The Bunker Diary Read Online Free PDF Page A

like it because there’s nothing to
like down here, simple as that. So, yeah, I can cope on my own. But I have to admit
it’s pretty good to have someone else around. Someone to talk to, someone to react
with. It makes me feel better.
    It doesn’t make things any less crap,
of course. Or less scary. Or less anything, really. But it’s all right.
    It’s just gone 9 p.m. now. The lift
has gone up.
    Jenny’s reading the bible.
    I’m sitting in my nest, talking to
you, to me, to you …
    Now there’s a thought. Who
are
you?
    Who
am
I talking to?
    I don’t know.
    I have no one in mind for
you
. I
know you’re somewhere, but right now you’re nowhere, and I’m talking
to myself.
    I have to think about the cameras.
    Midnight, lights out.

Thursday, 2 February
    This morning the lift came down with most
of the stuff we’d asked for. No torch or candles (and obviously no radio, TV, or
mobile phone), but we got the kettle, an aluminium saucepan – both brand new – and all
the food and drink we’d asked for, except the chicken. I don’t know what
that means. Nothing, probably. There was also a new plastic fork to replace the one I
chopped up and melted.
    The kettle is one of those old-fashioned
whistling things that you boil up on the cooker. There aren’t any electric sockets
in here. The cooker and the fridge are bolted to the floor, so I can’t tell how
they’re connected. I expect the cables are threaded through the wall. I’ll
have to look into that. There’s a lot of things I need to look into. Like how to
get out of here, how to sort out the cameras, how to keep things from getting too
manky.
    The smell, for instance.
    Things are starting to stink a bit.
We’ve both been washing fairly regularly, but it doesn’t matter how often
you wash if you wear the same clothes all the time. You can’t help smelling bad.
And anyway, with the cameras watching us, it’s not easy to feel good about
stripping off to have a good wash. The rest of it is bad enough. Jenny won’t go to
the lavatory unless the lights are out. I don’t know how she manages. I just try
to ignore the cameras. Ignore him. Pretend he’s not there. Nocameras, no one watching. Close your eyes, imagine you’re somewhere else,
believe it.
    Believe it, that’s the thing. Believe
your own lies.
    The smell of unwashed bodies isn’t
very nice, but I don’t mind it too much. I’m used to it. I always kept
myself pretty clean on the streets, but a lot of them don’t bother. I don’t
think Lugless
ever
washed. It’s understandable. So you smell a bit, so
what? Everyone smells. It’s no big deal. And once your body odour reaches a
certain level it doesn’t really get any worse anyway. So why bother trying to keep
clean? What do you get out of it? Not much. I only made the effort because, for some
reason, when I look dirty I look
really
dirty. Nasty-dirty, like something
that’s crawled out from under a rock. My hair is quite long, and if I don’t
give it a brush now and then, or at least run my fingers through it, it mats up into
ratty old ropes and makes me look like a mad person. And if I don’t wash, my skin
gets kind of greyish, which gives me the sickly look of a junkie. I don’t
particularly mind looking like a mad junkie, but it doesn’t help when I’m
busking. People don’t mind giving money to a sweet-looking homeless kid, but when
they see a wild-haired loony on the street they tend to assume he’s going to blow
the cash on crack or heroin or something, and to them that’s
bad
.
That’s
wrong
. W-R-O-N-G. It’s bad enough begging for fags and
booze, but drugs? Oh, no. I’m not giving
my
money to a drug addict.
    Take Windsor Jack, for example.
Windsor’s not that handsome, kind of beaky-nosed and mean-looking, and he’s
only got one leg. Well, one and a half legs, actually. He fell asleep one night when he
was mashed out of his head, slept for twenty-eight hours with his leg all twisted up
under hisbody, and when he woke