Day 3 500 words

As I said before, thats where it all started going wrong. You see in truth there is no way I should ever have been allowed to move out at 15 and into a bedsit down a dark alley in a fairly rough part of town. No hot running water and precious little security. I slept but only just at night. Prefering to sleep during the afternoon whilst it was noisy, the school nearby meant nobody with bad intention would be around until after dark. I took some comfort in this and set about creating a new routine for myself.

I got a job in the nearby town in a car wash. There is nothing particulalry difficult to washing cars. The fact that a long stream of them rolled in all day took my mind of the numbing boredom of the task. I was wet from the waist down all day and my hands were like prunes daily. The job paid ok but I couldn’t save a penny after my rent was paid. It barely left any money for food and my perpetual state of hunger mad for a difficult day. I would always elect to work the weekends as the tips were always better and it meant I could treat myself to steak and kidney pie and chips on the way home on Saturday.

I tried to get on with the other lads who worked there but in truth we were a bunch of misfits who didn’t really get on with anyone. So we just got on with the job and headed our separate ways when the day finished. No going to the pub as I was too young at the time and I didn’t have the money to waste on beer.

I worked my way into the valeting bay and did ok there, the head valeter Graham was an odd character, bloody good at his craft and his customers would always ask for him to detail their cars. The large local Estate Agent firm had their company cars cleaned there. One, a very nice BMW 635 CSi in maroon, really caught my eye. There was also a number of Rolls Royce and Bentley cars that rolled through the wash. I marvelled at these beautiful cars and wondered what their owners did to afford such cars. I dreamt of course about how one day I would have one, it took me a long time but I did do it.

After a while the car wash wasn’t paying enough as more people elected to clean their cars and also chose alternative washes for less money. This lead me to a life after dark. Petty crime and low level nuisance were how I filled my nights. I hooked up with a bunch of guys from my senior school who had moved round the corner in a flat. They were just like me, out of home too early and without much of a clue about what to do our lives. The lack of parental guidance for our teenage years meant we were ill equipped to deal with life in a meaningful way and a life of crime soon ensued.

I fell into a local gang and we would be off fighting other gangs nearby, in truth I enjoyed the lifestyle. We would move in packs and with my innate planning and logistics skills, we would quickly disable any threats and to the wonderment of our adverseries, we never lost a fight. They were all too keen to just turn up fight. We on the other hand under my guidance, would encircle them and they often took quite serious beatings at our doing. As you might imagine, the local police soon took an interest and one particular night we’d arranged a big fight in the nearby town centre car park. It was brutal, blokes turned up with baseball bats, knives, hammers and one had a machete. The local people whose houses overlooked the car park were understandably horrified and feared for their lives. One took the good sense to call the police and they rounded most of the gang members up. Again my good planning meant we had an escape route and all but one of us escaped.

The lad who had ignored my planning was hammered by the police and he gave names and addresses like a man on death row. A visit from the police in the deep dark of night and I spent a long few uncomfortable hours in the local stations cells. No charges this time but they knew what had happened but were unable to pin anything directly on me. One observant officer commented on the appalling state of the alley way to my bedsit. Unsafe and dangerous were his words. It offered me an alibi as no one could see me come or go and therefore my word had to be good enough. I’d learn to be careful about whom I hung around with and what we’d get up to. Of course it didn’t take long for a big fight in park over the other side of town with a Skinhead gang to be arranged. My planning skills were called upon by the older gang members. I was asked to visit a pub in a part of town I’d not been to before and it meant walking right through a very dodgy part of town and I knew I’d be horribly exposed and crucially, alone. A lone high value target made me uneasy. So I deployed my cunning skills and I headed over very early to avoid the after tea mob and I arrived safely. One of the old guard was just about to walk in the pub and saw me. In we went and he bought me a pint, which was a big deal for me. I reasoned that I will only have the one as I had to get back safe and being drunk or even slightly, would hamper my journey. I’d planned a safe route back, it meant walking a box around the area I was concerned most about. It also meant it was a long way home, a very long way.

I’ll write more about the planning session in my next 500 words.