THE NUMBER ONE TRAMP

He dropped us off at the corner of Ashley and Cheltenham Road after we’d been to see Rita and Jasper at The Old Fox, a biker pub up the Gloucester Road.
‘I’m on a wealth walk,’ was a man’s voice behind us as we waited to cross the road at the lights.
He followed us over talking the while and said, ‘I’m not after your money,’ the only thing I remember.
I said to her, ‘stop and let him pass.’
We stopped and turning as he passed he said, ‘I’m a tramp, the number one tramp in the world, that’s what I’m saying.’
‘Oh yeh?’ I said.
‘I don’t want your money...’
‘You said.’
‘...but if anyone tells you they’re a tramp and the number one top tramp in the world, it’s not true,’ he said. ‘I’m the number one tramp, you tell them...’
‘Okay,’ I said.
She said, ‘bye,’ and I did too as we started up Ninetree Hill.
‘I’m the number one,’ he said, ‘don’t forget,’ as he walked on down Stokes Croft.

BROKEN GLASS

‘We don’t have to go all the way up there, do we?’ she said, ‘now that the lift’s working.’
When we got near to the block we saw two police cars outside, then pieces of broken glass on the ground by the front door, and in the car park by the corner of the block four men standing at the back of a car. We went over to them and saw that all the windows of the car had been smashed and there were pieces of glass on the body of the car and lying close by on the ground. One of the men was talking on a mobile phone.
‘What happened?’ she said.
The man furthest from us pointed up to the side of the block and said, ‘look, he did all that.’
From about the tenth floor down we could see holes and cracks in the windows of the stairwell.
We talked a short while with the four men commiserating the damage done to their car before saying, ‘goodnight,’ and then going through the entrance of the block and seeing that all of the windows there and in the foyer had holes in them and glass lay scattered on the floor.
‘They look like bullet holes,’ she said.

COP IN THE LIFT

We got in the lift with a tall policewoman wore her hair fastened in a bun at the back of her head and had followed us through the front door of the block.
‘What happened?’ I said.
‘Someone came down the stairs and smashed each of the windows with a hammer,’ said the policewoman.
‘Glad to hear it wasn’t a gun,’ I said.
‘You got him?’ she said.
‘Yes, but your eyes might feel a bit sore,’ said the policewoman, ‘we had to use CS gas to restrain him.’
‘You know why he did it?’ I said.
‘Not yet.’
The three of us got out the lift on my floor. I started to unlock the front door of my flat and the policewoman went towards the door leads to the stairwell.
‘He must’ve been drunk or on crack or something,’ she said when we got inside.
‘Maybe it was a deal went wrong.’
‘I wonder if he lives here.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘But what they should do is put him in some stocks outside the front so we can all see who he is did such a thing...I’d like to know.’

HOLES IN GLASS



TRANSCRIPT

‘Yeh, we turned up just as he’d finished it,’ I said.
‘Oh right.’
‘Just as they’d nabbed him.’
‘Oh, you see him did you?’ he said.
‘We didn’t see it happen but we saw the...’
‘They tear gas him?’
‘CS gas, yes, yep...’
‘...and there was the car,’ she said. ‘Did you see the car?’
‘We weren’t down here. I don’t know I just got a call this morning, look...’
‘...smashed the car...all er, every window on their car, a new car sitting there...’
‘What’s he got beef with then?’ he said.
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘He, he came down the stairs...’
‘...yeh...’
‘...with a hammer, smashing every window as he came.’
‘Then he.........the car...’ she said.
‘..............the motor.’
‘...every window of the car, yeh, th-they were gutted.’
‘Yeh,’ he said, then, ‘not nice is it?’
‘Aar, it’s out of order,’ I said. ‘Anyway thanks for doing it.’
‘..................make it safe,’ he said.
‘For sure,’ I said, ‘yeh...cheers.’
‘Cheers.’