The Steaming Rants of Ernie Wight

Let's P-p-p-Party!

I trundled slowly up the sodium-glow of Chippenham high street. In my pocket was an envelope with some cash. Once a week I had to pick up the account settlements from two garages who obstinately refused to use cheques or bank transfers to pay their bills. I didn't like carrying cash, especially when it wasn't mine. As I stopped at a red light someone lurched against my door and breathed stale drink fumes into the cab. It was 5 in the morning, and he said, with a curiously-mangled scots accent "Can I trouble you for forty quid?". I was already in gear, riding the clutch ready for the first hint of amber, and I felt my feet move smoothly in opposite directions, one down, one up, as I dropped the handbrake lever to the floor and slapped his hand off of the door. "Fuck you" I heard him scream above the noise of tyres and exhaust.

One drop later, and I had to retrace the same patch of road in the opposite direction. As I accelerated through the changing lights four figures staggered and lurched into the road across my path. He had fetched his friends. I weaved right slightly, waited till they had all turned to go that way, and swung hard left up over the pavement and around them. I heard a splat-splat from behind, and slowed, fearful that I had hit a fifth unseen man on the pavement. I saw with relief that two large containers of white stuff had shot off the back of the flatbed and exploded on the road. The drunks began to kick them towards me and howl like slavering werewolves. As I drove off I looked in the mirror once more, to see them all lined up across the road giving me the thumbs-down.

Later, less alarmed, I realised that he hadn't been asking for quite as much as I had first heard. In a drunken stutter he had been asking "for-for two pounds", but I, in my tired and surprised state, had heard forty. What would have happened to me if I had not managed to avoid them, and had knocked one of them down? If I had stopped at the scene, as the law and human behaviour said I should, I could have been beaten senseless. If I had driven off to a safe distance and then phoned, I could have been considered to have tried to run away from the scene of my guilt. All of this because four people have too much time on their hands, and not enough money. They had enough money to get drunk enough to be still on the stagger at 5 in the morning, but not enough to get them breakfast, or home.

And I, who haven't drunk anything now for several weeks, mostly because I can't afford it, have to be the target for someone's mindless forays, for less take-home pay each day than they had probably spent that previous evening getting that drunk. I'm beginning to realise that nobody actually cares about everyday justice. So long as no laws are broken that involve significant amounts of money or serious damage to the person, we are all left alone on the streets to get along with each other as best we can, the poor, the under-privileged, the mentally-unsettled, and the mischievous dancing around in a game of do or be done by, the sole proviso being that we should not upset our elders and betters.

Two pounds, which he wanted, is only half-an-hour's work for me, after deducting tax. I wonder how much he earns, and should I start trying to beg money from drunks? If I catch them early enough, they might be worth it. What is really burning at me, though, is that four drunks in the street should see me as rich enough to be able to give them two pounds, and there's no way I can explain to them that two pounds buys me the loaves of bread I need to eat, or the cans of beans, or whatever else I decide I've got to stuff inside my shivering form this cold and clammy morning.