Cold can Kill

There used to be two old boys who wandered the streets around here. They were part of the street scene, shuffling around a small orbit of a quarter mile.

Southside’s Vladimir and Estragon - threadbare macs, battered trilby hats, dirty, stained trousers held up by string and second hand shoes worn without socks.

They were a pair - a couple matched in their style of dress and mannerisms. They collected cigarette ends; their shaking, brown-stained fingers grasped up likely looking butts to be deposited in filth-edged pockets for later. The couple carried themselves with dignity, maybe not dignity, but an aloofness that defied their decrepitude. The local kids, the wannabe gangsters and members of the young team steered well clear of what would ordinarily be an easy target. Since moving here I have always thought that it was their very scaberousness that acted as a shield.

The pair leaning against the wall of the local lowlife boozer, sharing a packet of Mayfair, a blue plastic bag stretched around a bottle of sherry or Buckfast denoted pay day.

Like Beckett’s Boys they seemed to be waiting, but it’s clear what they were waiting for: a one way trip to the Infirmary. Clean linen, hospital food that will go cold and congeal without being touched, the disdain of pressed and fragrant nurses, a clean sheet for a shroud, followed by a cheap pine box.

But now there’s only one.

Is it Vladimir, or is it Estragon?

I don't know, I never asked their names.

After a brief absence, the remainder still wanders the same route. For a few days each fortnight he still clutches his blue offie bag. He still gathers the butts. He still waits.

After this particularly cold snap I wonder whether our little area will lose another part of the scenery.