People (The)

The Story of Camden

The people

Alan

Alan has lived in Camden for five years but he is originally from
Scotland as his accent reveals. He drinks in the Good Mixer every day
and knows just about every one in there. After visiting Camden once, he
fell in love with it and has lived there ever since. What really
attracts him to it, he says, are the characters - especially the
drunks. He's about 5'10'' with messy brown hair and a cheeky, toothless
grin. His countenance is mild and his conversation witty. He was
pleased to tell me about some of the friends he's made since moving to
the area.

If I was going to use an adjective to describe this area I'd just say
'hilarious'. I sit here and watch the old guys walk past the window
going aarrrghh ha haarrhh - it's just brilliant.
There's one old guy who used to come in here, Harry, and he didn't know
if he was in the house or in the toilet. He came in one day so drunk
that he pulled his pants down and sat there with nothing on! We said
for god's sake Harry, put the unemployed away - you know. But he just
sat there.

There's another guy, his name's Terry. He was pissed out of his head
and he ran up to a stall and stole a pair of trainers. Well, he hadn't
looked closely enough at them before he ran and we saw him the next day
walking around in two left-footed trainers. He didn't seem to mind. One
day he came walking by with a full-length corduroy dress on, a drunk in
a dress, he looked like a Buddhist monk!

It's not all drunks though. There was a kiwi who worked behind the bar
and he was leaving to go back home so we got him a big stripper-gram,
well, she was a fat-a-gram really. She comes in with the leather and
all the whips and starts whipping this guys arse something rotten. We
had a good time, that was it. But when he got back to New Zealand his
mum found the photographs and phoned us up;"What do you think you're
doing teaching my boy these things, my boy is innocent". Well this guy
was 23 years old, six foot two, 16 stone and he used to play for the
All Blacks under 21s - he wasn't innocent. We just howled.

Joe, Paul, Mike and A Man Who Couldn't Speak.

On Alan's recommendation, we went outside the Good Mixer to an
old-fashioned bus shelter where four of the Irish drunks of the kind
Alan had described were hanging out. Joe was the main talker although
Mike seemed reasonably eloquent (considering how drunk they all were),
but he refused to be included because he was signing on and didn't want
to get caught. Paul was the oldest - although the drink had probably
aged them all - and he was wearing a flat cap and had no teeth. Joe, on
the other hand, had no hair and the fourth man, whose name I didn't
get, had lost the power of speech and almost the ability to walk. He
had a very red face and grunted and gasped like a child. During the
course of the interview he was continually prodding a cigarette in my
direction, indicating, I realised, that he needed a light.

Interviewer: There used to be a lot of Irish round here, didn't
there?

Joe: The Irish made their money and moved on.

Interviewer: To the suburbs?

Joe: (mocking me) The suburbs? Really. (indicating to the fourth man)
Well he's just come in from the suburbs. (They laugh at the man who has
his eyes practically closed and is falling around us with a cigarette
in his mouth)

Man: Hav ya go'a matsh? ( He falls out of my eyeline)

Interviewer: Yeah, here's one (I give him a lighter)

Mike: He's a star.

Joe: Look, some days it's good but there's a hell of a lot of
unemployment here and they'll always wonder about people being on the
sick. A couple of friends of mine -

Paul: He's been sick for years, God help him.

Joe: Look at the way my hair fell out, it wasn't going to the dentist.
(They all laugh)
We're comical people - you know, Belfast people, Glasgow people?

Interviewer: (To the fourth man) You can keep that lighter.

Man: Na, Fack, It doesn't wok.

Paul: Don't be begging.

Interviewer: How long have you been in Camden?

Joe: 19 years me.

Paul: Thirty years.

Mike: This is our corner.

Joe: My corner.

Mike: Joe's corner.

Paul: (to Mike) He needs to get a job! (Laugh)

Joe: He's gonna end up nicked! (Laugh) No, you're not getting the
truth.
You got the big house up there - the Arlington Hilton (he is referring
to the hostel) and they put us into places like that and they want us
to survive.

Interviewer: Have you seen Camden change at all in the last 19
years?

Joe: Oh yeah. You see that market there, that used to come right up and
now there's only two or three stall-holders. Yeah, it's really
changed.

Interviewer: For the worst?

Joe: I can't make up my mind but there's too many caf?-bars. Real good
pubs are now wine bars. You do a days work, you're putting it in,
you're getting out the van and your boots are dirty. You've come off a
building site and they're not letting you in cos your boots are dirty.
And we're the spenders, we're the ones who spend the money.

Yorkie

Yorkie has been a regular visitor to Camden Town for the last six
years. On his first trip he stumbled into the Elephant's Head, a
biker's pub just off the main street and never looked back. A small,
thin man, Yorkie also has a few teeth missing and is covered with a
number of elaborate tattoos. The most prominent one was on his neck and
spelt 'Yorkie'. As he had a deep Bradford accent, I assumed this was a
nick-name, but despite his fearful appearance; his army jacket, big Dr
Martin boots and numerous tattoos, Yorkie was extremely pleasant and
polite. I have tried to capture his accent in the writing because it
was one of the deepest Yorkshire lilts I've ever encountered. The rest
I must trust to your own imagination.

I were walking round Camden looking for a boozer and went into The
Elephant's Head. Bein' a northerner, I like my northern soul see, and I
saw in there that it was full of rock and rollers, rock-a-billies and
teddy-boys - it were fantastic. It were the 'Happy Go Lucky' disco
night - no, that's on a Saturday. It were an Elvis night. All people
dressed up as Elvis. There was a woman in there that night looked the
spitting image of Marilyn Monroe, spitting image of her. Then there
were a few teddy-boys wearing their traditional suits - nice and smart,
bikers wiv the leather jackets and the jeans and the boots, the
skin-heads and the punk rocks - everyone goes in together and has a
party.

I was not long in there when I saw an old mate from ten or twelve year
back, an old Teddy-boy from Bradford who lives in Colindale. He just
walked in. It were a coincidence that. Well we had to make up for a lot
of lost time and so we started drinking.

Then a guy come in there, I won't say how old he was cos he were
under-age but he did drink. He came in with a nice white pair of pants
on and an Elvis sort of jacket and as soon as they played a record -
Joe Clay - he started to throw his self all round the dance floor,
crawling like a crab or a snail or sommat. Well we stood back and
watched him while all the girls went over and gave him a kiss. But by
the time he went home he needed two baths. All that dirt over his nice
white suit. Well to me that were funny.