(no subject)

[constance_b]

Busy Saturday. Started a quarter past midnight, I was thinking about getting an early night because I was spending the weekend with my half siblings and stepmother in Bath. My next door neighbour, Kayley, knocked and said she couldn't get her front door open, I went out to try her key and her boyfriend is hanging out of the window calling her everyword he knows. So I invited her into mine to have a coffee and phone her Mum, which is what she usually does when her chav boyfriend is being even more of a cunt that usual.
They're both nineteen, with a three year old daughter that was fortunately with her gran for the weekend, and Kayley is now pregnant again, just starting to show (because she genuinely believed 'not thinking about having a baby' was a form of contraceptive, but that's a whole other rant). We're going inside my flat when the boyfriend, Daniel, comes out in his boxers, shoves open my front door as I'm trying to lock it, throws her down on the stairs and starts punching her in the head. I was trying to pull him off, grab his arm, it was like I wasn't even there. Went to bang for my other neighbour, who's a burly guy and very neighbourly, but unfortunately has got used to sleeping through their bi-weekly screaming matches and didn't wake up. Back in my house Kayley's still curled up on the stairs and he's still punching her in the head. He's a weed, really, not fully grown yet, but I couldn't shift him at all. Eventually managed to wriggle between him and Kayley and he's trying to punch round me, but he won't hit me. He's a strange one like that, he'll stand right in front of me calling his girlfriend a whore and a slag, even sober, but when talking to me, or our other neighbours, he's scrupulously polite. Previous occasions when I've told him off about the way he talks to her he's like a chastened schoolboy, and now I'm shoving him and he's trying to kick her, but he won't shove me out the way to do it. Damn lucky really, because I'd never have herded him out the door otherwise.
Now she's sitting with her hands over her face, blood pouring between her fingers, won't move her hands or talk. And he's singing football songs through the letter box. My three year old is still soundly sleeping upstairs. Emptied her bag out to find her phone, called the police, ask if they'll send an ambulance and suddenly Kayley starts paying attention saying she won't go to hospital, she doesn't want the police, they'll think she's stupid. The girl is beyond stupid, she's a walking stereotype. Turns out he'd punched her earlier in the pub, infront of almost all their mutual acquaintance. But then she can read, and count, hold a sensible conversation, not actually stupid though astoundingly ignorant, she doesn't love him, doesn't like him, he smokes more skunk (pot) in a day than I could get through in a fortnight, generally so stoned he's not even company unless he's drunk enough beer to wake him up, he's driven off all her friends and won't allow her to talk to anything male, not even his mates. So why? Because her family will say 'told you so.'
He's trying to shake my door open, singing 'who's the bastard in the black' though the letter box, she's dripping blood on the carpet and trying to persuade me to hang up on a 999 call because the police might think she's stupid. By this point I'd quite like to slap her myself.
That argument was settled by the police arriving. I should maybe explain a little about Thames Valley Police, because they're a world away from what you see on American TV. No guns, for a start. There is an armed unit but they've only shot dead one person, ever, a few years ago a guy who shot his wife, daughter and sister-in-law and then took a few pot shots at the police. And he doesn't count, the coroner recorded a verdict of suicide, he'd been given that many warnings. People just don't kill policemen in this country, I'm not quite sure why because we kill each other often enough, a policewoman was shot dead about a year ago but she was the first since 1989. I've had a lot of contact with them the last ten years, working in pubs with occasional brawl, late night shifts in BK, when my son died and most recently a neighbour not dissimilar to Kayley, and they're a remarkably laid back lot. Not always in a good way, get burgled and they'll turn up a week later to give you a form to fill in, but I've never known them to take more than ten minutes to turn up and break up a fight. And they're all so relentlessly polite and sympathetic, sometimes to the most obnoxiously drunk and/or aggressive of people, to the point where it's actually annoying. Makes you want to whack someone with a truncheon on their behalf.
The point I'm wandering towards here is - they took ages. Daniel is still outside, still in his underpants (it's November for christsake, and pissing with rain) and he doesn't want to be arrested. There were two policepeople, they said they'd take Daniel away and come back in an hour to check on Kayley as she refused to go down and get in the ambulance. Half an hour later they're still trying to coax a nearly naked Daniel down the balcony stairs without hurting him, he's still swearing. My child is still asleep. They came back at 2.30 am. Then another hour sympathetically persuading Kayley to press charges and let them take photos of her face, which is getting purple by now. Then another two hours taking statements, written in longhand. The most annoying thing to watch, I could have done it myself in twenty minutes and a darned sight more eloquently. By now it's gone five thirty and this policeman is turning out harder to get out of the door than Daniel was. Kayley doesn't want to stay in her flat on her own in case he comes back (from his prison cell!), so they drive her to her Mum's, finally, thankfully. Then, I notice along with the rest of Kayley's handbag detritus on my table is a bag of Daniel's skunk, I've only had a policeman sitting there for hours, and just incase he was blind, there's a bleeding great cannabis leaf on the clear plastic bag. I can't even smoke it, he picks up some weird shit sometimes and I've seen him tripping on the stuff before.
And now I've been plying myself with caffeine and nicotine for hours so I can't sleep, just dozing off when my daughter wakes up, all excited because she was getting on a train to the aunties.
Then the day began.
Seriously, I'm getting too old to stay up all night. Standing in the bus stop in the pissing rain, I just wanted to go to bed. I thought I could get to Bath, hand Jennifer over to the kids to entertain and have a nice long afternoon nap. No. The rest of this post is just me bitching about how the former BR turned a ninety minute journey into a seven hour tour of the south of England. You are advised to skip. Not that I ever advised anyone to read in the first place.
Got on a train 10.15 Saturday morning, sleepwalking. Didcot 15 minutes later. This is where I'm supposed to be meeting my stepmother who's on her way back from London, and conveniently where we both have to change trains. Unfortunately her train decided not to stop in Didcot at all, she phones to say she's in Reading. But that's okay, because now the only trains in Didcot are going to Reading because apparently all the other lines are flooded. Including the one I've just travelled on. Yes, it's only flooded in the one direction.
2pm, two hours after I was supposed to be in Bath, I meet Sharon in Reading. A relief for me, because now she can take on the brain strain of trying to understand conflicting announcements and work out what the fuck's going on. We get a train supposed to be going to Bath, it stops at Westbury, about 10-15 miles out of Bath, can't go any further, more flooding. When they say flooding, by the way, they mean puddles. It's been raining for a day, everywhere else life's functioning normally, the rail service is behaving as if the entire country has suddenly sunk. We're now only a taxi ride away but they won't let anyone off for heath and safety reasons, because they're pricks. And also, because they have this deal with the people who run the track, basically funded by the government, that if the trains don't run they're compensated for the tickets. They're pricks that get paid extra for not running any sodding trains.
So back to Reading we all go, after sitting still for so long my daughter has had time to introduce herself to, and scav sweets from, every single person on the train. She's also built up a nice collection of pens, and the guard has lent her his little gizmo for stamping tickets. In Reading get off the train, play guess the platform for a while, end up back on the same damn train. Which is at least less crowded, on account of people giving up and (trying to) go home. Other passengers have organised themselves into groups and start hiring minibuses... We get to Bath long after dark. And masochist that I am, I'm playing train roulette again weekend after next to stay with my aunt in Bridgewater.



No fic, all this boils down to. No time to get online to read anyone else's either. I hate winter, I suddenly want to sleep eight hours a day, have no energy when I'm awake.

Comments

[dreamsofspike.livejournal.com]

wow, sounds like you're an awesome friend...i feel for you, having family members and friends who seem to be like your friend, putting up with abuse and not willing to do anything about it...that's part of the reason i'm currently raising my sister's kids...so i can relate....
i hope that someone can make her see reason before it's too late
*hugs*
J

[constance-b.livejournal.com]

I'm a terrible friend, I've been trying my utmost to persuade her to move back with her mother, and consequently out of my hair. Your sister very lucky.

[dreamsofspike.livejournal.com]

well it sounds like "out of your hair" also equals "safe", because anywhere near that abusive guy of hers is not good for her, since he was able to force his way into your house and hurt her...i think you're doing the right thing for her...give yourself a bit of credit, love :)