Dear Diary, your weekly escape from reality.
Sunday 21st September
"I recalls" started Mister Grumpyface "that me story began one particularly putrid Tuesday morning."
Mister Grumpyface wasn't his real name. Once upon a time he had a life, a job, family and friends,
back then he was Robert Harpham. Now he was a stinky homeless nobody in a tatty suit, now he
was Mister Grumpyface, a name given to him by the local children on account of his main feature,
a grizzled lifeless face. This face sat atop a grubby neck and a scrawny old man's body, bestowed
early in life upon the poor software designer become bum. Now instead of evenings at home with
a pizza and a movie, Robert relied on the only thing which really brought him pleasure, nights spent
sat around a campfire with his new family, a gaggle of people with nothing in common but their
amount of homes.
Every night they told tales, they talked about the woes of homelessness, what they used to be like
and where it all went wrong, rarely straying from the subject of homelessness. Everyone deserves
to be interesting, it's just a shame that some people have to lose everything to achieve such status.
"The clouds were thick and black." The weather was always bad in Grumpyface's sob stories, just
like a happy story the sun shines and there's not a cloud in the sky. In fact, according to his recollection
of history, every day was like spring until his life did a bellyflop and the first raindrops fell on his head.
This story, if it's opening was anything to go by, would be one of misery. "Those mean old clouds
were pissing big globs of rain down onto me and Stealth."
Stealth was the scrapyard's guard dog, a playful pitbull terrier who was friends with everyone who
lived there. One morning a pile of junk collapsed, crushing her lower body. The yard owner threw
his crippled bitch away like yesterday's papers. The tramps put any money they'd scrimped and
saved together to buy her treatment and she now lived with Mister Grumpyface and a pair of wooden
back wheels.
As Mister Grumpyface told his story, his gang muttered amongst themselves enthusiastically. Shoeless Bill
scratched his head and his left foot simulateously. He used to be regular Bill until some kids stole his footwear.
Now the underside of his socks had worn away and his revolting feet were thick and black with dirt. Bill
once pushed a little girl from the path of an oncoming car. Now he ate dead rats for Christmas dinner.
Nobo, the guy who just wouldn't admit that he was homeless, patted Stealth's shiny black fur. Those guys
treated her like the last dog alive, fed her the right stuff, did little besides handling and exercising her. Stealth
was as much a member of their community as they weren't members of the regular one.
"And this feller walks right up to us through the drizzle, I don't know how he got into the yard, I guess he
hasn't replaced old Stealth yet." He pointed a mucky finger in Stealth's direction. "So this guy comes up
and tells me his business, he was a student, writing a book on tramps and looking for words of wisdom."
The smell around the fire was harsh, Shoeless Bill's feet combined with Nobo's bad homemade cologne
wasn't a pleasant aroma. Nobo wore a fragrance because as far as he was concerned he wasn't homeless,
he was between homes. In the daytime he left the yard to look for a job, at night he washed his clothes in the
buckets of rainwater he'd collected. He was determined he'd get out of the yard soon and the others hoped
he was right. He was young, he'd learn. There is no going back.
"So I looked him straight in the eye and said 'Are we the ghosts of you, or are you the ghosts of us? We were
once you but we frazzled away and now live a faded existence, spotted from time to time between bins or down
a dark alleyway'" Grumpyface held his beer bottle like a glass of fine wine, as he quoted himself the liquid within
sloshed around noisily. If he wasn't a bum, he'd have been an impressive storyteller. "'We're the ghosts you hear
about in stories, jumping out and shouting boo, sneaking into people's bedrooms late at night. You on the other
hand, are what we used to be, and now you stick around to haunt us. A nasty reminder of the past I'd say.'"
Grumpyface reached into his inside coat pocket to pull out a book. "'We' I tells him 'are the ghosts of each other'
and the next time i see him, another disgusting morning, he gives me this."
The book which Grumpyface held out for everyone to see had a photograph of an old guy snoozing in a pile of dried leaves on the cover with the words
'A study of society's so called dregs' printed in white along the bottom. The name of the book was 'The Ghosts Of Us'.
The group's only female, a fat girl called Nanny, hugged her yellowing cardigan for warmth. She was pretty in a dirty,
no-good-to-anyone, homeless kinda way.
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