I got your number

This town I live in is planned around a series of connecting suburb villages.  I am cool with that, hating as I do, to leave my planned rat-like routes in a 5km radius.  We are well planted with European trees which makes the tree scape pleasing in autumn as the colours change.  I am not sure if the street lighting has some plan as well but it is very dim and at infrequent intervals.  When I walk the dog at night, I often wonder if I would feel as comfortable if I were a 17 year old girl walking home from the bus stop (not that my kids ever do that as they can drive and use cars and never seemed to have spend their lives waiting for the non arrival of public transport, but I digress.)

One of the downsides of this is that it is very hard to read the house numbers and there is a trade in getting the number of your house painted in fluorescent paint on the kerbside by an enterprising bunch of fellas in my neighbourhood.  Most of them are also the kind of guys standing at busy intersections also offering to wash your windscreen with the skinniness and bad teeth that years of drug use will give you.  I have a regular who comes to my house every year or so to offer to repaint my house numbers.  The price varies depending on his personal circumstances but I always say yes, as who I am to say no to someone on the fringe of society armed with a can of spray paint.

He came in around December when I had no cash in the house, but he said he would do it and come by for the money later.  I didn't see him again until yesterday when he turned up.  He had been in a car accident.  He had a giant scar lacing up across his forehead and across the top of his head.  He told me he had a brain injury and spent 2 months in hospital.  His balance was poor, his short term memory shot, his mood changes swift and unpredictable.  He has a wife and two kids.  I had no cash in the house and sent my daughter out to get some but it was lunchtime and she couldn't find parking so I sat on the front steps for 20 minutes talking to this guy.  My daughter was a bit nervous but years of sitting next to drunks on night buses in Glasgow and outlying towns has given me the skills to keep those conversations going.  It reminded me that the poor, the poorly educated, the addicted, the hopeless are still among us even in this garden city.  I gave him twice what we agreed and asked him to be kind to his wife.  I am a very lucky person.

Comments

[ganching]

It's good to be reminded sometimes of just how lucky we are.