David Douglas at Chave do Douro

Some cool hair growth for women images:

David Douglas at Chave do Douro


Image by a shadow of my future self
Worked late last night at the Crypt, let plumber into work this morning and went up the road to the dry cleaners, being organised and collected the jacket I dropped off there on Thursday. Went to Brights, picked up a newspaper, bought a lighter and a New Scientist, went to the Portuguese cafe, had a bit of banter with the guys who work there, went outside with my double espresso and pastel de nata to sit in the sun and have a quiet quarter hour. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

As I was putting the cup and plate down and arranging myself with the newpaper and carrier bag with milk and stuff in it to sit down, this guy came shuffling up and readied the other chair at the same table. He had a frame walking stick, turned the chair facing out to the street, turned and sat in it and asked me ‘Who are Chelsea playing today?’. Sport isn’t exactly my main interest; I wouldn’t know who Chelsea was playing in a month of Sundays, so I flipped through the sport section of the newspaper but the only fixtures I could see were for horse racing and cricket. Come to think of it, the football season probably hasn’t happened yet. It’s sort of summer right? They play football through the winter right? ‘If I know who they’re playing I’ll go into the bookies and put two quid on them to win five nil’ he said.

We had a long chat about buses and social services. He’s from Birmingham but lived in London most of his life. His dream, when he was a kid, was to drive buses, which he did in London for twenty years. ‘Imagine that’ he said’ ‘growing up and getting your dream come true. I loved driving buses, loved the people, loved the job. Then I had a massive stroke in 08. I was in the pub. A woman came up to me and said her brother had had a stroke a week before and I looked like I was having one too, should she call an ambulance? And I said yes and she did and she stopped me going to sleep. The doctor at St Thomas’s said she saved my life by stopping me going to sleep. That’s the problem with a stroke if you go to sleep you never wake up. And that’s the problem if someone doesn’t let you go to sleep, you end up alive and like this. The doctor’s say I’ve made an incredible recovery, that most people like me are in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. I can walk but only with that – and about as fast as a snail, you saw me coming up here didn’t you?’

He said he can’t remember anything – another thing the stroke did to him. He said English people scare him. ‘I only started talking to you because I thought you were one of them Portuguese or Spanish who come here. I wouldn’t have if I knew you were English’.

He said he had dreads down to his legs when he was twenty, liked the weed and the Jah. Gave it up for meat and a wife, she combed it out over three days. Now he’s got this hair and beard like that, three weeks growth, keeps it like that because it scares kids away, they think he looks crazy.

David Douglas. Lovely man.

This is number 1 of 100 strangers www.100strangers.com

9.35am Saturday 4 September 2010