I'm spending most mornings in the local library on Lavender Hill, working on various writing projects, so it's probably time for the first of an occasional series of entries about the interesting cast of characters I encounter in the Battersea Reference Library.
No. 1: The Gangsta Unwrappa
The Gangsta Unwrappa is a young black guy, dressed like a poor man's 50 Cent, who swaggers into the library every morning with a selection of noisy foods that he proceeds to eat in as disruptive a fashion as possible. His favourite foods are those which are both noisy to open and to eat, a mainstay being a large packet of Butterkist popcorn.
He wanders noisily around the room, talking to himself and shoving great fistfuls of popcorn in his mouth, much of which misses and ends up on the floor. On his travels he makes a point of sitting in various chairs, as if looking for the perfect one, but rarely settles for more than five minutes.
The Gangsta Unwrappa is a genius at treading the delicate line between "inconsiderate bastard" and "genuine nutter" so despite numerous imagined scenarios where I force-feed him the remaining popcorn then throw him out onto the street through the satisfyingly saloon-like double doors of the library, I'm always stopped by the sudden image of the front page of the local newspaper with the headline "vulnerable local man in unprovoked library attack".
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