ANDY.
They called him Dave, but his name was Andy. I was surprised that I seemed to be the first person to notice just how disrespectful this was. I would attempt small talk with him when he danced his mundane dance each morning around the supermarket floor at around 5 am. He was the stores floor cleaner. So he had in his possession within the walls of our nightly home, an industrial floor cleaner. It was a large green machine that had to be pushed around by hand. Andy was good with it. The nights he was off, everybody else seemed to struggle with it. It surprised some that he was so good with it, Andy was a huge, strangely shaped man. The glasses he wore resembled the type you get in joke shops, that magnify the eyes. His forehead seemed to swell up and dazzle under the store lights. Andy was bald except for a tiny bit of fluffy hair that grew around the bottom of his ears. One eye lazily pointed in a different direction to the other eye. He was certainly an easy target for jokes. It just so happened that the people he worked with found it most easy to joke about others appearances.
His voice was a wildly camp lisped snort that trilled when he found something funny. Most the time he didn't understand the jokes that were being made about him, to his face, so he would just reply 'Oh alright then!' which actually ended up being his catchphrase. People would shout at the tops of their voices 'OH ALRIGHT THEN!' sounding as camp as they could sound as he walked past the end of their aisles. He would wander past with a great big smile on his face. Appearing on the surface to enjoy the attention.
Not only was the way he spoke wildly eccentric, but it stood out from the rest of the workers in the store, as everybody else spoke with the thickest of geordie accents, he was a southerner.
Andrew would often ask about a friend of mine, a friend who works for the BBC. Both his crazy eyes would light up when I would tell him how my friend in London would sign me in as a visitor to see areas of the BBC news room. Andrew's only real past time was to listen to the radio. He was known to love his drink too. Nobody suspected he was possibly trying to escape the laughter he inspired in others. Everybody who took the piss out of him to his face loved the fact he laughed along. 'He's alright is Dave. A weird fucker but he's harmless enough.'
-
An old friend of mine turned to drink when he could no longer treat music as his vessel for escapism. He can conjure up beautifully constructed walls of sound using a guitar and a loop pedal, but somewhere along the way, these walls of sound weren't enough to hold back the strange weight of the world. So he chose to drink himself somewhere else.
After a distressing episode were late in the morning he was sent home from work, fell asleep in a bus shelter, then spat in the faces of the ambulance staff who came to help him, I invited him to stay with me some days. Suggesting to him that our little home town of Kendal is maybe too small for him just now, that it would be good for him to be somewhere where he can just relax.
The next day he got the train across to Newcastle. I was working in the evening so I had explained I wouldn't be able to drink at all with him, I just suggested he relaxed in our flat whilst I was out at work.
I should of known when I was heading to the train station to meet him at mid day he was going to be completely out of his mind drunk. Some naive hope inside of me had heard the quiet in his voice that same morning and expected him to travel with his thoughts in tact as opposed to inebriating himself.
Not making sense when I met him, I was very disappointed. My hope for helping him stay off the drink for a few days had faltered at the first hurdle. He hadn't eaten in days. I took us to a Burger King.
He sat looking into the place as I watched the people passing by the busy shopping street outside. We didn't say a word. I tried not to stare at my friend but I found it so sad how he was becoming somebody I didn't recognise. He was fat. His eyes were sunken. I loved him but I didn't recognise this new skin.
A man lay down on the street outside. Peacefully. His hands on his chest looking straight up. I said to my friend 'ay up, what's this guy doing?' With a lot of effort, my friend turned round to see what was happening. In these few seconds, a couple of random passers by had also stopped to check on this person.
We watched for 5 minutes as the number of people around him grew to about 15 people. People's hands were checking for pulses, and one person placed him in the recovery position. I started to panic asking where the police were, surely somebody had called them by now. My friend occasionally turned around looking confused and distressed. It was yesterday he had been lying on the street passed out drunk when the ambulance had to come save him. My friend asked me if it would be weird if he went out to talk to the guy. I said yes.
A couple of minutes later, an ambulance turned up. We were still sat in the Burger King. The view we had was strangely cinematic. The angles presented to us were symmetrical and framed the lying man beautifully. The crowd slowly dispersed. The couple who came out from the ambulance checked his pulse. They brought a stretcher out. Placed him on it, and covered his whole body with a dark green sheet. The blanket went over his head.
They wheeled him into the back of the ambulance. I remember seeing the stretcher bounce of one of the curbs and the whole body jumped from off the stretcher just slightly. My body was awash with shivers. My jaw had dropped and my eyes were wide in disbelief.
My friend, who had collapsed on the floor in a drunken state just the day before, who had been brought back to consciousness by ambulance staff and spat in their faces turned around to face me. His eyes weren't focusing on anything. They were wide. I'd never seen his complexion so pale. He was shaking his head in a way I'd never seen. I truly believed this was the look of someone who had just seen a ghost. We both sat there scared. The first words he was able to stutter were expletives. Just 'fuck' over and over. We left the Burger King. I had to say to him, this may of been fate. You needed to see this.
That night in work, I couldn't concentrate at all. I had made a bad decision inviting my friend over to escape our small home town. I hoped he would rest whilst I was at work, instead, him and my border line alcoholic housemate were drunk at my house crying together, pushing each other further to temporary insanity. I couldn't relax in work. The end of my shift, on our last break, people were taking the piss out of me for losing out on a weeks holiday.
'Are you a fucking idiot mate? Why the fuck didn't you book it in?' I said I didn't care. I didn't at the time. This colleague who found it so hard to believe I'd forgotten to book a holiday was giving me a lift home in the morning. I was scared I was going to arrive home to 2 dead bodies. The conversation in the car was still on my untaken holiday. 'The thing with you....' my colleague told me... 'you just don't care about anything do you. You're just that laid back aren't you? You don't care about anything.'
I saw red. I asked my colleague very slowly: do you know, just how much, I fucking hate you? A big ridiculous grin covered his face. Quietly he asked 'What?', I repeated the question: Do you know how much I fucking hate you? I hate you and everybody I work with so so much. Your lives are the most pathetic I have ever known. You all do absolutely nothing. Nothing.
The next 10 minutes of our drive home were difficult. I was arguing in front of my colleague with myself. I do hate them. But how can I say I hate them when they are harmless creatures. I hate myself. That's why I'm allowed to say how much I fucking hate all of them. This world needs to end. So nobody can see suicide as selfish, let's all go at the same time. It would be for the best. My colleague suggested I was finally coming to terms with my housemate who had committed suicide a few months earlier. He had been surprised at how little I seemed to react for the few months straight after it. This is what he had been waiting for. I left the car and got into my house. My friend was hungover, but OK. We quietly talked about my little out burst, finding it funny how I'd just told a work mate how much I hate him and every one else I work with.
-
A couple of nights after this out burst Andy didn't show up to work. 'It's not like Dave not to turn in?' He had got pissed up and slept in was what most had thought had happened. He didn't live far away and it was certainly out of character for him not to have show up. There had been no sick call.
One of the more seemingly sensitive members of staff that called him Dave suggested he drove to his house to see if he was ok. He arrived back half an hour later saying the lights were all off in his flat. There was no answer. Him and another member of staff would go check again the next day, after they finish their shift about 9am.
The next night I headed into work. As soon as I arrived I was stopped by my manager. 'Andy has killed himself.' He said. I remember it was strange hearing a member of staff call him by his real name. 'We thought we'd best tell you before you start your shift, just with your housemate.....' I couldn't help but reply by saying 'Everyone is killing themselves', a sentence I cringed at as soon as it left my mouth. I headed up the stairs to hang my coat up, clock in and start my shift.
The more sensitive member of staff who had gone to check on him didn't come into work for a couple of weeks. But the colleague who accompanied him must of told his story 10 times to staff at different times through out that night. They had to get the help of the landlord who owned the property Andy lived at, the 3 of them trying to break the door in. When they opened the letter box they could feel the heat coming out of the flat. The heating must of been on for 3 days non stop.
They thought to ask one of our work colleagues who was known to be a bit of a thief to come help break in through his window. He joins them and is able to get them in to the flat. Once in they search each room, a little scared of what they are going to find. Andy was found face down in the bath tub. Blood splattered all over.
The next few nights in work were very eerie. Every member of staff remarking how sad it was, but also every member of staff saying they didn't believe it was suicide. Dave was too happy to do that. He must of slipped. You know how drunk he used to get. He had a heart attack. He was a massive guy. He slipped then had a heart attack in the bath tub. Most the staff were sure of this. It wasn't suicide.
One member of staff, in a confiding tone, quietly said to me 'I know we took the piss out of him, but he loved that'.
The people that called him Dave all believe he slipped whilst drunk and had a heart attack.
They called him Dave, but his name was Andy. I was surprised that I seemed to be the first person to notice just how disrespectful this was. I would attempt small talk with him when he danced his mundane dance each morning around the supermarket floor at around 5 am. He was the stores floor cleaner. So he had in his possession within the walls of our nightly home, an industrial floor cleaner. It was a large green machine that had to be pushed around by hand. Andy was good with it. The nights he was off, everybody else seemed to struggle with it. It surprised some that he was so good with it, Andy was a huge, strangely shaped man. The glasses he wore resembled the type you get in joke shops, that magnify the eyes. His forehead seemed to swell up and dazzle under the store lights. Andy was bald except for a tiny bit of fluffy hair that grew around the bottom of his ears. One eye lazily pointed in a different direction to the other eye. He was certainly an easy target for jokes. It just so happened that the people he worked with found it most easy to joke about others appearances.
His voice was a wildly camp lisped snort that trilled when he found something funny. Most the time he didn't understand the jokes that were being made about him, to his face, so he would just reply 'Oh alright then!' which actually ended up being his catchphrase. People would shout at the tops of their voices 'OH ALRIGHT THEN!' sounding as camp as they could sound as he walked past the end of their aisles. He would wander past with a great big smile on his face. Appearing on the surface to enjoy the attention.
Not only was the way he spoke wildly eccentric, but it stood out from the rest of the workers in the store, as everybody else spoke with the thickest of geordie accents, he was a southerner.
Andrew would often ask about a friend of mine, a friend who works for the BBC. Both his crazy eyes would light up when I would tell him how my friend in London would sign me in as a visitor to see areas of the BBC news room. Andrew's only real past time was to listen to the radio. He was known to love his drink too. Nobody suspected he was possibly trying to escape the laughter he inspired in others. Everybody who took the piss out of him to his face loved the fact he laughed along. 'He's alright is Dave. A weird fucker but he's harmless enough.'
-
An old friend of mine turned to drink when he could no longer treat music as his vessel for escapism. He can conjure up beautifully constructed walls of sound using a guitar and a loop pedal, but somewhere along the way, these walls of sound weren't enough to hold back the strange weight of the world. So he chose to drink himself somewhere else.
After a distressing episode were late in the morning he was sent home from work, fell asleep in a bus shelter, then spat in the faces of the ambulance staff who came to help him, I invited him to stay with me some days. Suggesting to him that our little home town of Kendal is maybe too small for him just now, that it would be good for him to be somewhere where he can just relax.
The next day he got the train across to Newcastle. I was working in the evening so I had explained I wouldn't be able to drink at all with him, I just suggested he relaxed in our flat whilst I was out at work.
I should of known when I was heading to the train station to meet him at mid day he was going to be completely out of his mind drunk. Some naive hope inside of me had heard the quiet in his voice that same morning and expected him to travel with his thoughts in tact as opposed to inebriating himself.
Not making sense when I met him, I was very disappointed. My hope for helping him stay off the drink for a few days had faltered at the first hurdle. He hadn't eaten in days. I took us to a Burger King.
He sat looking into the place as I watched the people passing by the busy shopping street outside. We didn't say a word. I tried not to stare at my friend but I found it so sad how he was becoming somebody I didn't recognise. He was fat. His eyes were sunken. I loved him but I didn't recognise this new skin.
A man lay down on the street outside. Peacefully. His hands on his chest looking straight up. I said to my friend 'ay up, what's this guy doing?' With a lot of effort, my friend turned round to see what was happening. In these few seconds, a couple of random passers by had also stopped to check on this person.
We watched for 5 minutes as the number of people around him grew to about 15 people. People's hands were checking for pulses, and one person placed him in the recovery position. I started to panic asking where the police were, surely somebody had called them by now. My friend occasionally turned around looking confused and distressed. It was yesterday he had been lying on the street passed out drunk when the ambulance had to come save him. My friend asked me if it would be weird if he went out to talk to the guy. I said yes.
A couple of minutes later, an ambulance turned up. We were still sat in the Burger King. The view we had was strangely cinematic. The angles presented to us were symmetrical and framed the lying man beautifully. The crowd slowly dispersed. The couple who came out from the ambulance checked his pulse. They brought a stretcher out. Placed him on it, and covered his whole body with a dark green sheet. The blanket went over his head.
They wheeled him into the back of the ambulance. I remember seeing the stretcher bounce of one of the curbs and the whole body jumped from off the stretcher just slightly. My body was awash with shivers. My jaw had dropped and my eyes were wide in disbelief.
My friend, who had collapsed on the floor in a drunken state just the day before, who had been brought back to consciousness by ambulance staff and spat in their faces turned around to face me. His eyes weren't focusing on anything. They were wide. I'd never seen his complexion so pale. He was shaking his head in a way I'd never seen. I truly believed this was the look of someone who had just seen a ghost. We both sat there scared. The first words he was able to stutter were expletives. Just 'fuck' over and over. We left the Burger King. I had to say to him, this may of been fate. You needed to see this.
That night in work, I couldn't concentrate at all. I had made a bad decision inviting my friend over to escape our small home town. I hoped he would rest whilst I was at work, instead, him and my border line alcoholic housemate were drunk at my house crying together, pushing each other further to temporary insanity. I couldn't relax in work. The end of my shift, on our last break, people were taking the piss out of me for losing out on a weeks holiday.
'Are you a fucking idiot mate? Why the fuck didn't you book it in?' I said I didn't care. I didn't at the time. This colleague who found it so hard to believe I'd forgotten to book a holiday was giving me a lift home in the morning. I was scared I was going to arrive home to 2 dead bodies. The conversation in the car was still on my untaken holiday. 'The thing with you....' my colleague told me... 'you just don't care about anything do you. You're just that laid back aren't you? You don't care about anything.'
I saw red. I asked my colleague very slowly: do you know, just how much, I fucking hate you? A big ridiculous grin covered his face. Quietly he asked 'What?', I repeated the question: Do you know how much I fucking hate you? I hate you and everybody I work with so so much. Your lives are the most pathetic I have ever known. You all do absolutely nothing. Nothing.
The next 10 minutes of our drive home were difficult. I was arguing in front of my colleague with myself. I do hate them. But how can I say I hate them when they are harmless creatures. I hate myself. That's why I'm allowed to say how much I fucking hate all of them. This world needs to end. So nobody can see suicide as selfish, let's all go at the same time. It would be for the best. My colleague suggested I was finally coming to terms with my housemate who had committed suicide a few months earlier. He had been surprised at how little I seemed to react for the few months straight after it. This is what he had been waiting for. I left the car and got into my house. My friend was hungover, but OK. We quietly talked about my little out burst, finding it funny how I'd just told a work mate how much I hate him and every one else I work with.
-
A couple of nights after this out burst Andy didn't show up to work. 'It's not like Dave not to turn in?' He had got pissed up and slept in was what most had thought had happened. He didn't live far away and it was certainly out of character for him not to have show up. There had been no sick call.
One of the more seemingly sensitive members of staff that called him Dave suggested he drove to his house to see if he was ok. He arrived back half an hour later saying the lights were all off in his flat. There was no answer. Him and another member of staff would go check again the next day, after they finish their shift about 9am.
The next night I headed into work. As soon as I arrived I was stopped by my manager. 'Andy has killed himself.' He said. I remember it was strange hearing a member of staff call him by his real name. 'We thought we'd best tell you before you start your shift, just with your housemate.....' I couldn't help but reply by saying 'Everyone is killing themselves', a sentence I cringed at as soon as it left my mouth. I headed up the stairs to hang my coat up, clock in and start my shift.
The more sensitive member of staff who had gone to check on him didn't come into work for a couple of weeks. But the colleague who accompanied him must of told his story 10 times to staff at different times through out that night. They had to get the help of the landlord who owned the property Andy lived at, the 3 of them trying to break the door in. When they opened the letter box they could feel the heat coming out of the flat. The heating must of been on for 3 days non stop.
They thought to ask one of our work colleagues who was known to be a bit of a thief to come help break in through his window. He joins them and is able to get them in to the flat. Once in they search each room, a little scared of what they are going to find. Andy was found face down in the bath tub. Blood splattered all over.
The next few nights in work were very eerie. Every member of staff remarking how sad it was, but also every member of staff saying they didn't believe it was suicide. Dave was too happy to do that. He must of slipped. You know how drunk he used to get. He had a heart attack. He was a massive guy. He slipped then had a heart attack in the bath tub. Most the staff were sure of this. It wasn't suicide.
One member of staff, in a confiding tone, quietly said to me 'I know we took the piss out of him, but he loved that'.
The people that called him Dave all believe he slipped whilst drunk and had a heart attack.