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Walking down Westbourne Grove this evening, I saw a junkie I recognise, passing me in the opposite direction. He is about 5’10” with short dark hair, caucasian. He often has a few days stubble, but generally looks healthy, and dresses well. In fact he seems to change clothes pretty often, and looks neat and clean, verging on cool in a ‘street’ kinda way at times. I’ll refer to him as ‘Col’.

 

Anyway, he was heading west down Westbourne Grove, wearing a short sleeve check shirt over a t-shirt, and jeans. He was holding a can of beer (not uncommon for him), and trying to work out how to get his shirt off at the same time. He was also wearing a grey wool beanie pulled down low, I had to double-take to recognise him.

 

I’ve seen this guy shoplifting whisky from M&S in Whiteley’s before. He had two bottles, one tucked up each sleeve of his overcoat, and managed to drop one right next to me, it hit the floor and exploded. He is also seen hurrying around with Ali quite often, they’re a bit of a double act, and I spotted him in a phone box on Queensway last week beating ten bells out of the phone, presumably trying to extract some money from it. He didn’t put any money in, but was frantically hitting the reject coin button, then hitting it with the handset, then giving the whole phone unit major blows with his palm. That time he was wearing a bright red hoodie, he put his hood up when he stopped some people to hustle. This evening he seemed in quite a rush, so probably off to score.

 

On past the supermarket opposite Oddbins, where Sta was sitting on the pavement and begging. He had his hands in the prayer position, presumably this convinces more mugs to give him money. When I passed him later, he’d put his hands down and appeared to be asleep. I had to double take him too, his hair that is usually sticking up all over the place, was flattened down.

 

On to Tesco on Queensway, where Jim was sitting outside begging. He’s trimmed his beard and moustache and it makes him look younger. He was still dressed in his pale olive green full length mac.

 

Outside Dongle, something was going on. A black guy, was hustling with two short Slavic looking guys. The black guy was looking around in a very surreptitious way, and exchanging something with one guy. Then the second Slav walked up on the opposite side of the road and whistled (a common means of communication with junkies it seems, they seem to have ‘personalised’ whistles), all three of them joined up and headed up Queensway towards the park. I haven’t seen them before, meanwhile I’ll refer to the black guy who seemed to be the dealer as Mys1, he was noticeable for a marked limp, an injury in his right leg. Let’s see if we run into him again…