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Odd People: Cranks, Eccentrics & Nutters

I was out for a walk at lunchtime today and was just heading back to work when two women attracted my attention. They pointed to a man coming towards me on the path and suggested not to go near him as he had a massive knife. He did indeed and was brandishing it in the air. One of them was talking to the police and I heard sirens a bit later so hopefully he got lifted before he hurt himself or anyone else. It is a good job those two women were there as I may have got quite close without noticing as it is normally a nice place with friendly people. :freak:
That reminds me of the time when I was walking along Slough high street back in the 80s. A young man was shouting and wielding a small meat cleaver. He was attacking a small sapling and shouting at people. The whole street ground to a halt - nobody was moving.
I found out from the local newspaper what it was all about. Just some guy confused in the head about his sexuality, so he had to make a public display.
 
I must admit that I expected my first wife to stay at home with the 4 kids, same as my mum did when we were growing up. I still believe that one parent should be there to see the kids off to school, be there to greet them when they come home, and be immediately on hand to respond to any emergency. It meant I worked 7 days most weeks to cover the bills, pay for holidays and Christmas etc.
My second wife lost her first husband when they were in their forties and the house was paid off as a result. When we married 10 years later it took me another 12 or 13 years and a cancer scare to get her to take early retirement.
Our income dropped by half but we cut back and get by on one salary, mine.
Don’t know if that would stretch to a younger wife and a new family but that is never going to Happen as we are in a good place.
I 100% agree with you on this.

I know a married woman who had a part time job that she didn’t like, but it meant that she could be there for her two children, taking and picking up from school etc. The part time job paid a reasonably decent salary for the hours that she worked.

She then decided that she wanted to work full time for a new employer, but the full time job (which she enjoys and that’s important) wasn’t really that well paid, which meant that once she’d paid childminding costs and travelling expenses, she had less money in her purse come payday, that what she would have done with the part time job.

To me there is zero logic in this whatsoever.

Her husband was furious with her btw, and tried to put his foot down, but she ignored him.
 
That reminds me of the time when I was walking along Slough high street back in the 80s. A young man was shouting and wielding a small meat cleaver. He was attacking a small sapling and shouting at people. The whole street ground to a halt - nobody was moving.
I found out from the local newspaper what it was all about. Just some guy confused in the head about his sexuality, so he had to make a public display.
Back in the 80s my brother and I stopped off at quite a rough pub, which we had never ventured in before, on the way home from work . At a table a little way away were a few teenagers around 18 or 19 years old and the males were showing off and bantering with each other in front of the girls when it started to take a nastier turn.

One of them stood up with his pint glass, stlll half full, and broke the glass against the table and threatened another lad still sitting down. The pub went very quiet and all eyes turned to the smash of the glass, my brother, straight off the cuff, called out " I hope thats not Foster's" and a few people burst out laughing and it luckily defused the situation -the lad with the glass just banged it on the table and stomped off out.:chuckle:
 
I was out for a walk at lunchtime today and was just heading back to work when two women attracted my attention. They pointed to a man coming towards me on the path and suggested not to go near him as he had a massive knife. He did indeed and was brandishing it in the air. One of them was talking to the police and I heard sirens a bit later so hopefully he got lifted before he hurt himself or anyone else. It is a good job those two women were there as I may have got quite close without noticing as it is normally a nice place with friendly people. :freak:
I mentioned somewhere about an incident MrsF and I once had with a guy swimming down the canal (he killed his mother a few weeks later). I really felt quite nervous when he got out next to us on the canal path as he was a huge guy, and as you well know, I'm more of a lover than a fighter. I like to think that adrenaline would have kicked in had he tried anything, but I often wonder what I would/could have done had he turned violent on us.
 
That reminds me of the time when I was walking along Slough high street back in the 80s. A young man was shouting and wielding a small meat cleaver. He was attacking a small sapling and shouting at people. The whole street ground to a halt - nobody was moving.
I found out from the local newspaper what it was all about. Just some guy confused in the head about his sexuality, so he had to make a public display.
Back in the mid 1990's, I was walking along Greys Inn Road (Central London) about 10pm at night, when I heard a loud Ahhhhhhh, coming from behind me.

I turned and there was a huge bald guy running towards me, holding a large machete above his head. Luckily, there wasn’t much traffic, so I managed to cross the road. I half expected him to do the same and run in my direction, but he didn’t. He just carried on running in the direction of Kings cross, holding the machete above his head and shouting Ahhhhhhhhh

I checked and there were no local news reports about the incident over the next few days, so I assume no one was hurt and that he was just a nutter.

Some people eh lol
 
I mentioned somewhere about an incident MrsF and I once had with a guy swimming down the canal (he killed his mother a few weeks later). I really felt quite nervous when he got out next to us on the canal path as he was a huge guy, and as you well know, I'm more of a lover than a fighter. I like to think that adrenaline would have kicked in had he tried anything, but I often wonder what I would/could have done had he turned violent on us.
Swimming along a canal? Definitely not right in the head.
 
Back in the mid 1990's, I was walking along Greys Inn Road (Central London) about 10pm at night, when I heard a loud Ahhhhhhh, coming from behind me.

I turned and there was a huge bald guy running towards me, holding a large machete above his head. Luckily, there wasn’t much traffic, so I managed to cross the road. I half expected him to do the same and run in my direction, but he didn’t. He just carried on running in the direction of Kings cross, holding the machete above his head and shouting Ahhhhhhhhh

I checked and there were no local news reports about the incident over the next few days, so I assume no one was hurt and that he was just a nutter.

I can't imagine what gave it away.
 
I 100% agree with you on this.

I know a married woman who had a part time job that she didn’t like, but it meant that she could be there for her two children, taking and picking up from school etc. The part time job paid a reasonably decent salary for the hours that she worked.

She then decided that she wanted to work full time for a new employer, but the full time job (which she enjoys and that’s important) wasn’t really that well paid, which meant that once she’d paid childminding costs and travelling expenses, she had less money in her purse come payday, that what she would have done with the part time job.

To me there is zero logic in this whatsoever.

Her husband was furious with her btw, and tried to put his foot down, but she ignored him.
When I was first a primary teacher, around 1990, the pay was so low that when we looked for a childminder for our eldest - because there weren't lots of nurseries yet, that came a few years later - we realised they were asking more money per week for childcare than I was earning. It was the nadir of teacher wages - a very poorly paid job. The salary since got hiked.

It was gutting to realise after 4 years at uni and working so hard to be a qualified teacher, in the days when it was really hard even to get on a PGCE course at all - someone with no qualifications could just set up as a childminder and instantly earn more money (and bear in mind this was more money than I earned for one child and many childminders had two or three... so they might have more than triple my income). Absolutely gutting to work so hard all day - for nothing.

In the end husband quit his job to look after son so I could establish some kind of career. As I just couldn't face working full time in such an exhausting job to then hand every penny over to someone else who was making more than me!

By son 3, mid 1990s, there was proper and subsidised nursery provision - I picked the worst time to start a family and that particular career!

Staying on topic, that same first year of teaching, I had to go to some boring national curriculum teacher conference. It was a vast national event not just local so there were a few hundred teachers in the audience. Basically, they got some randomers who the government decided were expert enough to write the English National Curriculum, to come and talk to us about it - what their rationale was when they knocked it together, the usual nonsense. (In fact it turned out to be very enlightening as one of them confessed he wrote his bit on the back of a beermat on a train - this became the core of the English curriculum kids are taught to this day).

But anyway, this vast conference, hundreds of people, all of them qualified teachers so you'd think it would be a drab event in a roomful of people who force other people to sit silently and behave in assemblies. You'd expect an afternoon with no major heckles.

Wrong.

In that entire lecture hall, I was sat next to a friend as she had to go as well. But on the other side of me, this random male teacher. He started heckling. Got very lively and abusive and just - weird. Every time he shouted something at the "stage", it felt like a good 400 heads turned, to stare right at where we were sitting. They probably all thought he was my best friend. My mate leans towards me and whispers:

"Fecking hundreds of people in this hall and who manages to sit next to the one nutter?"
 
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Ooh talking of weirdos, I had a really interesting experience yesterday.

After being exposed in the local press for their animal cruelty, big photo and their address given out (so sad), my former neighbours from hell finally moved, in May.

Their (council) house has been void since then and the council have been painfully slow clearing it.

Turns out although the bloke came across as OCD and a control freak, the house is essentially a hoarder's discarded hoard.

And maybe a couple of hours a week the council have sent one of their vans, with a man who is slowly clearing the crap.

A couple weeks ago, son and I saw he'd left their outhouse door open so went for a nose. It was filled from floor to ceiling, with bits of sodden paper, old bills, and junk. Same outhouse we saw rats in last year and indeed the rats have reappeared last week.

So when the man with the van pulled up to do some more clearing I got chatting to him to warn him there might be rat bodies in there. I ask him - not thinking he'll tell me owt - if the house is one of the worst he's cleared given that it's been 3 months neaarly and he's still clearing it. He replies "Oh yes it's right up there." Then asks me if I want to see something inside the house? He's cleared the entire house of their shit, just the outhouse to go. I'm not one to wander into murder houses with strange men but as he's the council employee and it's known he's there, my nosiness overtakes caution.

He takes me on a guided tour of the entire house. In the front bedroom, he goes: "It's in here. Come and see this." I wonder wtf "this" could be as he's cleared the junk, ripped out the upstairs carpets etc... In the front bedroom, they had an amateur looking walk in cupboard, badly made and never painted. He opens it and... they had a safe. WTF? Unemployed for twenty years, this bloke. Always screaming he was "skint". A safe? (Not a drugs dealer - they would have had a better car plus ten years living there and almost no visitors let alone a constant stream of lads in snapbacks buying a bag of something).

I asked him if the 5 or 6 CCTV cameras (still in situ, they never took them down) were real or dummies, already knowing they were real but I was curious. He confirms all real.

So they left behind a safe that must have cost a fortune and hundreds' of pounds' worth of state of the art CCTV equipment...

The stench hit you as you walk in. Black mould up every wall in every room and just dirt all over the paintwork. He says it's going to take ages to get contractors to put it right.

They've been gone 3 months but still causing confusion and mystery.
 
Ooh talking of weirdos, I had a really interesting experience yesterday.

After being exposed in the local press for their animal cruelty, big photo and their address given out (so sad), my former neighbours from hell finally moved, in May.

Their (council) house has been void since then and the council have been painfully slow clearing it.

Turns out although the bloke came across as OCD and a control freak, the house is essentially a hoarder's discarded hoard.

And maybe a couple of hours a week the council have sent one of their vans, with a man who is slowly clearing the crap.

A couple weeks ago, son and I saw he'd left their outhouse door open so went for a nose. It was filled from floor to ceiling, with bits of sodden paper, old bills, and junk. Same outhouse we saw rats in last year and indeed the rats have reappeared last week.

So when the man with the van pulled up to do some more clearing I got chatting to him to warn him there might be rat bodies in there. I ask him - not thinking he'll tell me owt - if the house is one of the worst he's cleared given that it's been 3 months neaarly and he's still clearing it. He replies "Oh yes it's right up there." Then asks me if I want to see something inside the house? He's cleared the entire house of their shit, just the outhouse to go. I'm not one to wander into murder houses with strange men but as he's the council employee and it's known he's there, my nosiness overtakes caution.

He takes me on a guided tour of the entire house. In the front bedroom, he goes: "It's in here. Come and see this." I wonder wtf "this" could be as he's cleared the junk, ripped out the upstairs carpets etc... In the front bedroom, they had an amateur looking walk in cupboard, badly made and never painted. He opens it and... they had a safe. WTF? Unemployed for twenty years, this bloke. Always screaming he was "skint". A safe? (Not a drugs dealer - they would have had a better car plus ten years living there and almost no visitors let alone a constant stream of lads in snapbacks buying a bag of something).

I asked him if the 5 or 6 CCTV cameras (still in situ, they never took them down) were real or dummies, already knowing they were real but I was curious. He confirms all real.

So they left behind a safe that must have cost a fortune and hundreds' of pounds' worth of state of the art CCTV equipment...

The stench hit you as you walk in. Black mould up every wall in every room and just dirt all over the paintwork. He says it's going to take ages to get contractors to put it right.

They've been gone 3 months but still causing confusion and mystery.
It could be from a previous occupant who couldn't be bothered to move it or no longer wanted it. And if he could run a car while on the dole, they must have had money coming in from elsewhere I reckon.
 
From Twitter:
Of course you never know if people are serious (though weird stupid) or just trolling:

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I work in a call centre.

Took a call last week, from a man with a very particular sounding name. Old fashioned.

I noticed that a colleague had taken a call from him the previous week, and left a post-call note which made sure to mention the customer's name.

Under Data Protection laws, customers are entitled to ask for every note that has ever been left on their account, so we cannot write things such as "The customer is a tosser" etc.
We can though state if a customer has been aggressive on a particular call.

That the note contained the customer's name in full was very unusual, not needed at all, because the account had just one customer's name on it.
So a note need not state the name of the customer.
It stood out to me that it was a hint about the customer, left to as a subtle warning to the next colleague to take a call from him, inferring the customer was very particular.

How right it was!!!

What should have been a 12 - 15 minute conversation, lasted 50 minutes.
The customer insisted on checking every action I carried out on his account, repeating each process three times.
A meticulous and slow repetition, full of minor detail.
All said in a precise, slow monotone.

He was extraordinarily polite, his conversation packed with excessive compliments and platitudes.

Whilst this should, on paper, be preferable to a threatening customer, it eventually came across as a form of passive aggressive behaviour.
I doubt he meant it, I think he suffered from a bizarre personality disorder, an offshoot of OCD.
It's a wonder he achieves more than a handful of things during the day.

The result of the call was to leave me feeling totally drained.
I actually did not feel well.
This lasted into the evening and into the night too, I was quite rattled by the call.

Luckily I had a day off the next day.
Though I had not slept much during the week, and needed to catch up on sleep anyway, I ended up sleeping for 14 hours the day after the call.
I am sure the call was connected to that.
 
I work in a call centre.

Took a call last week, from a man with a very particular sounding name. Old fashioned.

I noticed that a colleague had taken a call from him the previous week, and left a post-call note which made sure to mention the customer's name.

Under Data Protection laws, customers are entitled to ask for every note that has ever been left on their account, so we cannot write things such as "The customer is a tosser" etc.
We can though state if a customer has been aggressive on a particular call.

That the note contained the customer's name in full was very unusual, not needed at all, because the account had just one customer's name on it.
So a note need not state the name of the customer.
It stood out to me that it was a hint about the customer, left to as a subtle warning to the next colleague to take a call from him, inferring the customer was very particular.

How right it was!!!

What should have been a 12 - 15 minute conversation, lasted 50 minutes.
The customer insisted on checking every action I carried out on his account, repeating each process three times.
A meticulous and slow repetition, full of minor detail.
All said in a precise, slow monotone.

He was extraordinarily polite, his conversation packed with excessive compliments and platitudes.

Whilst this should, on paper, be preferable to a threatening customer, it eventually came across as a form of passive aggressive behaviour.
I doubt he meant it, I think he suffered from a bizarre personality disorder, an offshoot of OCD.
It's a wonder he achieves more than a handful of things during the day.

The result of the call was to leave me feeling totally drained.
I actually did not feel well.
This lasted into the evening and into the night too, I was quite rattled by the call.

Luckily I had a day off the next day.
Though I had not slept much during the week, and needed to catch up on sleep anyway, I ended up sleeping for 14 hours the day after the call.
I am sure the call was connected to that.
He sounds like one of those people who when, say for eg a plumber goes to their house, he slyly tells them how to do their job, because although he's never used a spanner in his life he's read about how to do the job and he thinks 'on paper' is the same as actually getting down with your head wedged underneath someone's bath.

Or, it could be that maybe he's had no end of trouble before from call centre staff and things that were promised would be done, weren't (looking at you Homeserve).
 
Or, it could be that maybe he's had no end of trouble before from call centre staff and things that were promised would be done, weren't (looking at you Homeserve).

I think this is more the case.

At no point did he sound arrogant or instruct me.

I don't know what job he does, but he sounded as if he would be something like a legal clerk or a school science teacher.
 
Is the safe open? Or are the contents still inside?
You know, I was so taken aback I didn't notice but I think it was closed. Either way they will have to rip it out as they return houses to their original condition, every time which means they rip out anything the tenant has done.

I'll go chat to him when I hear it happening as that's going to be a process that will be heard through these walls. (Safe is against our party wall).

There won't be contents, though - not likely they'd leave anything. Although they did leave a safe and a load of CCTV cameras, so you never know.

They didn't do a house move like normal people either. Had a large Luton van but came back several times with it over a couple days and every time left with it half full. Then came back and forth for three weeks, carrying maybe one thing out of the house and into their car every time... So husband rang council and casually mentioned they'd moved out, on the prextext of ringing them to say "Are you clearing all that shit we have to look at, from the roof?" (Radio ham, the roof was crisscrossed with ugly aerials, one that ran the length of the front garden and one the back. It's been an eyesore for years). We suspect they had stopped paying rent and were doing a lengthy moonlight flit, so by ringing council we cut it short as they came back a couple of days after did the most hurried visit yet, then piled into the Bastardmobile and drove off never to return. So may be because husband rang that they couldn't clear it all in time..?

Weirdly they've moved to my home village where I lived 20 years ago and back then the council were having a terrible time with a wife beating tenant who was a keen radio ham, who was abusive to everyone on the street and people had heard and seen him beating his wife and kid. I never saw him but my husband, who was told the whole saga at the time by a neighbour, suspects this was probably him 20 years ago when on wife 1.
 
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It could be from a previous occupant who couldn't be bothered to move it or no longer wanted it. And if he could run a car while on the dole, they must have had money coming in from elsewhere I reckon.
I think her parents bought them the car as they took them to buy it. Think they also paid for the removal van as her dad drove it here.

And no, safe wasn't tenant before - she was my mate and she didn't have a safe. Also council literally strip away anything a tenant has done to the fabric of the house before they re-let. It would have been removed before they moved in if the previous tenant before them, had it. Previous tenant, my pal, had thought she was living there forever so had knocked through a room to make it open plan, put a French window in the back and even built a two storey outhouse (no planning permission) in the back garden - and they had to demolish and reverse all of that, then re-decorate before they gave the house to these bozos.
 
I was looking for a thread about people that are local to a particular area (or your own area) who are a bit 'eccentric' but I couldn't find one.
If there is a better place for this then I'm fine with it being moved there.

Cromer Pier Pavilion Theatre pays tribute to 'front row Jo'
A theatre has paid tribute to a woman known as its "greatest fan" after she attended nearly every performance for "decades".
Jo Raby, 60, known as Front Row Jo, went to most summer season and Christmas shows at Cromer Pier in Norfolk. She died on Monday.
She sat in the same seat for every performance and was a "huge part of our theatre life," the venue said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-62738192
1662043426845.png


When I was growing up in North London there always seemed to be 'eccentric' local characters around of one sort or another.
There was the old bloke that walked around in just a pair of red bathing trunks, all through the year, and looked incredibly tanned (it might have been dirt though) and as far as we knew he existed on cadging fruit from the greengrocers in Burnt Oak and Edgware.
There was this tramp bloke that wore a full suit and a bowler hat (much like the character created by Dick Emery) who you would often find sleeping on a bench somewhere.
(Dick Emery, below)
1662043839427.png


And when I lived in Borehamwood, the house my parents had there backed onto some parkland bordering Elstree Studios, and late in the evening a chap known as 'Anniss' would stand in the middle of the park, on an upturned milk crate, addressing an imaginary crowd of people and rant about all sorts of stuff.

When I lived in Little Chalfont we rented the place from a bloke who had been friends with my mates dad for years, who we called 'Mick the Manager' (for some reason).
He had had a colourful life, and many years spent working as a brickie and hod-carrier had given him a mis-shapen hunchback. He was a seething, angry sort of chap, but harmless, and had a serious alcohol problem which meant he couldn't drive, but he had one of those heavy, very old bicycles with a black frame and 'lever operated' brakes, which he would drunkenly cycle to and from the pub on. He owned an angry goat which he tethered in the back garden of the place we rented from him. He was famously 'tight' with his money, which led us to joke that his hunchback was actually where he kept his wallet.
 
I was looking for a thread about people that are local to a particular area (or your own area) who are a bit 'eccentric' but I couldn't find one.
If there is a better place for this then I'm fine with it being moved there.

Cromer Pier Pavilion Theatre pays tribute to 'front row Jo'
A theatre has paid tribute to a woman known as its "greatest fan" after she attended nearly every performance for "decades".
Jo Raby, 60, known as Front Row Jo, went to most summer season and Christmas shows at Cromer Pier in Norfolk. She died on Monday.
She sat in the same seat for every performance and was a "huge part of our theatre life," the venue said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-62738192
View attachment 58494

When I was growing up in North London there always seemed to be 'eccentric' local characters around of one sort or another.
There was the old bloke that walked around in just a pair of red bathing trunks, all through the year, and looked incredibly tanned (it might have been dirt though) and as far as we knew he existed on cadging fruit from the greengrocers in Burnt Oak and Edgware.
There was this tramp bloke that wore a full suit and a bowler hat (much like the character created by Dick Emery) who you would often find sleeping on a bench somewhere.
(Dick Emery, below)
View attachment 58495

And when I lived in Borehamwood, the house my parents had there backed onto some parkland bordering Elstree Studios, and late in the evening a chap known as 'Anniss' would stand in the middle of the park, on an upturned milk crate, addressing an imaginary crowd of people and rant about all sorts of stuff.

When I lived in Little Chalfont we rented the place from a bloke who had been friends with my mates dad for years, who we called 'Mick the Manager' (for some reason).
He had had a colourful life, and many years spent working as a brickie and hod-carrier had given him a mis-shapen hunchback. He was a seething, angry sort of chap, but harmless, and had a serious alcohol problem which meant he couldn't drive, but he had one of those heavy, very old bicycles with a black frame and 'lever operated' brakes, which he would drunkenly cycle to and from the pub on. He owned an angry goat which he tethered in the back garden of the place we rented from him. He was famously 'tight' with his money, which led us to joke that his hunchback was actually where he kept his wallet.
I might have mentioned him before but there used to be an old bloke who'd walk around wearing an unbuttoned shirt carrying a brown cardboard box full of VHS tapes in Burton on Trent with a 1000 yard stare .. we'd all buy him a cup of tea or a donut or something because he looked like he needed both, I can't remember his name but he'd clearly fallen through the net social services wise. I was told his wife had left him at some point but I never found out what his problem was or why he was doing that. One day it could be me or you level stuff.
 
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I was looking for a thread about people that are local to a particular area (or your own area) who are a bit 'eccentric' but I couldn't find one.
If there is a better place for this then I'm fine with it being moved there.

Cromer Pier Pavilion Theatre pays tribute to 'front row Jo'
A theatre has paid tribute to a woman known as its "greatest fan" after she attended nearly every performance for "decades".
Jo Raby, 60, known as Front Row Jo, went to most summer season and Christmas shows at Cromer Pier in Norfolk. She died on Monday.
She sat in the same seat for every performance and was a "huge part of our theatre life," the venue said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-62738192
View attachment 58494

When I was growing up in North London there always seemed to be 'eccentric' local characters around of one sort or another.
There was the old bloke that walked around in just a pair of red bathing trunks, all through the year, and looked incredibly tanned (it might have been dirt though) and as far as we knew he existed on cadging fruit from the greengrocers in Burnt Oak and Edgware.
There was this tramp bloke that wore a full suit and a bowler hat (much like the character created by Dick Emery) who you would often find sleeping on a bench somewhere.
(Dick Emery, below)
View attachment 58495

And when I lived in Borehamwood, the house my parents had there backed onto some parkland bordering Elstree Studios, and late in the evening a chap known as 'Anniss' would stand in the middle of the park, on an upturned milk crate, addressing an imaginary crowd of people and rant about all sorts of stuff.

When I lived in Little Chalfont we rented the place from a bloke who had been friends with my mates dad for years, who we called 'Mick the Manager' (for some reason).
He had had a colourful life, and many years spent working as a brickie and hod-carrier had given him a mis-shapen hunchback. He was a seething, angry sort of chap, but harmless, and had a serious alcohol problem which meant he couldn't drive, but he had one of those heavy, very old bicycles with a black frame and 'lever operated' brakes, which he would drunkenly cycle to and from the pub on. He owned an angry goat which he tethered in the back garden of the place we rented from him. He was famously 'tight' with his money, which led us to joke that his hunchback was actually where he kept his wallet.
She always had a smile for everyone X R.I.P. Jo X
 

Hermit faces eviction from beachside cave home:​

In Herzliya in Israel, people have begun a petition to try to save a modern-day hermit from being thrown out of his unusual dwelling, built in a cave on the coast.
Nisim spent months living by the sea without a home, but then defied the humidity, salt and waves to build a Gaudi-like structure, which has been a local attraction for nearly 50 years.


Interesting how he says that the sea doesn't smell the same as it used to.

(Why the BBC insist on drippy, highly annoying background music is beyond me).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-62799226
 
Interesting how he says that the sea doesn't smell the same as it used to.
It doesn't. I was discussing this with my Mum only yesterday.
It may be a combination of pollution, sewage, and changes to bacteria and sea plant life that is doing it. Beaches years ago typically would get covered in seaweed that had washed ashore. How much seaweed gets washed ashore now? I'm going to say 'not as much as in the past'.
 
It doesn't. I was discussing this with my Mum only yesterday.
It may be a combination of pollution, sewage, and changes to bacteria and sea plant life that is doing it. Beaches years ago typically would get covered in seaweed that had washed ashore. How much seaweed gets washed ashore now? I'm going to say 'not as much as in the past'.
Yes that's true.
He says it smells of soap, alluding to the new marina that has been built nearby. I can believe it.
 
I hate to point it out, but being OCD and a control freak is absolutely no bar to being a hoarder. People with OCD are not necessarily mad cleaners.
LOL no don't hate to point it out - that's a very good point. I guess the hoarding could even be part of exerting control? Never thought about it before.
 
Certainly an odd chap.

A gentleman who intended to restore Trump to his "President King of the United States" status was arrested at a Dairy Queen. The pistol-packing MAGA was wearing a rainbow clown wig, a bright yellow safety vest, and was ready to kill Democrats and Liberals.

Trib Live:

Three loaded handguns and 62 rounds of ammunition were seized from a Hempfield man Saturday after Delmont police said he took one of the weapons into the Route 66 Dairy Queen.
Officers were responding to the area about 1:30 p.m. after a motorist reported an erratic driver wearing a bright yellow safety vest and rainbow clown wig walk into the restaurant with a gun, Police Chief T.J. Klobucar said. Police took him into custody and filed charges the following day.
Stawovy told investigators he had it to protect himself from drug traffickers, intended to kill "Democrats and liberals" and wanted to "restore (former President Donald) Trump to President king of the United States," police said in a news release.

https://boingboing.net/2022/09/14/a...ing-three-loaded-guns-into-a-dairy-queen.html
 
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I have a slightly weird customer. She comes into the shop and tries to start a conversation with me, clearly trying to lead me into admitting that our self-serve tills (which film customers using them as a deterrent to thieves) are somehow using her image for some purpose and contravening GDPR by filming without her permission.

Having failed to incite me into an admission that we are selling her soul to the devil, via the medium of security film, she then harrangues me on the subject of how illegal it is, how NO OTHER shops do it, and how the Co Op is in so much trouble for doing this.

Next time I'm going to point out that she's being filmed every time she walks down the street and that every shop films people. No, I'm not, actually, because she's clearly suffering from a form of paranoia and I'd hate to worsen her condition, but I'm running out of polite acknowledgement noises to make.
 
I have a slightly weird customer. She comes into the shop and tries to start a conversation with me, clearly trying to lead me into admitting that our self-serve tills (which film customers using them as a deterrent to thieves) are somehow using her image for some purpose and contravening GDPR by filming without her permission.

Having failed to incite me into an admission that we are selling her soul to the devil, via the medium of security film, she then harrangues me on the subject of how illegal it is, how NO OTHER shops do it, and how the Co Op is in so much trouble for doing this.

Next time I'm going to point out that she's being filmed every time she walks down the street and that every shop films people. No, I'm not, actually, because she's clearly suffering from a form of paranoia and I'd hate to worsen her condition, but I'm running out of polite acknowledgement noises to make.
You need to try the old schoolboy/girl trick. Don't argue with them, agree with them. Tell them that yes, it's a travesty, that it should be stopped and that you've told 'management how you feel about it, but they just won't listen.

Failing that, try the other schoolboy trick- imagine them naked, sat on the toilet. It might not solve the issue, but you'll at least be laughing.
 
You need to try the old schoolboy/girl trick. Don't argue with them, agree with them. Tell them that yes, it's a travesty, that it should be stopped and that you've told 'management how you feel about it, but they just won't listen.

Failing that, try the other schoolboy trick- imagine them naked, sat on the toilet. It might not solve the issue, but you'll at least be laughing.
Oddly enough, the first time she did this I did all the agreeing with her stuff. But whenever she comes in she says exactly the same thing again, I don't think she can tell the difference between shop assistants and presumably says this to everyone she comes across, so I've been giving her the 'thousand yard stare' mostly every since.
 
I have a slightly weird customer. She comes into the shop and tries to start a conversation with me, clearly trying to lead me into admitting that our self-serve tills (which film customers using them as a deterrent to thieves) are somehow using her image for some purpose and contravening GDPR by filming without her permission.

Having failed to incite me into an admission that we are selling her soul to the devil, via the medium of security film, she then harrangues me on the subject of how illegal it is, how NO OTHER shops do it, and how the Co Op is in so much trouble for doing this.

Next time I'm going to point out that she's being filmed every time she walks down the street and that every shop films people. No, I'm not, actually, because she's clearly suffering from a form of paranoia and I'd hate to worsen her condition, but I'm running out of polite acknowledgement noises to make.
Just go 'um' and 'ah' a lot, and then say 'who's next?' or something like that.
 
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