Our favourite local characters

[Guest]

Has anyone got a few distinctive characters in their neighbourhood? If so, how distinctive? (The idea of this thread is to take an affectionate look at those who enrich ordinary everyday life mildly by being slightly offbeat rather than to condemn.)

[Richard Tarleton]

Well - I can't name names for obvious reasons. But there was an old chap who stole logs from the woods, in a wheelbarrow. Once when challenged - "is that you, ***** *******"" - when he was hiding behind a tree - he replied "No". To avoid detection, he threw camouflage netting - over his wheelbarrow. A stealth wheelbarrow.

[Lateralthinking1]

Llawhaden?

[Richard Tarleton]

Close!

[salymap]

I don't know if this is what you mean but two characters come to mind, both in the past.

A man called Smokey Joe roamed the streets of Foots Cray and Sidcup when they were villages, at the beginning of the 20thcentury.
Smokey carried his worldly goods in the basket on the front of his old bicycle.He lived nowhere, never seemed to sleep, just walked around the area for years. I forget his end, he was much photographed as a local character.

The other very different character was Dame Ethel Smyth. She was born in a house in Sidcup High Street, now all shops. Her uncle commanded the Garrison at Woolwich and sometimes she rode her horse to visit him, a journey impossible to make now with miles of surburban streets to cover.
She left many volumes of autobiography covering her varied life as a sufragette and musician and detailing the many people she met incluing Brahms and Napoleon 3rd.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes exactly. Some of these people are never seen by some and yet sadly missed by others when they go. They often have nicknames. There is an elderly lady here called the Tooth Fairy and my Nan was very friendly with a Soapy Bill.

[Lateralthinking1]

....We have a guy locally who is 82. I think he has been single all his life. People often mistake him for a tramp on the basis of his appearance. When he speaks, he is coherent enough but you would probably think he has a below average IQ. Back in the day he was among other things in the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of bricks carried on a hod.

As it happens he has so much knowledge about engineering, having worked on the Channel Tunnel project and many others, that a very well known major construction company refuses to let him go. They can't find anyone younger who has the same amount of technical understanding or indeed sense.

He also has an extraordinary work ethic and determination. Earlier this week, I bumped into him on two separate occasions clearing vast loads of snow from a road to, quote, help the old people. For this he admitted he received no thanks.

The night before, when call after call was made to a radio programme about people being stuck on the M25 for four hours - at one point the police were towing vehicles up a hill individually - he was called out urgently to the South Coast. He was telling me how he managed the 12 hour combination of drive there, work and drive back easily, somehow managing to cross the M25 twice.

Frequently he has stuck his neck out by contradicting others' advice and he has saved lives in the process. And far from being poor, he has several very smart cars and will never be short of money. It just goes to show really that you can't judge a book by its cover. I suggested to him that he should get an OBE and characteristically he didn't disagree with me.

[salymap]

What a pity your thread didn't 'take off' more Lateralthinking 1. It's nice to hear about pople such as this man, when eveyone is judged, and probably dismissed, by/for their appearance.

[Mr Pee]

When I was youger, I lived in a pretty isolated Hampshire village, and there was a character there called Mattie, well into his 70s, who had barely travelled outside the immediate vicinity all his life. He was quite a handyman, so one day we took him up to town to help with some work at a house there, and as we were driving through South London, he suddenly said, with genuine wonderment, " Look! there's one of them darkies!"

I'm sure he didn't have a racist bone in his body, but he had genuinely never seen a black person before. Of course, such innocence would probably get him arrested today, but that's the world we live in, unfortunately.

[amateur51]

I'm sure he didn't have a racist bone in his body, but he had genuinely never seen a black person before. Of course, such innocence would probably get him arrested today, but that's the world we live in, unfortunately.

No Mr Pee - that's the world that just you live in