Chatterday Saturday

STANLEY THE O.A.P. SHOPLIFTER and Miles his Public Skool partner have dropped round a few times this week. They sit about for an hour or so smoking their wares, give me a bit (I can't usually do it in front of them as would have to strip nearly naked to find a site) but it's the thought that counts. Miles came by today. Stanley is funny. He tells the tallest stories I've ever heard, eg about whacking a wasps' nest down out of an oak tree and the yellowjackets (that's what us Brits mean when we say a "wasp") going mental up the entire street. Old 1920s fishwives (well that's what it was like when Stanley was a little boy) running up in arms from their homes with black and yellow swarms buzzing them out ... etc etc. The other day when they came and I had somewhere to go I avoided them, met up with them later on a park bench with another shoplifter called Sarah. And sat there as the three of them talked "shop" about what store five miles away you can't take so much as a stick of chewing gum out of "because yous lot have done it to death"... Sarah speaks such heavy London slang she even says "moons" instead of months. I mean honestly she sounds to me like a Mediaeval serving wench. "I bain't been outta these ere parts for seven moons" what does she think she sounds like. I had an animated conversation about "getting clean" not that I'm telling anyone I want to, for over an hour. And in the end told the nasty truth. Well what is this existence about? Except a tightrope walk between survival and death. I don't know.