No Method in Our Madness...

When I was 17 I started working in a bank. 

I hated it and loved it with equal passion.  

If I was on the counter I got to talk to a stream of people all day.   I couldn't balance my till, ever.  But the customers would opt to wait in the queue to come to me rather than someone else.   I was never short - I was always over.   Off the till, because I could type, I typed.  And Typed, and typed.  I hated typing.  And i hated the people who gave me typing.  The same people I had to argue with to do my Banking Exams, because their first response was "your a girlie,  you'll be leaving soon to have babies".   I didn't even have a boyfriend.

I got the bus from home ( in the days when you had to walk half a mile to the bus stop) and the first week I had the worst blisters on my heels after the first day I had to wear flip flops the rest of the week. 

There were customers you liked and there were customers you didn't.   There were the local characters who drove everyone equally insane but gave us something to talk about at lunchtime.

One such character was Josie.   He was your archetypal worthie.   No one knew where he slept, he was filthy, he had tangled, dirty hair to his shoulders, he was shabbie, and he was pretty much always drunk. 

He would appear at the bank door - the doors were always wedged open, he would sidle in, he would stand beside your box and as very sweetly if we had any spare money. 

Adam and the Ants were big at the time, and god help us if the sellotape dispenser was within arms reach.  He would grab 10 inches or so, and stick it over his nose and give us a rendition of "A new Royal Family a Wild Nobility We are the family". complete with some pretty fancy footwork (learned from years of balancing when completely pelted)

he was pretty dang good at it as well; but the show would always end with him asking for money again. 

A couple of years after I left the Bank, Josie was found, dead, in a derelict building in Harbour Street.   The town mourned him, even though he was a complete and utter bampot and had drove everyone crazy. 

But every time I see Adam and the Ants, I'm reminded of the wee fat, drunk, smelly man, arms akimbo, gieing it laldy.