31 Falkner Street (4)

Chapter 4 – Les

Les Blackburn was sixty-six years old, with a long-reaching criminal record, and currently, an ASBO received for harrassing and physically assaulting a neighbouring resident of the street. Les lived alone in his two bed terrace and kept it relatively clean, excluding his bad habit of flicking his cigarette ash onto his carpet and wiping it with his shoe. The large grey mark on one part of the carpet marked the spot of the couch that Les tended to sit on.

Les had found other ways to keep his house clean and make his life easier, by washing once a week he saved on having to wash towels. By often falling asleep on his couch after a few cans, he saved on washing his bedding. By going to the pub down the road every day he saved on his gas and electricity. Although he did leave his electric fire on permanently so it was possible that Les just really liked going to the pub.

Les hadn’t always lived alone, and frequently reminded the neighbours that his ex-wife Diane didn’t live with him because they couldn’t come to an agreement about the area they wanted to live in. This wasn’t the case. Diane had become sick of the beatings she had received at Les’s hands for decades and had found that she was able to walk away when Les was 60, weaker and less intimidating. He still needed her though, and Diane cooked his tea for him at least three times a week. If she was honest, she felt sorry for Les and pitied him for the lonely life he had lead since she had left him. And she would feel guilty if she stopped supporting him because she knew that he couldn’t support himself fully and would never learn.

Les had lost a considerable amount of weight over the past couple of years, and this was down to his liquid lunches. And his liquid breakfast and tea. He was far exceeding the daily recommended calorie intake every day with his ten to fifteen cans of lager, but still this was just as Les said himself. Liquid. People who knew Les would doubt that he would cook for himself, even to stretch as far as a ham sandwich. The thought of Les using the grill to cook bacon was altogether a scary and dangerous concept. Although he would tell anyone who asked that he had eaten a buttie in the morning and cooked himself a roast dinner after returning from The Lion. He smoked 60 cigarettes a day which he bought cheap from a man at The Lion, had large lumps dotted around his throat and chin which he didn’t get seen to, and a horribly wheezing chest and cough. Jo helped Les by keeping him in supplies of lager when he visited her in the evenings, and by calling Diane to inform her of abuse everyone had subsequently received from an intoxicated Les.

In some ways, Les had a good nature despite his rudeness. When a homeless or drug addicted young lad would ask him for a ciggy on his dark way home from the pub, he would first tell them to 'fuck off you aul bastard'. Then after walking on a few paces, would take pity on the young man, turn round and give him several of his cigarettes. He would then walk the rest of the way home muttering 'poor lad' to himself.

Les didn't understand his loneliness because he drank and the drink dulled his emotions and helped his days go faster. He had bought a little jack russell puppy once, and had loved him and the way that the puppy had jumped around him and been so pleased to see him when he had got home from the pub. He had thought that it was nice to have someone waiting for him to come home, even if it was a dog. He made sure that he always had dog food in and didn't smack the puppy if it soiled on the carpet. After all, it wasn't the poor old dog's fault if he had been asleep and hadn't let him out in the yard. But Jo soon took the dog away from him after convincing Les that he didn't have the dog under control and that it was only responding to her commands. Les was happy when the dog would run out of Jo's house when she had left her door open and come and sit in his living room for a while. But Jo soon told Les that the pup had gone to a family member of hers.

Les had a fairly strict routine. He would wake up either on his couch or in his bed past midday. He would walk to The Lion, sit with the other regulars or chat up the barmaids. He would go to the toilets for a cigarette, with a rolled up newspaper which he propped against the window and blew his cigarette smoke down even on a sunny day. He would buy 8 cans of bitter from the off license and walk home. He would sleep until around midnight and then go to Jo’s house until around 4am and argue with her and anyone else who happened to be sitting in her living room. He would end each night by singing ‘OOOHH it’s four in the morning and once more the dawning’ to everyone present as he stumbled across the road back to his house. Sometimes falling over several times on the way. Then he would take a bucket with him upstairs if he was able to manage the walk up the stairs, and would use the bucket to urinate in throughout the night. On more than one occasion, Les had slipped down the stairs when he had carried the bucket down during the night and had ended up on the floor, covered in urine before returning immediately to bed, still in his urine-soaked pyjamas. If it wasn’t wash day the following day, then so be it.

When Les had a not-so-good-natured row with Jo, he hated the nights he spent in his own company in his living room with his bitter. He would ring his ex wife and tell her about what Jo had said to him. Then he would watch his only DVD of Daniel O’Donnell (live) on repeat until he fell into an alcohol-induced sleep. Falkner Street had not been good to Les.