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longfellow
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Penthouse in Essex overlooking the Thames.
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16-10-2017, 04:06 PM
11

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

Some 40 yrs ago when visiting the wife in Guys we would stop on the corner of Newcomen Street and Crosby Row at the gate of one of the tiny houses opposite Guys entrance . A chap would be standing at his gate with a bugie on his shoulder. We often talked because my daughter 2 at the time would love to see the bugie. The chap would always leave his front door open and when it was time the bugie would fly back into the house.
Anyways 2 months ago we were on the same corner having a break in visiting the cancer unit there.
My daughter said to me "Remember the old man and the bugie dad".
How could I ever forget
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Primus1
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York
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16-10-2017, 06:38 PM
12

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

We used to have a character in the 80s, called Albert, he would often be found in the city , shouting " move it" to traffic and tourists alike, quite frightening, but harmless really, he once found an old reel of bus conductors tickets, and could be seen charging visitors to go on the bar walls!, the police used to pick him up and, rather than sending him to the cells, they'd take him to tadcaster, about 6 miles away, and he had to walk back,! He was very well known and if he went into a pub ( assuming he wasn't barred ) a huge cheer would go up from the pubgoers, he was a minor celebrity around here..
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UK
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16-10-2017, 06:54 PM
13

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

A local drunk with a goat on a lead.

The story goes that there was a game of 3 card brag with a massive pot of around £5k the drunk guy and a local builder were the last in but the builder was out of cash for his bet.

The builder persuaded the drunk to take an item as payment should be win, which he did.

The next day he went to get the papers for the item...a sailing boat or so he thought....truth of the matter is the security was an ageing goat
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SW England
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16-10-2017, 07:25 PM
14

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

Anyone from Southend might remember the bloke riding around on a trike, wearing a kilt and playing bag pipe music.
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Dorset
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16-10-2017, 07:32 PM
15

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

Originally Posted by Tpin ->
A local drunk with a goat on a lead.

The story goes that there was a game of 3 card brag with a massive pot of around £5k the drunk guy and a local builder were the last in but the builder was out of cash for his bet.

The builder persuaded the drunk to take an item as payment should be win, which he did.

The next day he went to get the papers for the item...a sailing boat or so he thought....truth of the matter is the security was an ageing goat
I thought I read Ghost! I really must go to Specsavers
Robert Jnr.
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UK
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17-10-2017, 07:31 PM
16

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

In my days in the employ of “Grace Brothers” way back in the early 1960s I had a wonderful mentor. He was a buyer of the old school, smart, savvy, inscrutable and my role model, a veritable polymath of his day. An intellectual, raconteur, chef, writer, poet, idealist, artist. What was he doing in such a job as buyer. The answer was while he was being all these other things he drifted into this well paid comfortable job .............and stayed. He introduced me to art, music, literature, theatre, theology and much more. I became a family friend stayed in contact with him for 50 years until his tragically early death.
I digress,
I will always be grateful to my friend Tom for one important lesson, one which released me in an important way. I was a perfectionist, couldn’t bear to fail or be associated with failure.
Tom called me into his office one day,
“Bob, I am worried about you” he said.
“But I never make mistakes” I was defensive.
“That’s right Bob, you don’t make mistakes, I am giving you permission, full permission, to make mistakes, big ones. If you don’t take risks, you won’t grow.
Now go back out there & go wild!”

I duly obliged, and grew in confidence & became an excellent buyer. Thanks Tom, wherever you are…..
Robert Jnr.
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UK
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17-10-2017, 07:40 PM
17

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

I have posted this before, but I couldn't resist posting it again given the topic of unforgettable people.

EDWIN JONES ;CHARLES STACEY

Smile, even though your heart is breaking.

Have you a friend who makes you smile whenever you think of them. . At our age it’s a sobering thought that many folks known to us have passed on now. Not a smile because they are or were funny. That may be true, but I was thinking more of a smile from warm or happy memories of being with that person…

Some people give out oodles of human kindness and they are to be cherished as much as they encourage us.

I worked with Charles S. for many years. He was advertising manager for the branch of “Grace Brothers” (Debenhams actually) where I worked during 1967 to 1976... Although under constant pressure from everyone from the store director chasing him for the latest advert copy to the sales juniors waiting to collect their point of sale for a new product, he never flustered or showed any unpleasantness.

He had a withered leg and walked very distinctively with a sort of rise and fall gait, He wouldn’t wear the special boots made for him…

During November of 1940 he had been taken on as a sign writer and unfortunately turned up for work to be greeted by a flattened bombed site where a very grand department store had stood the previous day. The Germans bombed Southampton extensively because of its marine & aviation importance.

H Neville Garland (Of Garlands of Norwich) store director was stood in the road arms crossed surveying the scene. A very tall imposing man with a high forehead and white hair. He gradually became aware of my slight friend next to him
“Hmm you look familiar” he said, stroking his chin. ,
Charles quietly said “I suppose you won’t want me now”
“Good heavens, you’re the new sign writer, start immediately, I want signs, lots of signs, bomb damage , smoke damage, quick man, Have to look on the bright side” he checked his watch, then strode off, picking his way through the debris.

Charles did write those smoke damage signs and stayed in the same store for 50 years more, enjoying a long retirement & still smiling when I called to visit him and his dear wife every Christmas.
Robert Jnr.
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UK
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17-10-2017, 07:44 PM
18

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

Here is another one I wrote earlier.

I once had a boss with the name of Iain Hill, a formidable giant of a man with eyes as black as his heart, a thick black beard, arms that hung down to his knees a voice somewhere off the Richter scale and possessed of a vile temper . He had an encyclopaedic vocabulary of swear words, an armoury of put downs & insults & struck terror into the hearts and minds of all those who incurred his displeasure, most people in fact.
I liked him a lot.
He was the kind of man who had been everywhere, done everything and if he hadn’t knew someone who had. He arranged for a group of his managers & me to visit a paint factory in Bradford about 1972. The factory was a favourite workplace for newly arrived Asian immigrants. It was impossible to discern the race of all the shopfloor workers due to the air being thick with Titanium Carbide dust, the main ingredient of cheap paint in the woodchip years. The white dust, these days a Health & Safety no no, plastered the faces of the workers. Yeuk..

More tomorrow
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Warwickshire
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17-10-2017, 09:54 PM
19

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

I once had transactions with a Tom, he was very good at geography, so much so, he was so good, they named him twice, "Tom Tom"
spitfire
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Warwickshire
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17-10-2017, 10:03 PM
20

Re: Unforgettable Characters. Have You Known Any?

Then there was Lenny Harris.
 
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