i know more about him but i'll keep mum on that, he's not a well man and i don;t want any strange random people tracking him down because of anything i've said here.
Yep. I heard he was attacked a few years ago - very sad.
I think the saddest Leeds character is the 'old lady' who sits on the steps in the market.
I was in the market today! Your note reminded me of the elderly woman who used to walk in then out of the West Yorkshire Playhouse foyer, over and over and over again.
quote:
And while I think on, those two lads are still around on Burley Road.
One of them drinks in the bus shelter by the medical centre?
Thats the place. Saw the lad who waves not so long back.
After my previous post I was worried that most of the people I mentioned were probably distressed in some way. And a lot of the Strange Folk I've known have seemed almost ordinary, until layer by layer their real strangeness has been revealed.
One who stands out is 'Paul'. Don't know why I want to give him a false name.... any way, here is what happened.
I was a graphic designer, and a mate worked at a small print company. He asked me over to meet a new client, who had a business startup and needed a lot of printing. 'Paul' was a smartly dressed, seemingly switched on bloke in his late thirties. His business idea was for a sort of loyalty card, which he wanted to setup in Leeds but steadily expand. He had done a lot of research, which he showed us, and claimed to have financial backing, but not quite enough to launch straight away. Could we design and print marketing materials, and the cards?
This is some time ago, before schemes like this were widespread. It all seemed well thought out and reasonable. His financial figures were convincing, he did not initially talk 'daft numbers', profits for his company were going to be negligible to start with, things would build slowly. And he was charming and rational. Not so much as a twitch!
So we agreed to start marketing the idea. He claimed to be 100% committed to this business, and always seemed busy. Over the weeks he reported on meetings with companies he wanted to sign up to the card, advertisers, the local commercial radio station.
We had meetings at his house, which was an ordinary but decent semi in the city. Met his wife, who was lovely. They had a little girl. Everything seemed not only normal, but promising.
Things began to very slowly unwind. He couldn't quite get his story straight about what he had been up to previously. He had been in southern europe. Germany. He began to drop hints of something going wrong in his recent past, which was why he was in the UK, making a fresh start.
There were people he wanted to avoid.
He started talking about bigger and bigger companies who had signed up to the card, although there was no evidence of this. And no money. What he owed us started to mount, and his response was to offer large 'shares' in the company. We said no. People started turning up looking for Paul. Some were pretty dodgy. Others were owed money. We decided he was a bit of a crook and planned to dump him and write off the debt. Then things took a turn.
The backstory developed. He was on the run from the Mafia. In Italy, he had a Ferrari. He could not go back and get it because his life was at risk. There was a lot of money in Italian bank accounts, but complex legal problems stopped him getting it. And the mafia controlled the banks, the minute he used a cash point and entered his pin number, They would know. He was increasingly worried about his wife and child being kidnapped.
A department store in the city centre closed. He said he was going to take over the ground floor - a massive space. This would be the company's main office, people going past would look in and see the hundreds of staff all working on 'the card'. Nearly everyone in the city was going to have a card.
For us it was getting near 'change the locks' time. Or at least we should hide behind the sofa and pretend to be out. I think the last meeting I had was at his house. His wife welcomed me in. She was handling the threat of kidnap well. Paul wanted to talk about computers. He wanted to set up a state-of-the-art design studio. We'd need the latest kit. He was going to offer a major supplier a share in the business, if they would provide, say, four Macs. A cashless transaction!
He then mentioned he was getting the internet installed. This was a big deal back then. Most people thought newsgroups were bleeding edge. He 'saw' that the internet was going to be huge, but it was controlled by shadowy organisations, monitored by the CIA, and the Mafia were there too. He wanted to show me a little gadget he had just acquired. It had cost a lot of money, was made by 'specialists'. Governments were trying to get hold of this sort of technology. This gadget plugged into the telephone socket, and scrambled everything he said, every fax he sent, all his emails.
It was time for me to go!
What was interesting was how this all came out in stages and how, at every point, he was sincere. He never seemed irrational, his speech was always measured, considered. His wife was always charming, she never took us to one side to say 'be patient, he didn't take his medication last night'.
I went off and found some slightly more sane clients (the NHS!). The printers banned him and soon after he disappeared. Either he did a moonlight flit ... or They got him.
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