Tuesday 30 June 2015

Tramp

Now I know we are supposed to call tramps homeless people or street drinkers or other more politically correct but less evocative things, but there was this tramp. In Stockwell. Grey skin, thick with ashy dirt, long matted grey beard, long matted grey hair, grey track pants, dirty shirt not done up, huge belly. He came out of a telephone box (one of the new kinds with clear glass doors and an advertisement on one window) and poured a bottle of very yellow frothy liquid down the drain outside, leaving his filthy belongings on their trolley in the phone box. Living in the box I guessed. Life. But not as we know it. 

2 comments:

Jake said...

Coincidence - have just been re-reading Jack London's The Road, which is his (presumably) highly exaggerated and romanticized, but nonetheless thrillingly escapist memoir about travelling across the US in the 1890s as a tramp. Funny how the availability of free out-of-copyright ebooks affects one's reading patterns, or is that just me?

Have been half wishing all day that it was a realistic option to set off for adventure by clinging onto goods trains (if they still existed) - I'm such a hopeless planner though. Anyway, no doubt it would be much tougher and less pleasant than I imagine ...

Harriet (the fshlady) said...

I think its a part of the human condition to want to escape and become a wanderer. Or perhaps thats just those of us who are trapped inside too much!