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Welcome to the Glamorous World of Low Income Housing in Scotland! [PICS]

 
 
Nobody's girl
22:40 / 08.06.05
As the blurb on the Scottish Tourist Board website describes, there's no single element that defines the area I live in, "Rather, it's a subtle blend of many different ingredients that have been added to the mix down through the centuries."

Those ingredients range from the tame yet sinister older couple that live in the flat below us whose penchant for excessive smoking and cooked liver have caused us regular olfactory distress to the guy living in the house right next to us (although thankfully in a different stair) who, in wee hours, often likes to chuck furniture at our adjoining walls when arguing with his girlfriend and who has just been hauled away by the cops for beating the crap out of his bedroom window, observe the wreckage-







I do try not to let these things bother me, and accept it as part of the rich urban tapestry, but this dude lives literally right next to us-


I think he's having a bit of a difficult break up, earlier whilst trying to nap I was awoken to this phrase repeated over and over at top decibel- "KEELLLLLLYYYYYYYYY!!!!!! THERE'S SUMMA MA STUFF STILL IN THERE...KEELLLLLLLYYYYYYY..."

I'm beginning to wonder if a strange breed of luddites has emerged in my street only, of which this guy is definitely member. This new breed don't seem to believe buzzers, doorbells or telephones are reliable tools to ascertain whether or not somebody is at home, they would rather shout up at the desired house Romeo style for a good twenty minutes or so until absolutely sure that no-one is home. Often even this twenty minute long barrage is not satisfactory and the querent will return at random intervals during the night (never the daytime) to check and make sure. When all else fails, as seen above, a window will suffer or perhaps a door. Observe our stair door-



Note the grey metal panel on the doorframe, that's where the old locks were, until we got so fed up by the drug dealer in our stair disabling them so his clients could get in and out easily that we had one actually embedded in the doorframe. You'll note that the wire-mesh window panel at the top of the door is neatly complimented by the plain wire-mesh panel at the bottom, stapled to the door frame. This bottom panel had been reglazed so many times in the space of one year that the wire mesh seemed a better option, until that too was kicked in by a junkie desperate for a a fix. Classy, eh?

Also adding to the local colour in my street is the perma-tipping. Perhaps because low-income housing is high turnover, people are always throwing out furniture.

Currently, just outside out front door, we are treated to the beautiful sight of an old toilet bowl-


Also, for the past few days, the pub on the corner has had what looks like an old air conditioner sitting outside it-



I reckon if we had one of those signs, like on building sites, "It has been _ days since someone left a piece of crappy old furniture on the street" we'd never get past day two. I'm toying with the idea of regularly updating this thread with photos of the rapidly circulating detritis of my street, you'd be amazed by the sheer relentless quantity. I know I am.


Finally, observe the misplaced faith my local council had in its residents. Clearly they thought the simple manoever of "open big smelly communal bin and place household bin bags inside" was idiot proof, but we showed 'em!

I love it. Bags on top, bags at the bottom, nothing inside.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
00:52 / 09.06.05
I really like this (IMHO, it has shades of Vonnegut's 'Breakfast of Champions'). Please keep it going, or do a weblog, or... something.
 
 
Ganesh
01:13 / 09.06.05
S'making me nostalgic.
 
 
Loomis
07:32 / 09.06.05
Yeah you complain now but don't come crying to me when you need a new toilet and they've taken away the one I left for you outside your building ...

We have a couple across the street from us who also don't believe in using the intercom. I love being woken at 3am to a chorus of LETTTTTTTTTTTTT MEEEEEEEEEEEE INNNNNNNNNNNNN! LETTTTTTTTTTT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE INNNNNNNNNNN!! And once they were having a big shouting match: YOU'RE A FUCKING JUNKY! NO I'M NOT! YES YOU FUCKING ARE YOU'RE A JUNKY! I'M NOT A JUNKY!!! I was half asleep and I thought he was calling her a donkey. It was far more amusing that way until Ariadne told me what they were really saying.
 
 
■
07:39 / 09.06.05
There does seem to be something wrong with the brains of Edinburgh residents when it comes to rubbish.
Fly tipping magnet
This spot is a magnet for crap. Whenever people want to tart up their house and sell it for extortionate amounts of money they rip out their fixtures and dump them here, and then wonder why buyers aren't interested. It's because you've turned the area into a rubbish tip, you morons. What is so hard about calling the council and getting them to pick it up for free. You can do that up to 12 times a years, muppets. It's not like it's hard. Graaaagghh.
Will detail mad Greek neighbour throwing rocks at his own window while his girlfriend was inside later.
 
 
Axolotl
07:47 / 09.06.05
While all my neighbours are fine I had to pick my way through a crime scene (complete with Scene of Crime Officers - you know the ones in the white overalls) to get the Sunday papers this weekend. And the police came round one night at around 1:30 to ask if I had any information about a "disturbance" which freaked me out quite considerably. Especially when he started asking me where I worked.
 
 
Nobody's girl
10:04 / 09.06.05
Please keep it going, or do a weblog, or... something.

Hey, no problem. I find it oddly cathartic to talk about.

Loomis, Ariadne, try to see it as local colour. At least it was funny.

What is so hard about calling the council and getting them to pick it up for free.

Well, certainly in my street anyway, you'd have to care first. One of the things that makes me rather sad about our street is I know this is a bit of a depressing ending for it. My flatmate's family have lived here for decades and back in the day it was much more of a community, "Broons" stylee. Not that "The Broons" are a particularly desirable example for anything apart from the community aspect.
 
 
The Falcon
11:19 / 09.06.05
The Broons are all the same family! That's no substitute for a community.
 
 
■
11:42 / 09.06.05
Oh, aye? Whit aboot the laird up at the But'n'Ben? And that bus conductor who made Paw's pockets shoogle wi' all that spare change?
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
13:17 / 09.06.05
I'm not sure that I approve of the content of this new computer game, but the screenshots are gorgeous...
 
 
_Boboss
15:10 / 09.06.05
granpa broon lived acoss town didn't he, in the nicer old people's bit?

crivven's! whit's that? the bairn owerheard gran'paws pals in the park say he'd fractured his wee hip? etc.

my famlee used to live in one o them 'whally closes' - is that what they're called? nice tiling up the stairs. is it like that round your way?
 
 
Mourne Kransky
19:44 / 09.06.05
Good try Gumbitch but wally closes only in Glasgow, the wally denoting the tiles. Edinburgh closes have doors but no tiles, just fabulous squabbling neighbourts and dead junkies.
 
 
Loomis
07:24 / 10.06.05
And while we're on the subject, don't forget my bestest pub evah The Wally Dug.
 
 
Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!
19:06 / 14.06.05
It is to laugh.

Last night, Nobody's Girl and I (we cohabitate) heard strange banging noises from outside the flat. It sounded like somebody was banging the lid of a bin, so I was unconcerned until I saw a guy stand up, drunkenly, carrying a heavy wooden door. On our street, this might be a bad sign. He wobbled, drunkenly, having trouble keeping his eyes open. Then, bracing himself against a car as he nearly fell over, he pushed the door away from him as if it were rejecting his advances or something. It slammed down on the ground. Seemingly displeased with the result, he took to picking the door up and repeatedly throwing it down at the ground (and the previously pictured toilet) until it broke in two. Seemingly satisfied, he came into our stair (where he apparently lives damn it) and went home, drunkenly stumbling up the stairs.

Sadly, I didn't manage to get any pictures of his antics, but we have the immediate results:



Exactly as he left it, three minutes after he went inside.

Also, our neighbour (Mr. Shouty) seems to have a bathtub in his backyard. Actually, now it's in the middle of the sidewalk out front, but I'm not too bothered.



Someone left a wardrobe in our backyard, and it's taken up residence in a dark corner and proceeded to look frightening and rain-soaked, but somehow sinister.



Also, (no pic) but for some unknown reason somebody has been leaving a tea towel draped over the side of the bin across the street from us. Weird.
 
 
Ariadne
19:10 / 14.06.05
I can't believe the door broke and the toilet stayed whole. My Mum broke a loo seat recently just dropping a plant on it - and that one survived, and broke, a whole door? I hope you checked your own door is still there...
 
 
Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!
19:40 / 14.06.05
Indeed, although experience tells us we should worry more about junkies kicking in our door, not stealing and slamming them against a loo.

I think I will try to get pictures of the inevitable "Saturday Night: Drunken Fight" sometime soon.
 
 
subcultureofone
20:34 / 14.06.05
perhaps your door-breaking drunken neighbor wanted to take advantage of the conveniently-located sidewalk commode but wanted a little privacy and could not figure out why the perfectly good door he found wouldn't work properly when he brought it over to the toilet.

you have my sympathy. i once lived in an apartment with a lovely view of a small parking lot mainly used for prostitution, complete with sofas around the perimeter looking even more menacing than your mystery wardrobe. i couldn't afford cable, so if i was bored i could always turn out the lights and peek out my window.
 
 
haus of fraser
20:48 / 14.06.05
do you not have a reclaimation yard round your way?

surely given the pics there is money to be made from all the royal doulton lining the streets.

sorry guys i'm a bit pissed, but maybe there is a buck to be earned from these fuckwits?

check out scrap merchants and see who's interested- it may give you enough for a round- vintage toilettes etc...
 
 
Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!
20:50 / 14.06.05
i couldn't afford cable, so if i was bored i could always turn out the lights and peek out my window.

Geez, that is harsh.

As far as selling for scrap goes, it's all in poor condition, but I'll keep it in mind.
 
 
■
22:32 / 14.06.05
That bath looks great! I'll be round soon to pick it up. Looks like a proper enamel job, gotta be worth a few sovs, guv.
 
 
Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!
00:02 / 15.06.05
Come get it. It's sitting on the sidewalk just up from my house, looking sad and dangerous.
 
 
Shrug
00:05 / 15.06.05
I used to live in five storey house converted into flats which lay directly beside an old men's hostel. Oh the stories I could tell if hadn't repressed them for my own sanity. *shivers*
 
 
Golias
09:15 / 15.06.05
Maybe the guy carrying the door got fed up losing his key when out on the piss and decided
"Fuck it!Ah'll no lose ma door!".

I used to live in Blantyre,The Armpit of Scotland, but decided to move out when the murder rate started climbing.
Now I live in a terrible swanky place.
Example- A gang of neds loitering outside my house were causing their usual brand of buckfast fuelled,low-key mayhem so I stepped out and called to them,'Ye's waant tae fuck off before ah phone the polis!'.
The Blantyre respose would have been,'Shut yer c*nthole ya prick!' and bottle through my window.
These lads replied,'Nae bother big man,sorry'.
The poor wee souls seem to have lost their fighting spirit...or maybe the monks have started adding Ritalin to the bucky.
 
 
folded
13:05 / 15.06.05
My sympathies to everyone here. This kind of thing boils me.

I live in Australia, in a beachside suburb- but it isn't something like on one of the Oz soaps you might have seen. Beachside areas here, outside metro areas, unless a well-trod holiday spot or yuppie bolthole, are generally a big socio-economic mashup, mostly poor people who figure if they're going to be poor it may as well be somewhere near the water. My area is very pretty in many ways- ocean a few mintues away by bike, good weather etc. But the pocket my house is in is pretty poor (by Australian/Western standards). Which is fine by me- I grew up in the same kind of areas. But what I don't understand so much (as someone who remembers other eras) is why people have to trash their own environment. Not having money is bad enough without brawling in the streets all weekend long, frontyards that never get tended and are full of rubbish etc, using four letter words not as punctuation but as the space between words! LOL. Every morning I have to clean up my garden and surrounds with empty beer bottles, snapped signage etc. etc. Friday/Saturday nights are like a zombie movie: you turn off the lights at about 10pm, bolt the doors and wait it out. If you have the lights on, people will chuck stuff at the windows, knock on the door asking for drink/phone etc. or just generally have a pitched battle right outside because they know that some poor bastard (ie. my family) is inside and has to listen to their drunken raging.

Why can't people just get organised and if they want to blow off some steam, go and trash a rich area, instead of their own homes?

For a very pretty area we've had some bad stuff happen here (including a home invasion where my father was visiting from Sydney and got stabbed- he's OK now- a few times for his trouble. When I moved in I put a white picket fence around my house as a kind of Lynchian flourish. It lasted 3 weeks before a car missed the corner and crashed through it at 3 in the morning. Now I've got a big concrete ugly thing as a crash barrier of sorts). I remember other eras and I've been other places and seen people who make much better of bad situations. We've got so much in this country and many just piss all over it. Sure, there's big problems here like anywhere, but how does it help by trashing your surrounds and even your neighbours? Australian larrikinism used to be about fun- now its about taking pcp and going out in a big group and beating up on some poor solitary sod out for a walk (as happened yesterday to my neighbour's kid who's also got Down Syndrome to deal with).

Man- sorry for the rant. I don't advocate laws/police/regs etc. I just wish people would grow a brain and think things through a bit instead of lashing out at people who are pretty much in the same boat as them.

My sympathies to everyone here for the kind of stuff they've got to deal with.

Maybe some of you could move here and sort this out eh? Its got beaches, great weather etc. Australians like to think of themselves as hard laconic bastards but I suspect you Scots may be harder and able to sort 'em out! And I like the accents much better than our crow-caws...
 
 
Mourne Kransky
13:34 / 15.06.05
Nah, us Scots just get drunk and dismantle the household fittings, as you can see from the above. Nothing that constructive.

The posters on this thread might live in Scotland but they are a splendidly cosmopollitan crew, gathered from all over the world. That Ariadne is practically a kiwi and Loomis is a marsupial. And Tom Tit is, I believe, a transatlantic ambassador to the frozen Southern Land of South East Edinburgh.

I'm a Scot but I took the Low Road to the Saxon Lands long since. Now I am plagued by antisocial Portuguese - not a phenomenon I had to deal with in Edinburgh.
 
 
folded
14:02 / 15.06.05
But some here still have the great accent though right? The bloke at my former workplace had one and it always lifted me up. My Oz twang/drawl/caw is mostly gone from too much travel and I'm glad of it- if I hear one more person take 5 minutes to say "maaaaaaaayyyyyyhhhhhtttttt" I'll throttle someone!

Reading the posts in this thread made me realise something though- this kind of thing is bloody everywhere. (I've been getting all Apocalyptic lately- too much listening to Jaz Coleman's "Courtauld Talks", Killing Joke etc. I find myself thinking that the little bit of fraying around the edges may turn into a big unravelling- but I suppose the frayings always been there- and always will be).

I think Mr Shouty's Antipodean cousin lives on my street.
 
 
Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!
01:01 / 18.06.05
And Tom Tit is, I believe, a transatlantic ambassador to the frozen Southern Land of South East Edinburgh.

Am I being... observed?

God, you'd think Scotland could muster some decent weather. The recent schizophrenic rain/hot/sunny/torrential/humid bullshit is really pissing me off. But I guess it's traditional scots weather, ie shitty and infuriating.

I have to walk 6 miles on Sunday. In the morning. For work. On my day off. It better not rain. *fume*

I find myself thinking that the little bit of fraying around the edges may turn into a big unravelling- but I suppose the frayings always been there- and always will be).

Well, yeah, pretty much. I used to subscribe to quite a "crazy libertarian with guns" style apocalyptic belief about society. I quit, and my mental health is better for it, believe me.

I think Mr Shouty's Antipodean cousin lives on my street.

But does he throw kangaroos at the wall when he fights with his girlfriend? Because, if so, take pictures...

Oh, speaking of which....

Directly across the street, placed artistically between two bins on a bollard; for your pleasure, a pair of socks.



Or perhaps you prefer the bathtub, now sitting in the middle of the sidewalk and containing what seems to be a moist (perhaps urine-stained?) rug.



Either way, when you can fit so much into one picture, it's a bad sign.

 
 
Loomis
07:51 / 18.06.05
That rug looks like it's just relaxing in the tub after a long day at the office.
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
18:39 / 18.06.05
"I say ol'chap? Do you mind passing me a sock to dry myself off?"
 
 
heimdallr
19:03 / 19.06.05
I used to live in a YMCA, that was interesting, getting woken up by the police because someone had took a dilsike to their corridor. I always remember getting woken up by the police again when 2 lads had set the wardens house on fire because they didn't like him. People placing bets on how long they could stay awake. aaahhhh good old days
 
 
pornotaxi
18:01 / 20.06.05
my own edinburgh stair is graced by wonderful artworks by local children:

Hosted by Putfile.com
 
 
pornotaxi
18:08 / 20.06.05
they bring a cheery message of hope to an otherwise drab stairway

Hosted by Putfile.com
 
  
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