W.'s street. The houses at the bottom are no longer derelict, he says. You used to be able to see the faces of children behind the cracked windows like ghosts, but now developers have moved in.
You must always live among the poor, W. says. This part of the city was once very wealthy, he observes. His own house was owned by a ship's captain, he says – imagine it! We stand back and admire its storeys.
The railway to London used to run through here, he tells me a little later. Passengers would disembark straight from their cruise liners onto the train, and went straight up to London. The houses are still grand, W. says, although most of them have been turned into flats now. They're full of alcoholics and drug addicts, he says. No one wants to live here.
The children like to bang on the window as we sit inside and drink Tequila. Ignore them, says W., don't give them any attention. He's not fightened of them, he says later as he closes the shutters. They're strangely lost, he says, you can see it in their eyes.
Their grandparents would have moved down from Scotland, like everyone around here, W. says. Thousands of them came down to the dockyards a couple of generations ago, but now there's no work for them now, nothing. So what do they do but drink all day?
He'd drink all day, says W., if he had nothing to do. Sometimes they punch him or throw ashtrays at Sal but that's alright. He'd be exactly the same, says W.
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