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BLOODY KIDS!

Joe put the dish of food down for his elderly cats, Mungo and Midge. He shrugged on the padded jacket his daughter had bought him last Christmas. ‘Not the same as the old tweed one she threw out’, he thought, ’no weight to it!’ He peered into the spotted mirror hanging over the sink. ‘No need to shave today.’ Even his whiskers didn’t grow much anymore. Time was when he’d had a full head of curly black hair. Mary had fallen for him then, with his cord velvet jacket, drainpipe trousers and thick-soled ‘brother creeper’ shoes!
The old man sighed and dragged the few remaining teeth of a disreputable comb through his sparse grey hair, picked up his walking stick and braced himself for the ordeal to come.
At least when he’d had a pension book he could sometimes persuade Betty- next- door to fetch his pension for him. Now it was paid into the bank and he had to go down armed with his confounded pin number thingy and grapple with the machine to get enough change to shop and pay the gas bill. Worst of all he had to walk past ‘them’. The youths were there, as usual, leaning on the brick wall of the old bus depot. He wondered if they were the ones that had covered its desolate face with graffiti. He would have liked to tell them how much he admired the work that had obviously gone into it and how much it cheered up the bleak street but he was terrified of attracting their attention. Joe found that if he kept his eyes down and walked straight past them they generally left him alone.
So there they were; shoulders hunched, hoodies up, thin roll ups smouldering, trainered feet idly kicking a beer can about. Joe turned to cross the road, keeping a wary eye on the boys as he did so. He stepped off the pavement – and lost his balance. At this moment a van came roaring towards him and caught him a glancing blow as he fell into the road. He saw the tarmac coming up to meet him and then.....nothing. When he woke he was lying on a trolley in the Emergency Department of the local hospital. He tried to sit up but a nurse appeared at his side and told him to lie still till the Doctor could find time to have a look at him.
“Who called the ambulance?” he asked.
“Noo ideea love”, she said shaking her tight black curls and giving him a beaming smile, “but good job they did. You a bit bashed about and they say the van driver never stop!” It was after dark by the time they finally decided that Joe should be admitted to the ward, ‘in case of concussion’.
They let him use the phone to ask Betty to feed the cats and she said yes, she would make sure to lock up carefully and yes, she would feed them again in the morning. Joe lay back in the crisp, clean, antiseptic, impersonal hospital ward and closed his eyes. Would Betty, busy with her own husband and family remember to feed the cats? How would he manage when he went home with a broken arm and a sprained ankle? At visiting time the next day Joe sat propped up, his arm in plaster and his ankle throbbing, reading the paper. He didn’t expect any visitors. Betty had a family to feed and no car and he didn’t really know anyone else, having only moved back to town a few months ago when Mary died and he could no longer cope with the isolated cottage. They’d already asked him about help when he went home but he didn’t let on that his daughter lived in Wales and his son in New Zealand. He didn’t want any nosy social service woman coming round and saying he had to go into a home.
Visitors started drifting in. Wives and mothers with bags of goodies in case their man should starve; young women with fidgety children, suddenly shy in this alien place. A couple of young lads, hoods thrown back, hesitated in the doorway. They duty nurse stopped to speak to them and then nodded and smiled and .....pointed at Joe!
They were coming over. What did they want? He didn’t know them. The first one stood beside the bed, hands rooted firmly in the pockets of his baggy trousers while his mate hovered behind. The first boy cleared his throat nervously.
“Came to see ‘ow yer were”, he mumbled, chin on chest.
“I’m okay thanks”. Light began to dawn.
“Did you call the ambulance?” A nod and another mumble and a waving of a cell phone to indicate that it had been used to call for help.
“Well thanks, son”, Joe said gruffly, “I’m not too bad. I’m more worried about when I go home.”
The second lad shuffled forward and thrust out his hand. He had a bottle of Lucozade and a packet of toffees.
“Well that is good of you!” Joe was almost speechless
“It’s wot me granddad likes,” he shrugged.
The ward sister appeared in the doorway and the two slunk off like his cats did when they were threatened with a rolled up newspaper for scratching the furniture. “Your grandson seems like a nice lad”, the ward sister remarked as she came round with the medication trolley.” So! That’s how they’d got in...cheeky beggars!
Joe was out in a few days and the boys didn’t come again.
‘A short lived miracle but a miracle all the same’ he thought but, the day after he got home, the first lad, Wayne, and his mate Leo knocked on the door and offered to go to the shop for him. Joe had no money to give them as he’d never got to the machine. What to do? If he gave them his card and his pin number they could empty his account and he might never see them again.
“I could really do with some bread and milk and that but I’ve no money in’t house” “That’s alright Mr Harris,” Wayne looked embarrassed. “I’ve just picked up me benefit. Yer can pay me back when yer getting about again”. “How did yer know my name?” It had never occurred to Joe that he was anything but an anonymous old man to them.
“Me grandma used to know yer when she was about seventeen. Jean Miller she was then.” Wayne sniggered. “She said you was a bit of a lad!”
When they’d gone off with the shopping list Joe left the door on the latch and sat down, with his foot propped on a stool, thinking wistfully of being seventeen. The adults were always hassling him and his pals for hanging about in the street but, too young for the pub and too hard up for the coffee bars in town, it was the only place to meet up with girls... girls like that flighty Jean Miller!
Joe sighed and thought about the passage of time and how hard it was to be old. Well at least I’ve got me grandsons, he told himself.