Diary of a Nottingham Chav

Monday 08 November 2004

reading time: min, words

Literature Creative Writing

"I spend most of my days wandering round the city of Nottingham looking for fights, calling people tossers and knobheads"

I spend most of my days wandering round the city of Nottingham looking for fights, calling people tossers or knobheads.

Last week was no exception as I decided to go to the Goose Fair. Having urinated in numerous phoneboxes and one bus stop before hitting Forest Fields, I was happy, i'd even go so far as to say I was ecstatic! In truth I was armed with enough white cider to kill a tramp, a Fila puffa jacket, the smell of stale piss and most importantly a bad attitude.

Earlier that day I'd been feeling rather dejected to say the least. After the fourth pint of Carlsberg in my local, the landlord came over and said: "Hey you, donkey chaff, didn't I tell you not to come back in ere?" Naturally I assumed that he was talking about the gentlemen next to me, Kev, who I see in many bars and parkbenches and who does me the welcome favour of making my own alcoholism seem mild and my speech coherant.

The landlord got louder: "Hey wank stick, do I have to tell you again? Or do you want Jimmi to tell you?" He motioned to Jimmi, he drinks shorts, smokes chesterfields, looks violent and occasionally cries about his missing shoe.

"Hey Kev, you're wanted." I said.

"Haer sh gro be tes?" he asked back. From our previous interactions, I knew this to translate as "Has she got big tits?"

Before I had chance to disappoint him by saying "Only if you like them hairy", the landlord was in my face. The situation came to it's end shortly afterwards with me, not Kev, getting chucked out of the bar for apparantly, threatening numerous customers with imaginary kitchen knives, swords and chemical weapons.

Can no-one take a joke these days? I asked myself as I picked up my tooth from the kerb. The landlord had made a slight error though, he'd let slip that he would be going to the fair later that evening, with his family no less. After leaving the fair that day, I had satisfied myself but thankfully not the landlord.

Yesterday was Tuesday, it was mid morning, I was sober, disturbed, a little on edge and I needed a drink.

Where have they come from? I thought to myself, walking unhappily through Clumber Street. It was distressing to say the bare midriff minimum. Shoppers everywhere, not so abnormal you may think. But it was, the consumers were seeping from the cracks, dropping from the sky with parachutes marked with a large yellow 'M', Burgers, soft drinks, H&M bags, attractive young girls with boys with pimp moustaches and gold chains.

This is Nottingham, I thought to myself, is this life? Walking off clumber street, away from the mass of over milked herds, I had already decided that the person who would be deserving of my allocated alcohol money (yes that is all of my money) that day would be the first place I could find that still had not succumbed to the brown leather sofa virus.

The brave and noble magnitude of such an aim must be deserving of some sort of medal, the George Cross, the Victoria Cross or any medal which had a Christian name that was around before the year 1920, suited to an old person or more impressively anything that precedes the word 'cross'. They must have thought, all these landlords, breweries, the people that want to make me endure hours of physical exertion before I can find a place that is safe from this evil plague of animal hide seats.

Does anyone remember the Krypton Factor? It's a conspiracy, I think as I walk needing the illogical logic that alcohol brings. The bastards, they have sat there I know it, all of them together, in something they call an apartment, probably in Hockley. They try and make it smell like a mixture of dried flowers and coffee but it really smells like the diarrheoa (caused from creamy coffee liqueurs that they aim at 14 year olds they want to seduce) they have expulsed and then tried to cover the stench with Wilkinson's own brand air fresheners.

They sit there and have a meeting, the outcome of which will make my life more difficult. I pass them, their bars, their customers that shop anywhere with any label with all the neccessary shameless morals that accompany their brand. I pass them, I walk on by. Since Clumber street I'd walked for no longer than two minutes, it was all too much, I needed refuge and escape. No, I'm lying, I just needed alcohol.

I walked into the nearest bar, got the attention of the nearest reluctant, poor, unhappy, serving beneath his station, student barman and asked for two pints of cider, a double whisky, a cigar and a disapproving look. I didn't actually ask for the last one but it is obviously the way of customer services these day, I know I'd rather have that than a barrage of fake happy cleavage and benign empty eyes. This was fine I thought as I'd necked the whisky and went to sit down to appreciate the young sparsely clad and uninformed shoppers from the nearest brown leather sofa....... Life is compromise

Grrr... Umbrellas make my life more difficult, that much is certain.

What is it about umbrellas that make me want to kill people? This is even after I've sat in my own excrement for the three days of bleeding after severing a large vein in my leg (a none lethal injury but the hacking certainly gets out some frustration). I still have not cut deep enough to remove the offending thought, umbrellas.

I was walking along the Trent recently, drinking bourbon, smoking into the wind and cursing under my breath about the booze I'd just spilt on my jumper. It was a fresh, windy autumn day and reflecting in the murky water was a lonely, almost pathetic collection of small grey clouds, they were perhaps a minor threat to dryness but nothing to warrant rain protection.

What do I see as I surreptitiously suck out the remaining liquor from my jumper, a jogger no less, running along merrily. She was fit, young, bouncing along with a self-satisfied push, not because she was jogging but because she had an umbrella. Nothing else seemed to be about her person, the tight lycra was unforgiving and would have showed if she had any other form of 'protection' on her but there was none. That's when my hatred of umbrella's hit an all time high. What is the poor stupid bastard thinking of? Is she allergic to water? Is she particularly niche' and fears the coming of water will bring on a cold of some sort? No, I thought, she is simply another sub-standard clown who does not notice how she showcases her own stupidity...

How will taking your umbrella out jogging really protect you from anything? Is it perhaps, a special umbrella that doubles up as a rape alarm, a large knife or even, dare I say it, a mobile phone? It could be a truncheon, a bottle of water (please god no, not the dreaded water) or even more useful a bottle of alcohol, which serves as not only a device of protection but also the gateway to class A drugs.

But no, that would be too sensible, so what do you do instead, take out an umbrella, it does not occur to you that you will get wet anyway. Number one: you sweat when you jog. Number two: it was a windy day so I doubt this so called umbrella could really stop all the wayward drips. Will an umbrella stop this large cruel world? Will it help you fight cancer, run faster, achieve more? They help nothing apart from making the owners look organised, practical, sensible, boring and twattish? I for one, may be a twat, I may be lazy, cynical, bitter, angry and drunk but I do not have an irrational fear of the expected. Plus, watching all these joggers that pass me daily, believe me, I'm damp enough already...

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