If you go down in the woods today...

This is a photo I took on my first ‘community service’ with my mates: Shaz, Baz and Derek.

For the first time in my life I have got ‘mates’!

Single mum Shaz comes to work on her scooter. She refuses to get a lift in the minibus. She says minibuses are dangerous – but really she likes to be independent. She has got more rings, pins and studs in her face than anyone I have ever seen: rings through her ears (ten in each), eyebrows, nose, lips, and pins and studs in her forehead and neck. I call her ‘the perforated mum.’

If there were to be a prize awarded for creative swearing, Shaz would win, hands down. She can even manage to insert a swearword in the middle of another word. For example: I overheard Baz telling her something about ‘catching a packet last week’, (I thought he was talking about taking a steamship somewhere, but it turns out to be slang for ‘contracted a sexually transmitted disease’).
Shaz suddenly exclaimed, in a voice that could be heard all over the park, ‘Well I’m not sur-fuckin-prised!’
She continued to admonish poor Baz. You should have used a fucking condom’ .

I wondered if there were any other kind.
But anyway, Baz says condoms are not cool.

People in Derek’s world always ‘turn round’ before they say anything… ‘So I turned round and said… And she turned round and said…’
He also has a couple of general-purpose phrases: ‘Well, it would, wouldn’t it…’ and ‘Stands to reason’.

But although I have had some difficulty getting used to the idiom, I quite like being with my new mates. They are so open, so direct. Does that sound patronising? I don’t mean it to be. They say you start to become like the person you marry; I don't want to become like George.

George used to say that the ‘lower classes’ could be quite amusing on occasions. He is a snob, of course. I don’t know why, since he likes to tell everyone how he was born in a ‘two up, two down’ with no bathroom and an outside lavatory. But my new friends do have a wicked sense of humour – often taking the piss (as they say), out of each other.

And out of Edgar. He is in charge of our little gang of ‘criminals’. He is about my age but they call him ‘grandad’. He has worked for Parks & Gardens ‘Since I was a lad’. And although they pull his leg something awful, he takes it all in good part and seems genuinely fond of his little ‘team’. He doesn’t know quite what to make of me! But then, neither do I.

I have decided. I am going to see George. I am pretty sure I know what his ‘little surprise’ is. There have been rumours flying about the village for some time now.
Ah well, let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth.