It’s warm and crisp and bright and sunny and lovely. The neighbourhood kids patrol the circular green space in the middle of the houses, skulking back and forth in arcs like waiting jackals. Clucking by the fence of the central swing park are a group of adults, one woman steps forward to the vehicle, more gold round her neck than MrT.
“I called you, the bairns said there was a man dead in the park, my husband’s looked at him and he’s moving, but.”
I’d argue that the chances of a man dropping dead in a children’s swing park is probably quite slim, the chances of someone being drunkenly asleep, are, however, pretty good.
From a distance the patient looks pretty alive, dead people tend not to lie flat on their back with their arms crossed, well, not outside coffins at least. The top of a bottle of Bells pokes out from his jacket. I think we may have had a diagnostic breakthrough.
A return to GCS15 is rapid, courtesy of a bit of yelling and a pinch on the man’s shoulder. He gets a little aggy with us when I try and remove the glass bottle from within smashing-it-into-my-face distance, so we ask if he’s hurt or sick and, on receiving more verbal abuse, politely invite him to bugger off.*
There’s a script in place here, we move people on, the caller apologises for wasting our time, we wave our hands demurely - not at all, always best to be safe.
“We didn’t want to go too close, because you never know who these people are, you know?”
I stifle the desire to laugh all the way in her face, this neighbourhood is right on the outskirts of Edinburgh’s badlands. Every.Last.One of these ladies’ husbands could wear a cerise tanktop and wave a bunch of gladioli and STILL be butcher than me. They are, as a friend from Sunderland once opined, “The kind of folk who build a porch on their house and think they’ve fuckin’ arrived.”
The entire neighbourhood is scared of the day it’s never seen, they’ve persuaded themselves that everyone out there is out to get them, despite being, I’m sure, the type of people who can handle themselves quite merrily.
Even so, I’ve no bother giving a drunk dude a wee shake and making everyone have a nicer day by moving him on. I’m a community figure, right? This is what I do. Cue grateful bystanders and happily playing children.
No.
The caller shouts at the top of her lungs across the square -
“Is he foreign?!”
“He’s drunk,” I reply “I think that’s all that’s important.”
“But is he Polish or something?”
“I don’t think that has anything to do with the situation, madam.”
“Well YOU might not, but I do. I’ve got bairns playing out here, I’m not letting them play if there are foreign people hanging around.”
Niemoller in my ears, I feel it’s only appropriate to challenge her.
“I’d say the problem is the fact there’s a drunk man sleeping next to your children while they play, there’s plenty of folk from Edinburgh getting drunk and passing out in parks.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Well, we’ll leave you to it, then.”
“Right…ok.”
(As an aside, the phrase “Right, ok” makes me want to hit people with a rake. I *know* it’s ok, I just did *you* a good turn. The word you’re looking for is ‘thankyou’ you racist, ignorant bag of pus.)
Cluedo is quietly fizzing at my elbow, we give it up for a bad lot and leave them to it, the children return to the swings and we drive off into the morning sunshine.
*Dialogue has been dramatised, I really asked him nicely to go and drink somewhere else and let the children play without disturbance.
