» Tramps

daffodils
I live near an area of Dundee that's affectionately known as "needle row"... pick a closie and you could wrap a christmas turkey with the amount of used tin foil in it. Between needle row and the town centre, there are plenty "interesting" people to meet. Many are the usual crazy/drugged up hobos you see all over Scotland, but there are a few who are true legends. Apologies now, this is not a funny story, it just kinda highlights that not all homeless people are junkies, some are the complete opposite.

Lisa was awesome. She used to sit in the overpass at the station in the winter, minding her own business and staying warm. She was quite possibly the sweetest girl i've ever met, so cheerful even though she'd had a horrible life.

The first time I met her, it was early December. She hadn't eaten in about 9 days, and was nearly unconscious. The pile of Big Issues she'd been trying to sell lay unsold beside her, no one buys them in Dundee. I took her to MacDonalds and she told me her story. Her parents were junkies in Glasgow, both heavily into heroin, and used to beat her, or worse, pretty much when the mood took them. She'd ran away when she was 15 after they'd tried to prostitute her to earn drug money. She didn't have a proper education, but was desperately trying to get a job. She'd go to the job centre nearly every day, looking for jobs and getting out of the cold for a bit. She'd applied for several jobs, but they all refused her as she didn't have an address. I got her a hotel room once, she insisted that she'd get a job in Tesco or something and pay me back. she ripped a corner off a Big Issue and wrote me an I.O.U. Everytime we met she told me how her job search was going, what she'd been up to, where she'd been. Sometimes she'd spend her day wandering about the parks, picking flowers. She loved them, she was amazed that something so pretty could grow from nothing but dirt. She told me once that it gave her hope in the spring when the daffodils came out, she knew that she would be ok.

For someone who'd lived on the street for nearly a decade, and had no more than a primary school education, she was incredibly warm and quick witted. Any time I was getting a train, or if I was bored in town, I'd sit and speak with her for ages, sharing cigarettes and cider and having a sly laugh at the businessmen who spent their whole day getting stressed over things that don't really matter. Someone gave her an old mobile phone once, the only numbers she had in it were me, a couple of my mates and the Samaritans hotline. I always felt a bit guilty when I went home to my warm house, knowing that she was still out there, huddled in the overpass trying to keep out of the rain. Whenever she saw me going for a train she made sure to give me a hug, and told me she prayed that I'd get there safe.

The council started to revamp the area around the station last year, and knocked down the overpass. Lisa had to move to the station doorway, with no shelter from the elements, but was still her chipper self, chattting to whoever would listen and sharing her last cigarette.

They found her on the 20th January this year, sat in her usual spot at the station doors. She'd died of pneumonia, and was frozen solid. She'd been ill for weeks, but refused to move in case someone stole her spot. She'd been grieving for one of her friends, another Big Issue seller who'd been stabbed outside M&S a week before. It was strange to think that Lisa and her flowers wouldn't be there anymore, and to see the impact she'd made on the lives of other Dundonians.

When spring came this year i made sure to leave a bunch of daffodils in her spot, along with a cigarette and the I.O.U. ripped in half. Next time someone asks you for change, please don't snub them and justify it with some druggie excuse... even if you only have 5 minutes, get to know them a little... they might just be another Lisa.

Apologies for lack of funnies. And length.

here's a link to the BBC site about her, any other Scumdonians on here might remember her and her awesomeness :)

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7861600.stm
(Sat 4th Jul 2009, 5:33, More)

» Too much information

restaurant tmi
one of my friends was dining out in a really, really posh restaurant near where i live. the kind where all the waiters are like royalty, and the chef is a deity. anyway, she was pretty young at the time, about 4. She went to the toilet, and being a pretty young and naive child, didn't know how to clean up afterwards. so she did the first sensible thing she could think- she wandered into the packed restaurant, and shouted to her mum that she needed wiping. I'm fairly sure the family was banned from the restaurant afterwards...
(Thu 6th Sep 2007, 12:43, More)

» School Days

awkward
I really didn't fit in at my school, as is probably the case with many on here. Not that I was smarter than average, just a prime target.

As is to be expected in a modern British school, the disruptive children were given utmost attention, to the point where they got holidays, trips to Alton Towers and so on. The kids with real problems, such as depression, self-harm, bulemia etc were pretty much ignored by the staff, as were most of the best teachers.

Mr Kiddie, for example. Bob Dylan lookalike, taught history. All the kids loved him, and therefore most of the teachers hated him. All apart from Mr Sutherland, his only mate. Made it harder when Sutherland found him hung in his classroom one Monday morning. The one decent teacher in the school was driven to suicide by the other teachers constantly trying to get him suspended, although the others were horrid (yes, the typical PE teacher perving on young girls in showers sort of thing.)

So we subtly got our own back. Most of the people who knew Mr Kiddie well were in my year, and proceeded to drive as many of the teachers who were mean to him to tears, as they had done him. They made him insane, now it was our turn.

As we were second years there wasn't much we could do that was drastic, so we did little things. Got the whole class to sway till the teacher felt seasick, switching keys and so on.

By 5th year we were smarter and more malicious. Successfully made quite a few teachers take early retirement. I think one got sectioned after we stole her shoes, house keys and car keys and deposited them on top of the portakabins. She didn't notice till school was done, apparently she was found in her room weeping. Didn't come back after that.

Some teachers sorted themselves for us. The pervy PE teacher came in pissed, had to be escorted off the premises and was suspended for a year. sadly he's now back and perving on my sister, none too happy about that. The best was one of the geography teachers who'd treated Kiddie like scum, because she was all middle class and he was a hippie who lived in a caravan. She moved schools, and has since been suspended when her phone was stolen, and all her dirty videos of her vag were texted and bluetoothed to every school rector and most of the pupils in Dundee.

Apologies for the rant, and lack of funnies, just needed to show that some teachers are worth a lot more than just what they can teach, and are worth respect in a system where pretty much everyone is against them.

On the plus side, my 4th year maths teacher was amazing. Imagine a jeordie version of Hulk Hogan, who without fail will be wearing tartan trousers and mismatched neon socks, with an insistance that maths without Zky, Judas Priest or Black Sabbath belting out of his homebuilt sound system was not maths at all. Most maths lessons consisted of a bellowed "get ya booooks owt" followed by "ahm off for a bit... if there's a mess when ahm back, it's East 17 for the lot oh yas"
(Mon 2nd Feb 2009, 4:24, More)

» Guilty Secrets

when i was 13
i was round at a mates house, and one of his mates was being a whiny twunt. so i hid the kid's bike in a field round the back, and told him it had been nicked. there is nothing more satisfying and disturbing than seeing a teenage boy in floods of tears coz his brand new bike has been stolen. when it got to the stage that he wanted to call the police, we hid his phone, making him near suicidal. when he finally found his bike after searching through the field for a half hour, he tried to ride off in anger. to this day, he has no idea that it was me that let his tyres down, making him crash into a tree and loosing teeth...

length? long enough to make up for his whining...
(Mon 3rd Sep 2007, 10:50, More)

» Rubbish Towns

Stoke on Trent
Went to Alton Towers with my girlfriend and her mates, and stayed in a hotel in stoke. We arrived pretty exhausted, and the first thing the concierge told us was that we should avoid going out after 7 if we didn't want "stabbed or sumfink." I've never been in a more hostile place... No one smiles, they just wander around aimlessly, and staring at you as if you just defecated into their grannie's ashes before feeding it to the dog. It is the only place in the world I have ever been driven AT, on a quite regular basis. The entire town is coated with a thick film of soot and grime, and people seem to actually go out of their way to be nasty or unhelpful. It has only 2 redeeming features: 1, it isn't Dundee, and 2, it has quite possibly the best car wash sign ever, proudly claiming to give "the best handjobs in town."
(Fri 30th Oct 2009, 9:27, More)