I actually had a lot of respect from the local speed dealers (particularly being a reliable cash customer) I could ride my £400 British made touring bike into their squat, leave it there and no one would dare touch it…
it was a bit of a paranoid buzz as comedowns/mood swings aside, I was buying “middle level dealer” amounts – had I been caught I would probably have got at least a Court appearance (and been named and shamed) if ont jail
At one point I was definitely being watched by “Echo Tango” (the CCTV ops in the city I then lived in) who were curious about why an Asian chap wearing a shirt and tie tended to spend so much time chatting with squatters/big issue sellers (many of whom were friends of mine) on his lunch breaks, I suspect that my distinctive bike (few people my age group ride tourers or hybrids) and the routes I took attracted their attention.
The squat though was classic, far from being a filthy den with needles everywhere it was proper spotless, you could eat your tea off the floor! The Welsh girl I mentioned in a earlier post would go on big cleaning binges and force anyone else present to help her..
On one ket/speed binge I woke up in the middle of the night thinking ghosts were everywhere, and even tried to get the cat to look for them with me (he gave me a sort of “nah mate, you’ve proper lost it this time” look and went back to sleep, so I had to do all the searching myself).
If the cat woke me up on a comedown I’d just meow back at it (got quite good at doing a Siamese cat impression), he’d either go and wake up my mum or sister and get fed that way, or go to sleep at the foot of my bed until I woke up. Started regularly meowing at cats around that time (2002), and still do this today, even when sober.
