say sorry to yourself…” and so on at some length. I’m sure the strange man doesn’t understand a word.

And then he asks “What you professional?” By which I think he meant “what is your job, what do you do for a living?” Trying to make polite conversation. But it gets taken as a reference to the army (I think – the man who can speak English was almost as hard to interpret at that point at the one who can’t). And apparently that was not a good subject to raise. “I can look after myself. I’m self-sufficient. There’s no-one taking care of me but me. I can handle myself”

Back indoors and sit and chat with someone else for a while. Then voices are raised on the other side of the bar. And before we know it we’re in a full-blown macho sizing up for a fight situation. Prancing from one side of bar to the other. Jerky movements. Nose-to-nose face-offs. Drawings-up to full height (which isn’t very high on either side) Apparent moments of calm and good humour and clappings on back and hugs. Separations, reversions, lookings around for allies.

Listening to a one-sided rant from S about odd bloke who he is convinced is Polish and is determined to insult him. Any replies are incoherent, not really in English, and slurred.

“Did you hear what he just called me?”

“He said he’s in their army and he’s going to bring his mates round and do me over!”

“He just insulted my mother!”

Others in the pub trying to calm him down while trying not to seem bothered. In the end the barmaid ordered the probably-not-Polish-at-all odd man out and it took about five men and ten minutes to gently manouvre him to the door, with brief ructions of macho on the way

And right at the end: “I Russian! I go now! Stanko! Wanko Stanko!”

“Is he calling me a wanker? I’ll have him….”

So we reassure S that he is not calling anyone a wanker but he’s just telling us his name. He mist be a Russian called Stanko. And I almost believe it. I’m about 2/3 sure that he was some lonely Russian immigrant who wnated a drink and a chat but whose grasp of English language and English ways just wasn’t up to dealing with a touchy Millwall supporter who has a chip on his shoulder about the army and isn’t very good at understanding broken English.
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But then he did piss on me. Maybe he really was trying to wind people up and start a fight. Maybe I’ll get back to Lewisham tonight and find that the pub’s been done over by a dozen ex Red Army men working in London as crack bodyguards for crack dealers. Who can tell?

Then talking to the two J – the Buddhist and the mountain-climbing lighting engineer. One with white hair and a long beard, the other shaved as short as I am. Middle-age in the first years of the twenty-first century is an odd thing. Whatever happened to neat haircuts? By the time I get old you will be able to spot geriatrics because they will be wearing jeans and T-shirts with the logos of old heavy metal bands on them. Maybe all the kids will be dressing in frilly blouses and getting their hair permed.

The Gardener

I’ve been reading on the train. Short stories are easier than novels because you can fit them in between stations.

Yesterday I started The Mark of the Beast and other fantastical tales which is a collection of Rudyard Kipling stories edited by Stephen Jones, and published in the wonderful Gollancz/Orion “Fantasy Masterworks” series. Its volume 50 and so far there aren’t three duds among them. The companion “SF Masterworks” series is almost as good. They do what they say on the tin. These are the books you ought to have read if you want to have read the books you ought to have read.

Yesterday I flicked through it and read The Man who would be King and The Bridgebuilders and a couple of other stories based in India some of which I’d read before. All very good. This morning on the train to work I read The Gardener as recommended in Neil Gaiman’s introduction.

Last week I read or re-read all of the Harry Potter books and finished the last one on Monday. They were OK. They made me laugh a few times. I don’t think they made me cry at any point. This ten page story by Kipling, which I read on the train between Lewisham and Waterloo, had tears in my eyes by the fifth page. I just about managed to control myself until I read the last line of the story (the last word really) and all but burst out sobbing hand had to get up and walk down the train so as not to disturb the other passengers.

So if there is anyone else writing blogs about odd people they see or overhear on commuter trains in London: I was that soldier.