Surfers of Some Sort

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gulls on a roof window from below


Open the bloody door, for crying out loud! My balls are freezing off. That jobsworth knows fair well we're waiting. 

Calm doon, Tam. The man’s only working.

Here we are lads. In you go!

Morning, driver. Four tickets to Inverness, please. With our hard-earned National Entitlement Card – so nae fee.

Oh, wonderful. The fifth lot of heat-surfers this week, clogging up my bus.

Heat-surfers?

Pensioners in search of warmth. Getting on my bus for nothing and enjoying the heat. I get loads of them. Some have the cheek to say we need a coffee machine on board.

We pay your wages, pal, and don’t you forget it. But right you are.  We expect three-and-a-half hours of warmth and Wi-Fi. With nae pay.

Wi-Fi’s aff.

What do you mean? It is in bloody big letters on the side of your bus. Free Wi-Fi.

Don’t believe everything written on the side of a bus. Get in lads, some of us have to work.

The Four musketeers: for warmth, companionship and we’ll get over the missing Wi-Fi.

You can sit beside the windae, Angus. It should get light soon.

I’ve got the flask – who wants a cuppa?

He’s got a point, the driver.  Hasn’t he? No' about clogging up the bus, that’s pure drivel.  But about being heat-surfers. Think aboot what we do each week.

Monday, we have the soup lunch in the community centre. No bad soup, though.

Oh feck, Colin, is that you? What did you eat?

Tin of beans with sausages. Straight from the tin, nae need to heat. It’s that or pot noodles.

Give it a wave to disperse.

There we go – up to the frozen north.

Tuesdays we’re in the library. Warm, quiet and we can catch up on the papers.

Wednesdays a free bus trip. With a flask and a piece.

And the hope the toilet works.

Thursday is senior swim; a long soak in the hot jacuzzi; a shower and a wash. And it only costs a quid.

I’m going to church on Sundays now.  It is warm and they’ve got lovely home-baking afterwards.

We’re regular social butterflies these days.

That’s what it has come to, lads. Heat-surfers, free-food surfers. In our seventies and we cannae heat our ain homes and sit and watch the telly like old folk are supposed te dae.

The other day I was in the Community Centre, the local warm bank, having tea and a piece. Comes this social worker up to me and says: ‘Can you please help with this?’ I didn’t feel I could say: ‘No pal, you’re getting paid for this, not me’. So ah’m sitting there stuffing envelopes.

Nothing wrong with a bit of work; plenty of folk our age work for B&Q or Asda, to get some much-needed dosh.

Ach away and boil your heid, Angus. don’t you see what is happening? They’ve got us by the balls: old, cold and grateful for a cuppa and a piece. Silver Surfers? Bollocks! Next step: the workhouse.

 

 

 

 


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