The Electro Wars

This post begins very normally, but gets more interesting, so read on!

Today I was in a small shopping centre in North West London and I ended up having a cup of tea with a homeless man.

His name was Jhan (pronounced Jan), which he said was originally Bavarian, though this didn't sound quite right to me and he had a very definitely English accent, so I'm not sure how true that was.

Anyway, he looked like your stereotypical homeless man; wild grey/white hair and beard, thick jumper and old battered coat, possibly from a shelter handout a while ago, big heavy boots, overlong nails with dirty underneath them and the obligatory two or three overstuffed carrier bags. Jhan had three rings on his fingers, all silver-coloured, one with a petroleum like stone and the others just silver bands with celtic-influenced symbols on them. And his teeth were surprisingly healthy looking.

We sat down for our tea. He's the first homeless person I've known who doesn't take sugar in his tea. He had asked me if I was from the area, and so I asked him in return, and he said he'd been wandering about; that he'd just been in Lincoln. Lincoln's been all over the news in the last few weeks because of the extreme snow there, so I mentioned that - but he didn't seem to know what I was talking about.

Then he said he'd just come from Chelmsford where he'd been visiting his daughter. While I was saying something inane about that being nice, he mentioned she'd passed away. Oh. A few sentences later I asked if there was a cathedral in Chelmsford, and he seemed to have no idea why I'd brought the place up, and repeated the word "Chelmsford" to himself several times like it was totally alien. I reminded him that he'd just brought it up, and he apologised and said he was drunk, but to be honest I didn't believe him. He didn't seem drunk at all. I think perhaps he was embarassed by his memory lapses and tried to cover them up by saying that. Then he said his daughter would be 12 now but she had died when she was 9. Again, I think he was slightly confused when he said this because he next told me that he is 49: if he's 49 then I'm still in primary school. Even hard-living and drinking don't age someone that much: his face was so lined and his hair the petering out frizz of old age. Several times in our conversation he seemed to be living in a different era, and would often sound quaintly old-fashioned.


Then it got more interesting...


He asked me if I was a "blitz temp". At first I thought he was imagining himself in the 1940s, but it quickly became apparent that that wasn't the case. He started to mention "the electro wars" and I slowly realised that memory wasn't the only problem he had.

He asked me "Are you one of those rebuilt dames?" and I told him I didn't know what he meant, to which he replied "You're well done, I'll give you that." I suppose I sort of half-nodded and swiftly tried to change the subject.

My next subject topic seemed to be a slight error! There was a small baby at the table opposite us, so I said, "Oh, look, what a little baby." And he agreed and then said "Isn't it terrible what they do to babies nowadays?" I agreed and asked what in particular he meant. "You know Cirencester? Well, there's this big building there and I looked in and they had all these babies, with wires in their heads, and they were feeding them on fitness drinks." I made some noises about the evils of protein shakes, and then drew attention to the 2 aquariums of beautiful fish near us.

He said he remembered them from a long time ago, and that he thought fish were very intelligent. Now, this is something I agree with, so we had a nice chat about how wonderful they are. Then he told me about a pigeon that he'd had a conversation with a few weeks ago - and for once he sounded suitably incredulous about what he was saying - and how it had sounded just like a normal person, and he wondered if it was 'the ghost' speaking to him. I'm not sure if he meant the Christian Holy Ghost or a ghost of a dead person, because at some point he did also mention people coming back from the dead.

Other snippets included him saying that he used to fit kitchens, then central heating, then work on vintage cars, then antiques dealing. He also told me not to go in ambulances because "you never know which way they're going to go".

On my way home I was thinking about Jhan and his mental health. I suppose he'd be labelled a paranoid schizophrenic, though I am in NO way an expert. So how should he be taken care of, rather than wandering the streets? He is definitely homeless: he has nowhere to sleep tonight and said he'll try to find a warm place "to huddle" but that it's difficult because he gets a hard time from drunk people and "these", said with a gesture of rubbing his fingertips, which I thought might mean the cold. If someone's not a danger to themselves or others, and has no family to fill out paperwork and fight for the place in some sort of sheltered housing, I suppose that is what happens to them. It seems a shame that to get a roof over his head tonight he'd have to harm someone.