It was late 2002.
I had not long moved away from the bar where I had lived and worked in the west end, but had returned to my old haunt like a dog returns to its vomit. I had bought a beer and sat in the window, watching the world drift past down oxford street, because, sooner or later, everything in the world will drift down oxford street. I wished it was summer, mostly for the bikinis.

I didn't really notice the man when he came in. He was wearing a suit and glasses and had short neat hair. He walked to the bar and stood next to me and bought three pints of inexpensive bitter. He was alone. The man left his bitter on the bar and walked back outside.

He came back after a few seconds. He was not alone this time. He had, in his company, a tramp. He led the tramp to the bar and stood him next to me, by the three pints of inexpensive bitter. He advised the tramp to 'get those down him', turned on his heel and walked straight back out. The tramp picked up and sipped at a pint of bitter. I tried to ignore the tramp, but his smell was distracting. I kept half-turning my head, looking away from the window. I began to worry that I might miss an unseasonal christmas bikini. The tramp chatted to the people around him. The conversations were short, as everyone walked away from him because he stank and was a tramp.

"Excuse me".
Oh great, my turn. I turned to face him. He was quite young, maybe a few years short of thirty, with watery grey eyes.
"Yeah"
"Have you seen this?"
I looked at what he offered in his outstreached hand. It was a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales.
"That's my book!", he said
"It's, er, nice. Do you mean 'your book' in the sense that you wrote it?". I mean, hey, you never know, right?
"No. But you like it?"
"It's ok, I suppose"
"It's a very special book"
"How so?"
"It's the book they talk to me with"
I backed away as well as I could, what with being against the window and all. "They"? "Talk"? "How"?
"From space"

Oh great.

"'They' talk to you from space? Using a bigraphy of Diana, Princess of Wales?"
"They use the book. They use it to try and get into my head and control me"
"Why would they want to do that?"
"Because they came and took me and put the all controls to all the nuclear weapons in the world in my head and they want to use me to set them off and destroy the world but I won't do it nono I won't do it no I'm good and I'm nice"
"Give me the book. I'll throw it away"
"You can't have the book. It's my book"
"But, er, destroying the world?"
"MY BOOK!"
"But if you throw it away you save the human race from certain doom"
"They can't. They won't. I won't let them"

Yorkie, one of my former colleagues, was the other side of the bar, watching, arms crossed. He gestured with his eyes and I distracted the tramp and Yorkie threw his bitter down the sink with a swift, clean action, then strode around the bar to stand the other side of him. He gestured again, and we grabbed him each by an armpit, and threw him out the door.

Yorkie pointed down the road and told him to piss off and not come back. I sniffed my fingers. They stank. My boot hit something on the way back in. It was the biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, which he'd dropped unnoticed. It was brand new and in off-the-shelf condition. The tramp had vanished down the road, and hadn't missed his prized possession. I handed it to Yorkie. He threw it and it arced into a nearby bin.

I am certain that at that moment, in a bunker in Siberia, Vladimir Putin slammed his fist into his desk and cried 'CURSES', as he sat in front of a screen with all numbers running across it.

I can't prove it, obviously.
(cs1ca, Thu 1 Dec 2011, 19:47, 4 replies)

Poor tramp :(
The fella has got fuck knows what audio and visual hallucinations going on and is doing his best to make sense of a very confusing world.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Fri 2 Dec 2011, 7:32, closed)

You sure showed
that mentally-ill homeless person.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 8:40, closed)

Vladimir Putin
isn't homeless. He's sitting in a bunker, look .
(cs1ca, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 10:14, closed)

Who was the dude in the suit that bought the pints? MIB possibly?
Also ^^^^^^ what the fag hags said, bullying of mentally ill people is wrong.

Except rory lyon
( The Mock Turtle ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 8:42, closed)