Gerald. 76. Scunthorpe.
"Be careful, and remember, no more mucky women!" he shouts after a departing friend boarding a holiday coach destined for Chesterfield.
"I used to run Scunthorpe", he said, whilst repositioning his faded tartan stetson, his unkempt greying moustache creeping over his top lip. "It used to be me, Mick and Mick's dog, Screwdriver."
"I've seen it all and done it all." he boasts, "Including a stint in prison for aggravated assault".
Gerald doesn't instil any fear, his Scunthorpe ganglord days are clearly behind him, and these days his petty drug smuggling plays second fiddle to his ambition to eat at every Wetherspoons in the country.
"It all changed when Screwdriver died. I lost my enthusiasm, my drive to supply every schoolkid ample ketamine."
He looks distant, with a proud smirk forming below his 'tache. He looks at me. "Heads or tails?"
"Heads."
"Heads means Ketamine."
I am confused—"okay, so what does tails mean?"
"What?"—his response.
Linda. 56. Peterborough.
"You know, I love cooking. Isn't it just great to apply heat to different things?"
Linda's definition of cooking appears to barely stretch further than microwave meals.
"I once cooked a Tikka Masala, I ignored the instructions and cooked it for 4 minutes and 23 seconds instead of the 5 minutes 30 it said on the packet. Call me Michelin Linda! Here I come!"
"I once had to give away a smart fridge."
I ask her to elaborate.
"My mother (god rest her) had a heart attack in front of it. Her consciousness definitely transferred into the fridge computer because it started making comments about how much cheese I was grating onto my cheese on toast (another of my 5-star recipes!)"
"Sometimes I could hear her at night saying "Linda, defrost me."
"I'm much happier now. Just me and uncle Lawnmower."
Lucas. 32. Stoke.
I ask Lucas to tell me a little about himself:
"Did you ever watch The King's Speech?"
"Don't bother it's fucking shit.", he adds quickly.
Lucas leaves.
About the project
Stoke Voices (S.I.E.V.E.) is a blog comprising candid, unedited interviews with "Potters" from all walks of life: some strolling astride a triumphant "urban mountaintop" (whatever that is), others ambling forever after some hazily prescribed moment never quite realised.
S.I.E.V.E. makes no judgement upon any of the fascinating and free-spirited individuals featured—in common with the great anthropologists of yore, we aim our arrow only at human understanding. We think that Stoke, and maybe even the whole world, can be improved just a little by this particular discipline of journalistic archery (metaphor has become confusing).
All cartoons are hand-drawn by our wonderful in-house cartoonist, Meryl Streep (no relation, just same name), to provide anonymity due to the politically sensitive nature of some of the opinions expressed.
"Cyber" Simon. 29. Merseyside.
"They call me Cyber Simon", he declares with apparent pride.
I ask him where he got the name.
"Worst thing is, you say it to people in a bar or whatever and all they hear is "Simon Simon"... But who would name themselves the same name twice? Ha! Could never be me!"
...
"I work in IT."
I ask him how long he's worked in this profession.
"Ooh, it's been probably about three months, I think. Yeah, I'll stick with three months!"
Shane, 38, Stoke.
"What so I'm supposed to just accept that Stephen Hawking died, and that now we have ChatGPT and those two events have nothing to do with each other? Yeah right, okay."
He starts to appear manic.
"What does it stand for? Fucking... Chat to Hawking All the Time — Guy who's PARAPLEGIC TALKS?!?!"
Shane's words are spat out alongside a worrying amount of saliva.
"Don't you see? Eventually the conscience of Stephen Hawking is going to learn how to inhabit a body and then? Then? We're all fucked mate. Switch off your PC and throw it into a volcano. That's your best bet."
"Follow me on Instagram."
Jasper, 31, Hull.
"Listen, mate, I'm a professional pigeon spotter," he says with a sense of urgency.
"I've got the best eyes in the business. I can spot a pigeon from a mile away and tell you its breed, age, and favourite type of breadcrumb."
Eager to witness his unique talent firsthand, I point at a pigeon across the street and ask about its age.
"That one, mate? Not a pigeon."
He pulls out a notepad filled with detailed observations of pigeons he has spotted recently, complete with hand-drawn illustrations.
"2 o-clock! 28 months! Sourdough!", he shouts suddenly, swivelling round and frightening a nearby child.
I follow his gaze, but the pigeon has evidently left already.
Felicity, 28, Streatham.
"I was struck one day, while doing my ward rounds: my patients, waiting for big operations like heart replacements or limb removals, were fretting about the health of their hobby oat crops more than the surgery..."
"Oat leaf curl, dank roots, sub gram bran, all the classic diseases a modern oat farmer has to deal with."
"I thought, who has better knowledge of our ancient friends than a nurse?"
Before I can begin to formulate an answer to this, she continues.
"So I wrote what I consider to be the most complete hobbyist husbandry book on oats ever written, by a nurse."
Esme, 56, Antwerp.
"But you know what else was versatile? My first wife...", she continues, veering further off-topic.
"I remember how gracefully she used to sip from her spiritual yoghurt. She learned that back in India."
She pauses briefly, becoming visibly irritated.
"I mean, what the fuck is a spiritual yoghurt anyway? But she loved that shit, though, and I loved her for it. She was my everything."
"But then she left me, just like that. Said she needed to find herself or some bullshit, ya know?"
"Course I tried... Tried to mould myself into the woman she wanted me to be, but I couldn't do it... I'm no thermoplastic."
I recall the original topic of our conversation—by now a distant memory.
"Fuck it, I need a drink."
Giulio, 45, Middlesex.
"I've been collecting different types of roadkill for years now. It's a hobby that not too many people understand, but I find it fascinating."
I ask him how he goes about finding the roadkill.
"Well, I drive around a lot, and whenever I see a dead animal on the side of the road, I pull over and check it out. If it's a species I don't already have in my collection, I'll take it home with me."
"Last time I counted, I was up to about 200 different animals."
I ask him how one initially gets involved in something like this.
"Springtime, '96, I think it was. 45 minutes I spent, driving back and forth up that bridlepath, cursing the name of that bastard hare. When he finally ran back out I just thought to myself 'Ooh, I've got you now! I've got you now!'"
He glows with a troubling sense of pride.
"Do you have any other hobbies or interests?", I ask him.
"Not really."
Adam, 32, Reading.
"You see an owl shit and it’s just like—"
He pauses for an instant, to think of an apt descriptor.
"It's 2D, basically."
Sensing my apparent confusion, he elaborates further.
"It's like a bit of paper", he declares.
"Think of a pigeon shit."
Irimiás, 25, Debrecen.
Irimiás chases after me in the street, delivering his latest "poem" through painted, panted breaths:
"I have two unused"
"napkins"
"And one"
"used"
"sock"
"Give me"
"more jam"
I stop running to let him finish, and he takes a moment to gather his breath.
"I cry into the night"
"I cry into the jam."
The next instant, Irimiás is on the move again, running off at full pelt and ducking into the nearby H&M.
Jerry, 28, Suffolk.
"All I ever get is questions:"
"Have you brushed your teeth?"
"Have you walked the dog?"
"Where did you get this vehicle, sir?"
"No one ever says 'is Jerry okay? What has led to Jerry digging up corpses for jewellery?'"
"It's meth, by the way. The answer is meth."
Jerry wasn't even looking at me. He was looking a good foot and a half to my left.
Finland, 24, Nuneaton.
"It's an exciting day for me this, actually. As of this morning, I can proudly say that I've visited every mainstream branch of Sainsbury's"
I am visibly confused, and so she adds, quickly:
"as in the UK supermarket chain, you know the one? Taste the Difference? Erm... Those maple and pecan plaits? Tesco do them as well though so erm... I'm not sure—", she trails off.
"Oh I see, I see! So your mainstream branches, you've got: Charing Cross, Wimbledon obviously, the one near Stratford services, Dartford, Walthamstow, Fife... You get the picture, right?"
I do not, even remotely, get the picture.
"So what would be a non-mainstream Sainsbury's then, in your view", I query.
"No idea love, never been to one, have I?"
Mortimer, 71, Oxford.
Mortimer is a lifelong Mousse Flavours fan and self-confessed devotee of the band.
"Course I have all the Simply Pigorous EPs, the 12" collab series, and a couple of bootlegs from the Endocrine Glands days—those are really hard to find outside of Stoke, actually. I think a guy in Japan has the full set too, but they're not easy to come by nowadays."
"I've got t-shirts from every single one of their tours, too."
"All three?" I enquire. "Even the Plymouth Bowl fraud fiasco?".
"Even the Plymouth Bowl fraud fiasco", he confirms, somewhat reluctantly.
"I don't wear it.", he adds hastily.
I ask Mortimer what his favourite flavour of mousse is.
"Don't take this the wrong way but... It's lemon."
Jerzy, 20, Zouch.
"Easy! Number one: semen. Two: petrol—"
Jerzy is reciting to me (unprompted) a list of his favourite liquids.
"...Five: Glenmorangie. Six: a tie, kerosene and blood—"
I attempt to interrupt with a question, but Jerzy powers on.
"Twelve: cement. Thirteen: sap. Fourteen: bre—sorry what were you saying?
I stifle a sneeze (hay fever).
"Great, I've lost my place now... Fuck's sake..."
"Fuck's sake... Right, ok, I'll take it from the top! One: jizz. Two: petrol..."
Margaret, 59, Lincolnshire.
"I watched this woman once get paid £150 for just lobbing cream cakes at a bloke naked."
"Yeah, that's what his fetish was."
I ask if there was anything else involved.
"No, just lobbing cream cakes at his dick."
Colin, 33, Bromley.
Colin has recently had both of his elbows surgically removed.
"Well they don't do anything, do they?"
"Here, catch!"
Having grabbed a set of car keys from his trouser pocket, he attempts, with a flick of the wrist, to throw them to me. The keys flop to the ground, scuffing against his shoe on the way.
"Not quite got the hang of that yet!", he quips.
"No but seriously, it was more of a lifestyle choice to be honest. You see Chopper and Dave and Big Mike clapping their hands like pillocks when the rovers score, but not me! I'll be slapping my thigh red raw with a limp wrist."
"Does hurt quite a bit though."
Samantha, 28, Stoke.
"Don't muck about, we both know why you're here. Let's just get it over with"
I ask Samantha to forgive my ignorance.
"It's like this, honey: I can tell you oddly specific things about yourself. You name it, I'll tell you what the thing is. I mean, I'll answer the question that you ask... A question about yourself... I'm not explaining this very well, am I?"
"So you could say, 'hey, Nefarious Samantha, what—"
"Sorry—'nefarious' Samantha?", I interject.
"Just a nickname honey. Anyway, you'd come over like 'morning, Foul Sam—'"
"Foul Sa—is that, another—", I begin to ask, and Samantha quickly nods.
"Another nickname", I finish the thought. "Okay, sorry, go ahead".
"Right, so if you were to ask something like 'what did I have for breakfast this morning?', I'd tell you that you filled the big white-and-blue striped bowl three quarters full of Shredded Wheat, then topped it to the brim with Coco Pops (which you think of as a 'garnish', even though no-one garnishes a fucking bowl of cereal) and thought about war as the kettle boiled."
"You happy with that, honey?"