THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING DOBBER

Not a day goes by without Dobber* stumbling past our gate on his daily mission to secure free beer and fags**. The later in the day he appears, the more unsteady his gait, as being a deceptively careful planner, he clearly has a few cans of lager readied the night before so that, when he awakes, he can start the day with a liquid breakfast to ensure his blood alcohol content remains stable. More often than not, his first port of call is the hairdressing salon two doors away, where he will inevitably regale my stylist Gerson with an incoherent monologue and/or rant. Depending on how thin his patience has worn, Gerson will frequently proffer a few notes and coins and ask Dobber to visit the supermarket down the road on the corner to buy him something, anything, on the unspoken understanding that the change will be used to purchase some more cheap alcohol. Cue Dobber stumbling past our gate again, this time heading in the opposite direction with a renewed sense of purpose.

As the salon has irregular hours and is not always open, Dobber will sometimes make his way over the road to the opposite corner, where a tailor operates out of his garage. Lengthy negotiations tend to ensue, and if the wind is blowing in the right direction, a similar visit will be paid to the supermarket to buy the tailor a twelve-pack of beer, a couple of cans being busted out in recompense. It’s like watching the noble hunter-gatherer, fixated only on securing enough supplies to avoid starvation, or in Dobber’s case, a debilitating bout of delirium tremens.

Part of me can’t help but envy his lifestyle, debauched as it may seem. There is a beautiful simplicity to his existence. He has no need for mindfulness meditation, as his sole focus each and every day is how to continue his permanent state of inebriation and keep the nicotine pulsing around his system. He lives with his mother, a melancholy woman who, on the rare occasions she ventures out, sits in front of the house, presumably wondering where it all went wrong.

I should not suggest that Dobber is a complete freeloader. Recently, showing an unexpectedly entrepreneurial bent, he came weaving around the corner pushing a wheelbarrow. It wasn’t at all clear where he got it from, or indeed if he was authorised to take it, but he had the air of a man on a mission, willing to push a wheelbarrow from point A to point B in return for a guaranteed supply of the amber nectar. A while ago, when a removal van arrived with some of my brother-in-law’s furniture, which he’d asked to store at our house, as I was going up the staircase, I was surprised to pass Dobber on his way down, fortunately carrying a dining room chair rather than a more delicate, breakable item. Never one to miss an opportunity to provide manual services in the hope of an alcohol-enabling tip.

There is a price to be paid, of course. Dobber’s dental hygiene is nothing to write a ballad about, and he has been known to drunkenly abuse strangers in bars, with predictable results. In fact, it’s not difficult to imagine that these two facts are related, that his almost complete lack of front teeth in part derives from multiple beatings dished out over the years. 

But on he goes, hobbling back and forth all day, every day, with an admirable laser-like focus. I just pray I don’t ever collapse and require mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when he’s in the vicinity.

* British English. NB - not his real name

** British English