Rich pickings

At last, some first rate speed in Bristol. I've had some expensive flat whites since moving here.

I took it round to Hayley's, who rang at half past nine asking me if I fancied an early drink at hers. She said that they'd been doing coke the previous night. "I picked my nose this morning, and managed to find a little lump of it still there." Hayley talked, I listened, but it was easy enough.

Harry came round later, and busied himself at the far end of the garden cutting down the weeds with a pair of scissors. When at last he came to talk to us he was jittery, eyes big, sociability an effort. In the bathroom there were stains on the little table, walls and floor. Someone to whom she had given a key had let himself in and done something that involves bloodletting.

She was pressing me about renting the flat again. "To be honest, Hayley, I wouldn't want to get involved in anything financial with you. I don't trust you with money." "Well, you know looby, my house is your house." She is kind like that.

She told me about the various financial ruses she's got going, farming from a network of lies to officials, exes, men who fancy her, and Harry, so that at the moment, she can pay the rent and the bills, by far the largest of which is her crack habit, without having to work, at least in any institutionalised way. Yet you still can't find the fifty quid I lent you?

I wanted something a bit less loud, so I went to a tree-shaded grassy square nearby. It adjoins a large homeless hostel, so there's a free soap opera going on all day. Someone was overreaching himself by attempting to stand up, and was pulled down with laughing friendliness onto a bench. Outside the pharmacy, a topless man was shouting at a put-upon older man who was trying to explain something. I felt for him, doing his best under the hail of that aggression. A recumbent man in the square, his patience exhausted, sat up and yelled "stop shouting like a crackhead!" When the police arrived, several people stood up on their benches, the better to observe the spectacle.

I said hello to a woman who was sitting by herself, insouciantly swinging a placcy bottle of cider to an inaudible summer track. "Hiya love," she said. Northerner. I gestured questioningly with an open hand, she invited me over, and we started chatting in the recommended turn-taking style. Hayley sometimes isn't good at the "con" element of "conversation".

"What brings you to Bristol?" I asked. "I just wanted to get away." One to leave for now, and let the story emerge over time. The less you ask, the more you learn. "Are you OK? she said, as I squirmed on the bench. "Yeah, it's just I've got a bony arse. I should bring a cushion out really."

On the day I was supposed to start the job I mentioned the other day, (which offered only the minimum wage and minimum holidays), I was offered another, which I have accepted. I'll soon be using needles in a legitimate use. It involves taking blood from people who have recovered from covid-19, then centrifuging it to extract the antibody-rich plasma so that it can be injected into people in the throes of the lergy. I sound like I know what I'm talking about, but the bit I do understand is £10 an hour, £14 after 8pm and £19 on Sundays. Three month contract, which will be OK because me and Kirsty and the girls should be off to Brittany at the end of August.