Out with Niall the Nutter last night. He's not welcome in any of Richmond's pubs except the Board, so we went there. As virtually every boozer in town will take just about anyone (the Unicorn actually has a polite notice on the door asking customers to refrain from bringing their knives on to the premises) this is quite an achievement on his part.
Niall has always assured me that he is not violent ('..apart from that bloke I beat up with an iron bar...') so I guess his unpopularity is to do with his appearance, which is frankly alarming, and his habit of loudly advertising his opinions of various of the townfolk in his characteristic righteous tone of voice. He's right, of course: Richmond is indeed ninety percent populated by bumptious middle-class bores and drug-dealing chavs. The people he actually likes he annoys with his constant self-pity, self-aggrandisement and pseudo-profound analysis of the 'fantastic friendship' he shares with them.
So why do I hang around with him? Well, he has a tough life, he means well and he can actually be quite entertaining. He's also great for putting things in perspective. Any problems you may have pale into insignificance when compared with the catalogue of disasters Niall suffers on a daily basis. He's like a lightning rod for bad luck.
He's also - and this is a major selling-point in my view - crap at pool. So crap, in fact, that he's the only person I can consistently beat. The Board is an excellent venue for his weekly humiliations because the pool table stands on a slope on the floor which causes every ball struck to veer in a sharply downhill direction. Although he's quite bright, Niall has learning difficulties across the whole spectrum, so his efforts at compensation usually result in another dent on the cue ball as it lands on the floor, or, in extreme cases, ricochets off the back wall. I beat him three times to a soundtrack of Steve Miller's greatest hits.
Niall's got a date tonight. Probably another desperate fifty-something divorcee. I hope he gets on all right: women are not naturally drawn to him (Sab: 'he looks like a rapist') so he needs every opportunity he can get. He's 38 on Sunday. The other week he told me, in a sad but matter-of-fact tone, that he no longer expects to have children of his own.
A space cowboy he may be, but I've never heard anyone call him the gangster of love.
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Published by Earthman
on Thursday, September 01, 2005 at 1:26 PM. Niall has always assured me that he is not violent ('..apart from that bloke I beat up with an iron bar...') so I guess his unpopularity is to do with his appearance, which is frankly alarming, and his habit of loudly advertising his opinions of various of the townfolk in his characteristic righteous tone of voice. He's right, of course: Richmond is indeed ninety percent populated by bumptious middle-class bores and drug-dealing chavs. The people he actually likes he annoys with his constant self-pity, self-aggrandisement and pseudo-profound analysis of the 'fantastic friendship' he shares with them.
So why do I hang around with him? Well, he has a tough life, he means well and he can actually be quite entertaining. He's also great for putting things in perspective. Any problems you may have pale into insignificance when compared with the catalogue of disasters Niall suffers on a daily basis. He's like a lightning rod for bad luck.
He's also - and this is a major selling-point in my view - crap at pool. So crap, in fact, that he's the only person I can consistently beat. The Board is an excellent venue for his weekly humiliations because the pool table stands on a slope on the floor which causes every ball struck to veer in a sharply downhill direction. Although he's quite bright, Niall has learning difficulties across the whole spectrum, so his efforts at compensation usually result in another dent on the cue ball as it lands on the floor, or, in extreme cases, ricochets off the back wall. I beat him three times to a soundtrack of Steve Miller's greatest hits.
Niall's got a date tonight. Probably another desperate fifty-something divorcee. I hope he gets on all right: women are not naturally drawn to him (Sab: 'he looks like a rapist') so he needs every opportunity he can get. He's 38 on Sunday. The other week he told me, in a sad but matter-of-fact tone, that he no longer expects to have children of his own.
A space cowboy he may be, but I've never heard anyone call him the gangster of love.
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