Tales from Dr Bobs (Hepatitis Blog Hep C)

(another fictional tale from my youth!)

Tales from Dr. Bobs


Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, tucked away in deepest, darkest Tang Hall there was a chemists shop that was known infamously as Dr Bobs.

Now Tang Hall is not, as the name would suggest, a grand aristocratic dwelling reserved for famous Dukes and Duchesses from a bygone age. It is a council estate not too far from the centre of York as you go out on the Huntington Road, which incidentally, is where a motley crew and I once resided.

Now Tang Hall was a council estate mainly reserved for single mums, low paid parent families and the like. But Dr Bobs was on the estate and could only be described as the chemist shop that time forgot, run by a little wizened old man. It sold a limited amount of wares and was rarely used by the local mums and I should say that anything he sold had usually been on the shelves for months and looked colour faded or out of date. For that reason it was barely used at all unless nappies were needed on a bad weather day. It was amazing that the shop survived at all, but Dr Bobs had a secret ‘elixir’ that ensured it would not go out of business until Dr Bob himself, shed his mortal coils.

And the name of that elixir was Gee’s Linctus. Now like me, when I first heard of it, you’re probably thinking “what the hell is that” Well, in truth, it’s nothing more than cough mixture! It’s very rarely sold these days, if at all. But for a time it was the cough remedy that everybody trusted without question. But its main active ingredient was the one that ensured its own demise, except at Dr Bobs, and that was Codeine. Codeine is an opiate derivative and junkies went crazy for it when they couldn’t lay their hands on heroin!

I couldn’t begin to describe its vile flavour other than to say it tasted like cough mixture, thick and sticky but not sweet like modern medicines. I suppose this was to stop people doing what junkies were doing; drinking a bottle of it in one sitting to stave off the attacks of ‘cold-turkey’!

You see Dr Bobs wasn’t like Boots selling pre-packed treatments. He bought in the Codeine in gallon bottles and made up the linctus, like chemists used to. And best of all, he made it how the junkies liked it; good and strong! This ensured that he had a steady stream of customers every morning. Those unfortunate enough to be caught short, for a ‘pound a pop’ or so, had relief from the daily grind of finding some gear. Really he did an honest social service and ensured he was no burden on society in any way. Because of him residents of York were saved countless petty burglaries and damage to property to boot.

Our house on Huntington Road was an imposing detached three story house that had been divided into flats. Like most ‘studenty’ types of residence, it was damp, draftee and downright filthy and had never been decorated, repaired or cleaned since forever, but we liked it. It wasn’t that we were dirty by nature; we did personal hygiene to a fashion. We just never ever cleaned the flat unless the filth was making us puke or we had absolutely nothing else better to do. Or we were being threatened by some girl or other and more often than not, all of the above! Now the girl usually doing the threatening was Rachel, but man, when she threatened she did it good and loud and she meant it too! She was the only one amongst us who had any semblance of reality, I would say she was straight really and she held down a full-time job but unfortunately for her, her boyfriend was the biggest f*ckwit and wreck head you could hope to meet. His name was Kit and he was also my best mate. Now the one thing Rachel hated more than anything was Kit doing smack, which was rather unfortunate for just about everybody really!

The three floors of our house were made up like this; the basement flat was really damp and uninhabited with a garage door that led into it. We used this as a ‘stash’ so that if we got raided we could claim that it was nothing to do with us and so the Police / Drug Squad couldn’t touch it (the operative word here was ‘when’, not ‘if’).

The middle floor was again divided into flats which Kit Rachel and me inhabited. And the top floor belonged to a small, wiry asthmatic dope dealer who had just one lung and smoked pot continuously. He was a wise old cockney, our dope score and a really good friend of mine, god bless him. His name was Gubbinz and he had Jack Russell dog which he called ‘The Biz’

I remember that I lost my key after the first couple of weeks of living there so my solution was to use National Insurance Number card to ‘credit-card’ the door open rather than spend money at a locksmiths; a trick which has helped me out over the years on a number of occasions. And that was about the standard of things back then.

Now Kit, in order to hide his drug dependency and the money he was spending on it from Rachel had started to become a regular at Dr Bobs. In fact the complete and utter f*ckwit had only got himself addicted to the bloody stuff! I couldn’t believe it, I still shudder and want to ‘gip’ at the thought of the very smell of the stuff. Mindst you, it was universally known that I ‘gipped’ with any drug I came into contact with, so that’s nothing unusual!

And so Kit, and more often than not with Scottish Matt, who took anything he could get his hands on, would set off to Dr Bobs to get his daily dose. I’m sure Matt just went half of the time so he had a captive audience to spout complete and utter shite to coz man, could he talk cr*p for Scotland!

Then when they got back, it was down into the basement ‘stash’ to ‘neck’ a bottle or two of Dr Bob’s famous elixir. They guzzled every drop in the cold, dank basement flat that was strewn with motorcycle parts and various bits of stolen goods. Then it was time to hide the empty bottles, lest Rachel should venture downstairs. There was a huge dark wood wardrobe which ran ceiling to floor, about seven feet. Behind it there was a gap between it and the wall and it was the favourite hideout for Kits empties. It filled up and up and up! Then it was up to the telly room for Kit to have an opiate ‘drift’ a while, whilst Matt would pick endless amounts of imaginary fluff off the carpet and continue to tell you the same bull sh*t stories he’d told you a thousand times before and had last recited an hour or so ago. Now that’s what I call ‘living alright’, NOT.

Now one night, Kit and me were down in the ‘stash’ with a few other of the usual cronies, mainly Benny, Danny Hill and Daz Hayes as I remember. We were smoking some weed and chewing the fat as you do, deepest skulduggery and the like when we hear the top door open. It was Rachel coming to have a look at what Kit was up to; she knew him too well. She started to make idle chatter as she looked and poked around to see if Kit was keeping to the straight narrow and none of us were leading him astray with hard drugs, not that he needed encouragement from us. It was like being quizzed by the teacher as we answered “yes Miss, no Miss, three bags full Miss”

But on this occasion it was nothing out of the ordinary; nothing that Rachel wasn’t used to by now and everybody in the room knew what could and couldn’t be discussed in front of her. Her temper was legendry and for that reason the room always became a little tenser when she entered. But it just so happened that purely by chance Rachel glanced down the back of the wardrobe and said ‘Oh, it looks like there’s a load of bottles behind here.”

The room froze. Everyone, with probably the exception of Daz Hayes new exactly what she was looking at. And then she did it, she pushed the wardrobe just enough to let a hundred or so bottles come crashing down out of it. It was like one of those moments in a movie which happen in slow motion as someone shouts “Nooooooo”, in a deep ‘whale’ sounding sort of voice.

Then, still in slow motion, she bent down and looked at the bottle and she knew exactly what it was and who it belonged to. That didn’t stop her scanning the room to see who else knew what was happening and was ‘in’ on the scam!

Danny Hill as usual was the first to start his denials – guilty as charged!

Then Benny and me – without doubt, guilty.

Then Daz, not knowing what he was denying but denying it anyway – guilty.

Then Rachel turned to Kit and as her arm came back, bottle in hand and the last thing legible I heard as the rest of us beat a hasty retreat for the door was “You f*cking ba*tard”

I could hear the glass smashing and the insults flying and the explanations proffered as we scurried up the stairs to the telly room as Benny dropped the latch behind us. We stood there in a circle, our gobs and eyes wide open, staring at each other as we listened to the screams and sounds of breaking glass. Then Benny started to laugh, then one by one we all did and suddenly the room erupted as we fell about howling.

The next thing I heard was the door to the top flat opening as Gubbinz peered out of his door and shouts in his best cockney “What the fack is going on” so we all made a break for it up the short flight stairs, passed Gubbz and into his flat whether he liked it or not. It must have taken an hour or so to tell the story as we scremed and yelped almost as loudly as the couple downstairs.

Now that was what I call ‘living alright’ and I don’t think if I live to be a hundred I’ll find anything that could make me laugh harder than I did that day, and for that, I too am eternally grateful to Dr Bob.