Sunday 5 February 2012

Armed Robbery

This is a tale of misunderstandings, some funny, some not, especially for the innocents dragged into something they had no control of.

First up, the amusing part.

At one of my many stints in rehab for alcoholism my eye caught a new guy, I thought mm he's not bad.  In the therapy groups I liked his voice, liked what he said and we got to know each other. I gave him a lift one day as I came upon him walking towards the unit, he said 'this is the first time I've been in a car without a blanket over my head'.  He gave the impression of being 'Jack the Lad' but underneath he was very unsure of himself and had massive self esteem issues.

I asked what he meant and he said he'd just been released after serving time for armed robbery.  He was living in a hostel at the time.

Anyway over the days we talked and in coffee times he did the telegraph crossword while I wandered off to get my daily pennies for the petrol used in getting to the unit.  One time I came back and he passed  me a note.  It said 'give me your money, I've got a gun under the paper' .. we both laughed and I tucked it into my handbag as a rather silly memento.

One time he showed me a diagram of a bank in London, the vaults, where he'd worked as an electrician for a short time, most of his jobs where short term as his drinking always came first.  I kept that too, as we were getting serious and I'm a one for keeping little bits and pieces.

At the time I was having a brief time off drink, but he was smoking hash and I'd give him lifts to do his deals, all very exciting for a boring working class mother.  I know now it's not exciting at all.

We were both broken people, but he was nice, and we ended up living together.  I honestly thought we'd never drink again, I was happy after the misery of my divorce and really thought this was for keeps.

To be continued.

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