A Tale of Two Coats...

Look back at your teenage years or further back to childhood, then come back to the present and discuss.

What's the first thing most people say they don't see no more... white dog poo!. and that wagon wheels are no longer the same size, along with polo's and curly wurlys. But has something else seem to be in decline too? but more silent that sun bleached fecal matter and chocolate treats and sweets....

What ever happened to the memorable lovable tramp?... It seems they have just been replaced by scagheads and beggers... even big issue sellers now seem to be mostly "imported" beggars.

In the town I currently work in, all I see is what I just mentioned, scagheads etc, I do see this one old guy walking the same bit of road, in the same clothes, but he lacks the ubiquitous big bushy beard, he may have the pungent odour, but never been that close.... thankfully...

So what has happened to the quintessential Tramp?... are they in decline like the bees? or have they all died out... because they were so old in the first place? and because they seem to be in decline.. are we importing foreign tramps in? to replace the national shortage...

But I digress so back to the blog about a Tramp...

In the town where I used to live as a child there were tramps and one that became a very familiar sight, Mr Two Coats...

Now Two Coats first came to the attention of my mother, who when on her lunch or just around town, would notice him, with his funny gaited walk and vaguely odd appearance, strolling all around town. She pointed him out to me once when I was with her in town, as mothers do and blatantly said, that's a tramp. (I think he was a "care in the community" refugee to be honest, abandoned by the system, but most people just think they are just weird..)

From then on, I would notice Two Coats when in town and I named him thus. This is all due to seeing him on a daily basis, once in the morning and going home in the afternoon, but each time he would be wearing a different coat.

In the morning, he could be sporting a long blue mac, a little too small to cover his rotund belly. Later he would be dressed in a short leatherette jacket. I think any coat was fair game to him, as I think I saw him in a ladies coat once.

This was the case for the many years I used to see him, his beard growing ever larger and his belly, the top of his head becoming ever balder and his apparent wardrobe full of coats becoming ever more large and equipped for all seasons.

I wondered where this wardrobe might be? Narnia?... did he have a stash behind the big skips in town? or where they simply dropped in specific places...

Considering these days seeing abandoned clothing around town is a common sight, back then there was simply nothing.

I often wonder if he's still around, swapping fashion ever couple of hours, mumbling to himself about what is in this season.. and which designer is the one to be seen in?... as he passes his day of travel.

Skool what is it gud 4?

Well since I've been struggling to find somethings to blog about, I seem to have been searching everywhere... and today a small light came on in my head while talking to a work colleague....

It stems from remembering things in the past from school (feeling a bit bitter that I feel a bit thick, even though I'm not), all the times when I got told off for being me... there was a few times this happened.

In art, I got told to stop drawing black lines around everything... which was my style not theirs, they tried to drum it that it was wrong, only Mat Smith flourished in this environment, creating masterpiece after masterpiece, me I failed but ironically I do now work in the design field, maybe I'd started earlier if I had my own style....

Then at the age of 14 for having a black magic book, which came from a book club, Mr Salkeld took it off me saying it was dangerous.... how stupid did this fool think I was, where was a 14 year old going to get some dolphin for one of the spells, from Tesco's.. at the all you need for witchcraft aisle?.

Being the burk he was, maybe he went on to learn the dark arts, as he was a crap English teacher...

But the first time I was told off was by Miss Chadwick or was it Mrs.. I don't think we ever knew.... She was a wizened old teacher with a large ginger hairdo, who I think from this day forth didn't like me, it was a small battle of wills, I would not reform... and I think she enjoyed telling me I couldn't come back to do the sixth form due to my exam results...

It was my second year and I remember being in the classroom, but can't recall what subject it was for. Wiggy one tit (as I nick named her later) gave us all a writing assignment, what can you see out of your bedroom window at home?....

Well the thought went through my mind that what I can see was a tad on the boring side and would have been very short... compared to most of my country dwelling school friends, with all their fields and trees, I lived in a 1970's house overlooking a load of bugalows and garage roofs.... so what did I do.... well I got creative... and thought out of the box...

I proceeded to write about seeing a giant beanstalk outside my window and I used to climb it, well this rubbed her up the wrong way.. rather than seeing it as using my imagination and funny.. I was made to look like a naughty kid in front of everyone ... so having just told this story to my work colleague we came up with a new one... both of us being the smutty and double entendre type, it would have being interesting to see what my teacher would have done if I came up with this at the age of 12... I've tried to keep in context.

"Well from my bedroom window I can see Mrs Bradbury's house, she in her 20's, blonde, pretty and married.

It's a lovely house, with a nice pair of big knockers, I like to fumble a little with them,

as they are very unusual.

She waves to me sometimes from the kitchen, wearing her apron. I can see she has a nice rack.

It's full of spices to make meals with, it must be hand made, the kind of thing we'd make in CDT.

At times she scratches herself a lot, with some meals, something about crabs,

I think she has an allergy to shellfish, but her husband really likes them.

On occasion I can hear her scream YES YES YES...

as I think she has solved her cooking conundrums or come up with a new tasty recipe...

She also has a huge flowery bush, at the bottom of the garden.

Mr Brabury grumbles as he has to go down so often, to sort it out.

In winter I see her with two fat balls in her hand.

There is nothing more pretty than Tits hanging off them.

The Tits can't stay for too long, as her pussy keeps popping out of it's flap,

it's very scary and the meanest cat on the street.

I sometimes go round for a good time and fun, generally I come first,

before all the other kids, as I live closer.

One week she asked me to help her put a bun in the oven,

it took us a while to work out how to put it in, it was a big cake, the whole street could have had a piece.

We played a game where you have to pull things out,

Operation is really tricky.

The end.

Abandoned things and their stories...

We've all seen the all to common sight of abandoned or lost clothes scattered across town and road, victims of passion, possibly... or lack of cash at the weekends who knows?. I did hear an urban myth about taxi drivers taking peoples jeans if they could not pay...

I myself take pictures of these unfortunate items. I started this after my long and still ongoing project of taking pictures of abandoned shopping trollies which evolved and before anyone ones says "thats been done before", well I had the first idea to do it 11 years ago now, whilst existing in the twilight.

Where I used to work in Sale, was a trolley mecca. My office block stood in an area littered with Tesco's finest, Mark and Spencer's best, Sainsbury's try something new wire metaled constructs, along with many more, all casually abandoned after ferrying their own weight in eggs and bread, milk and stockings.. (plus I also used to have crushes on some of the check out girls, who I'd had given names, I was too nervous to actually find out their names. These where the only other people I interacted with on a regular basis, working nights at my previous job, was a killer of friendships and souls).

So armed with my trusty film camera which I still prefer (I'd only purchase my first digital 2 years later whilst drunk and getting fat in Tenerife, with a massive 2 mega pixels). I'd go out after work or dinner, sometimes as late as 2am and wander around snapping up the local abandoned trollies, we'd also used to get large gathering on our carpark, hiding from the collectors or left by kids, looking more like animals than inanimates.

A lot were left as if causally waiting for a friend or punting for extra business as if it was something illicit, some as if they had run away themselves, others huddled together for warmth like pack animals and many cast upon their sides - the dead or murdered, but the most unfortunate would be in rivers or canals.

I still take pictures of them, but after a while this evolved into collecting shopping lists, left within these trollies. Yes I'm strange for the most part and I did get quite feverish at collecting them, sometimes going out of my way to get these scraps of screwed up paper. But I often wondered why lists are so readily thrown away....

If you think about a list, most people will spend a lot of time and effort to scribe down their wants, needs, treats and then simply screw it up and leave it... this list, that may have taken time to produce and probably the most thought out thing in that persons day or week.

But also interestingly the scraps of paper or what ever comes to hand used for lists is vast and the previous information or added information can just be as interesting, mobile phone numbers, letters from schools... wanting to see the parents of so and so... and some of the items listed are hilarious... Some badly spelt, but all in a different cursive. Some surprisingly long, whilst other suspiciously short and vague, did they know what the wanted or just thought "hell with it.. what ever takes my fancy shall be cast into my basket or trolley... I don't need it but I don't care...."

Again I still collect the odd ones, I did have a project to collect 101 randomly found lists, my eventual idea was to make a big list from all the scraps... which is still in the making...

Well as all things do, the evolution continued and I moved onto taking pictures of abandoned clothes. It's surprising how many loose articles are scattered around and when you mention it to people they too have come across a fair amount of this detritus.... My mum and dad once saw a bra hanging from a tree or on top of a bush in a very public area.

I myself have seen shoes (mostly babies), a pair of jeans, a couple of jumpers and many hat, but by far the most lost piece of clothing must be the humble glove. A sad lonely thing on it own, always craving for it's opposite equal. This is where my final part of the abandonment has come to rest, finding that single glove in the gutter or run over in the road, all wet and dirty.

If these glove weren't an inanimate object and had feelings what would they be?, a constant feeling of loneliness? or loss?, a want of rescue to meet lefty or righty again and be happy ever after?... that desperate plea to meet a one handed person....

No Doubt this will continue on until the point we evolve something better than hands, either a bluetooth dongle or a USB finger tip