I Hate This Place 4

"The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum"

For so long, I thought of this as a cliché-d, hackneyed phrase, yet, having managed to escape from the Beast that is London for a few days, it has simply confirmed that this phrase was in fact coined about London.

There are more mad people per square kilometre in London than in anywhere I have ever been before (and I grew up in Blackpool, so that's saying something).

Now I have nothing against mad people. They've presumably suffered some hideous mental trauma which has succeeded in detaching them from the rest of the world. I can't comprehend that fully, and am certainly not going to criticise the majority of these unfortunate people. It's fascinating, however, to observe the various divisions of madness around this city:

Type 1: Mutterers

These are the people who you can walk past and become aware that they are carrying out an constant monologue. We all do this - you try and think of an instance when you haven't been walking along and thinking to yourself at the same time. Mutterers are just vocalising these inner thoughts, and are mostly harmless. However, as we all know, there's a reason why we don't tend to vocalise our own internal monologues - we often can think fairly bad things about people around us. When that rude person barges us out of the way to get on the tube, you think "Tosser". The Mutterer, on the other hand, will say "Tosser" in an undertone, and as you can quite imagine, this can lead to social problems.

Type 2: Shouters

Shouters are normally one stage removed from Mutterers. They often have the whole external monologue thing going on, but this will occasionally be interrupted by loud outbursts. Normally these seem bizarre, but are rarely aggressive or offensive. A case in point is the chap I talked about on "Commuter Boy" a while ago, who suddenly erupted with "SADDAM HUSSEIN SAVE US! THE GERMANS ARE ALL DEAD..." Random and very strange, but pitiable more than offensive.

Type 3: Ravers

Now Ravers are the aggressive Shouters. Again, they seem to be descended from Mutterers, but this time, they actually focus on swearing and aggressive behaviour focussed at a particular individual. This can be extremely awkward, and although rarely physically violent, the Raver can be perceived as so simply through the aggression of their outbursts. The only solution in this case is to walk away. On the Tube there was an unpleasant incident where an elderly man seemed to focus his wrath on a slightly rotund man who got on the Tube after him. This old man was screaming in the face of this larger man, and the latter seemed completely at a loss as to what he had done, and what he could do to help this man calm down. Other people interceded but nothing seemed do-able. That was very sad indeed.

Type 4: The Lost

The Lost are most upsetting. They are people who clearly have lost most of their faculties and often just sit staring vacantly before shuffling away. They do not speak, and look totally vague. They often smell as if they have lost the ability to look after themselves, which they in all probability have done. These are the people you have to help, even if it’s just guiding along or smiling. It’s heart-breaking to see people like this, and I just hope that even a little kindness can help lighten their lives a little bit.

Type 5: The Sinister

The Sinister are truly terrifying, because there is a feeling that they would, and will do anything. A case in point was at Richmond station two nights ago. A group of three men staggered out of the toilets. They all appeared to be vagrants, in ragged clothes, and with the unfortunate odour. The first was a Raver, swearing repeatedly at two business men as they walked down the stairs. The second was simply legless, barely even able to negotiate the stairs. The third however, was sinister. He was balding on top, but his hair was long at the back, and clawed back in greasy lumps. He carried a guitar, and emblazoned across the back of his jacket was a large Swastika.
There were two girls walking down the stairs in the opposite direction. Both were about 20 and both were wearing smart skirts which came halfway down their thighs. This man stared at their legs as they walked down the stairs, then turned and kept his eyes fixed on them as they walked through the barrier and towards the platform. The look on his face was…I want to say a leer, but that implies smiling. It had all the attributes of a leer, but mingled with anger. He walked down the stairs a few times, before his drunken companion called at him to help him.

Having seen this, I am not ashamed to say that that man, to me, seemed like a potential rapist. I really don’t think anyone like that should be allowed unsupervised in the community. But you can’t stop him, because he hasn’t done anything. But his face is etched in my mind, and I swear it’s only a matter of time before he DOES do something. And that, quite frankly is terrifying.

London is disproportionately full of all these types of people. I would be willing to say that at least one in twenty people I see during my day is a “Mutterer”. And I see at least one of the more severe cases during the average day.

Why is this so? It could be because of Care in the Community not working correctly. But I think it’s London that’s to blame. I believe a lot of these people clearly need some attention or care. They need to feel like they’re not alone. And London is the worst place in the world in which to feel alone. I feel that, if I didn’t have my friends around me in London, I would have deteriorated. It’s a lonely place, where people can only afford to care about themselves and their little unit. No other city I have ever lived in has made me feel as isolated as London does. And in a city of this size, that’s a bad thing.

Here endeth the lesson.