Although I live in a very neat and orderly suburb with regularly mowed lawns, trimmed hedges and pleasant neighbours there are a couple of quite crazy people about. For the most part they are quite harmless, busy getting on with their lives with a sense of ardent purpose which keeps them busy and for the most part out of trouble. In a way just like non-strange people, (if there is such a thing). Maybe its just a matter of opinion as to what constitutes "a sense of purpose". But in a strange kind of way it makes life quite interesting.
Take for example a chap we call "the sack man". I've often spotted him walking determinedly up and down the main streets and sometimes as far away as the next suburbs. He's always carrying a couple of sacks, at least three bulging big plastic sacks filled with what looks like newspaper. He himself is dressed in brown ragged cloth looking not dissimilar to Robinson Crusoe's Man Friday complete with long matted hair and beard and leather sandals and skin burnt a deep brown.
He walks hunched over with his sacks on his back as if he's labouring under the load but he keeps going with seemingly determined purpose. I often wonder where he is going to, if there might be something in those sacks that needs to be delivered or if he sets off in the morning from where ever he lives and just keeps on walking and walking. I know that he can read because one day as he walked past me he stopped, put down his load, pointed to a car and said loudly "autosecurity!" which was written on the side of a security van. Perhaps he thought they were coming to take him away. Then he picked up his sacks, put them over his back and went off on his merry way.
Then there's another chap we call "muttering Jim" who is often spotted walking with a determined swagger up and down the local streets and often far away in the next couple of suburbs. I've also spotted him early in the morning so I know he's not one for a lie-in. He appears reasonably well dressed, clean shaven and sports good walking shoes.
He seems to spend every day walking for miles, and, no matter what the weather, never has an umbrella. Sometimes I see him in the local library with a takeaway coffee but never reading a book, just swaggering about muttering to himself. Then he is off again on his mission to walk the suburbs. Sometimes I'll be miles away driving along and then I'll see him swaggering along muttering to himself and I'll wonder where is he going. I suppose all that walking is good exercise, keeps him fit, and is a useful/harmless way to spend your day even if it ends up wearing out his shoes!
Then there's one crazy lady, I'll call her Mavis, who is on a mission to protest against the local council. She has a trespass order against her not to come near the council building but this does little to prevent her protests. She stands at a discreet distance with a big placard hanging over her neck saying things like "the Mayor is Bin Laden" and "Politicians are pollution and corrupt the world".
Then she often rants at passersby that Bin Laden is in the building and tells them to go and get him. Lately she's also had a trespass order preventing her from going into the local shopping mall because she got arrested for spitting at the mayor who was attending some function there.
All this craziness seems to have become quite contagious. Even the local news has become quite mad. Our very own local mayor got stalked the other night after leaving a restaurant and was caught peeing under a lemon tree. It made headline news the next day and by lunch time there was a man outside the council building holding up a banner proclaiming "Pee Protest" and urging passers-by to sign his petition.
To great effect he turned sideways squirting a water bottle from hip length to make it look like he was having a pee. It was an even more surreal moment when behind him, there was Mavis, busy watering the flowers! I would have thought it a late April fool joke had I not seen it on the evening TV national news. Well if its made it to the national TV news then it must be true! Which just goes to show that truth is often stranger than fiction.
Welcome to my world ..:-)
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