Sometime in the Yuppie 80's and whilst I was living in a huge Victorian mansion in Compayne Gardens in West Hampstead, I came to know two co-habiting gents, English Derek and Scots Ron, who happened to live in the almost self-contained flat across from my almost self-contained studio on the ground floor.

This house used to be the home of some turn-of-the-century empire-fat cat merchant and his family and domestics. The gentleman of the house had the convenience of being able to walk right through the rear garden, through a door in the wall and hop straight onto his coach ( not National Express either ) to take him to "work" in the city each morn. The family occupied the ground, first and second floors whilst the basement and top floors were reserved for the cooks and maids. In fact my studio ( the piano room) still had the servant-summoning bell attached to the wall. They knew how to build houses in those days, great thick walls, marbled features such as the ornate fireplaces, skyscraper-high ceilings elaborately artexed to hell and with quality hardwood finishings throughout.

Whatever, the reason I mention "almost" self-contained is because each floor's divided-up two or three living units were without loo or bathroom. So both facilities had to be shared and this induced a strange social interaction of a kind between the inhabitants of the entire house. In some ways this was a good thing, because it's not that healthy for anyone to live in isolation, as seems the current trend where everywhere has to be private and self-contained.

So I gradually got to know Derek and Ron who were at that time in their late forties or fifties. Thing about these two chaps was, in common with many other social failures living in bedsits in London at that time, they had made some kind of " pals for life" pact against the world and confined themselves to their room most days of the year. Certainly the sickly sweaty white-faced scared rabbit Ron never ventured outside as far as I saw, in 7 years. Superkings chainsmoking physical wreck Derek went out roughly every other day to grab some meagre morsels at the covenience Asian shop round the corner by W. Hampstead tube and once a week he brought home a treat of a cake from Grodinskys in Golders Green. Obviously both were on sickness benefit.

One other tenant of the house, one Mr Tripp from the first floor almost self-contained flat did mention in passing that once - about five years back he said - he had seen the two out together. He said it was the funniest sight seeing them walking in the road - both their pairs of trousers were at ridiculous half mast, halfway up to their knees. A bit of a self image problem there then.

I was invited to step into their room once or twice and beheld basically one collapsed setee, two single beds and an insanitary sink jammed in the corner next to a gas cooker and, the main feature, a gigantic 25" television taking pride af place in the middle. Behind the telly sat a bookshelf crammed with videos of classic 1940s & 50s films such as Gone With the Wind, Casablanca and Citizen Kane. The room stank of some strange melange of human-habitation-with-the-windows-shut-24/7/52. Derek's proud boast was that both he and Ron were big fans of Noel Edmund's Telly Addicts programme. ( Remember that grinning pullovered talentless BBC gravytrain twerp? )

These were simple people, shut in tight against the world, their inability to fit in being both understandable and sad. The odd thing about these inter-bedsitters relationships I noticed, was that for some weird inexplicable reason, they veered from excellent to very bad at sometimes the oddest incident or misunderstanding.

Because Derek and Ron were confined in such a small space, their entire lives also became cramped into that minute geographical area and the slightest interruption to their rat-on-a-treadmill routine within those confines would trigger pretty major inner crisis in them.

So inevitably it was only a matter of time til I fell foul of one of their house laws, which they considered they had the right to impose, having lived in that room a good 18 years before I came along.

It was the toilet seat what did it.

Derek insisted that it be lowered after use and I used to forget to carry out this simple task from time to time which irritated the hell out of him and we had one or two run-ins over the trivial ( for me but not for him ) nature of the matter. So being the isolated vindictive little fellow that he was, he used to black out the power to my studio at odd times such as when I was back from work enjoying the television. For the fuses and trip switches to the mains power to the ground floor were located within Derek and Ron's room.

What a wind-up that was, for sure. So I made my grovelling apology about the toilet seat and not being short on vindictiveness myself as a young fellow new to London, proceeded directly to the magic/joke shop opposite Camden Town tube ( it's still there ) and bought myself a large packet of PULVER itching powder, waited a month, then sprinkled it liberally on the loo seat ( having of course obeyed the house master's order to lower it first ) and watched and waited. The powder was very fine and virtually indistinguishable from the normal dust/traffic grime accumulations so I was confident in my revenge glory.

Even more so when, within two days the entire wardrobe of Derek and Ron was displayed for all to see, hanging dark, hefty and dripping on the washing line out the back, right in the line of sight of my little studio window. The poor f..ks thought they had lice.:)):)):)):)):)):))88|:)):D:?:
It was the first and last time I saw evidence of cloths washing from room 13. They had been well and truly PULVERIZED!

And by god their taste in clothing was absoloutely shocking. The term Fashion Victims didn't come close.

Sorry to Derek Rhodes and Ron Keddie - for yes those were their real names - who are now both long departed, with no dependants or known family. All in all you weren't bad old sticks, just two more victims of a sick society, that made you sicker still thereby. God rest your souls ( and sorry about the itching powder).

Blame it on life in London, the fear and loathing gets overmuch for all of us sometimes.

MSM