Jakey Season

             The weather north of the border has begun to warm up. Yes, it can happen, although anyone who visited in 2024, the year of the summer that never was, may be surprised to hear that. With warmer temperatures, we enter ‘Jakey Season’.

Edinburgh

       I wish I could claim the credit for coining this term, but the first time I heard it was from a former manager. My English brethren are likely unaware of the meaning of the word jakey, so I have a definition from Dictionaries of the Scots Language for them. A jakey is ‘a slang word for a down-and-out, especially one who obviously drinks lots of jake [methylated spirits].’ I think this definition can be extended to include anyone with a substance abuse problem, and who’s not above stealing.

       Well, there are a lot of them up north, although it’s of course not a phenomenon limited to Scotland. I noticed an ample supply of jakeys on a couple of recent visits to London (I’ve been away from England for so long that I’m unfamiliar with the equivalent term.) And they do come out into society when the weather takes a turn for the better. Who knows how they fill their time in the long winters.

       I used to work on Leith Walk in Edinburgh, a street which didn’t have the finest reputation. It’s now probably less sketchy than it was, but no eyebrows would be raised if you were to inform someone that you’d run into a spot of bother there. It was here that I became very familiar with jakeys.

       I was generally very reluctant to leave our door open, for obvious reasons. One brilliant summer’s day, though, we took the risk. Within a short time, a tall and extremely thin man reeled into the shop like a zombie. He didn’t respond to my greeting – a bad sign - and walked straight over to the Italian section. He grabbed a bottle of wine, then bolted. My colleague gave chase, but the guy was, shockingly, as fast as a gazelle, even if his trousers did fall down as he was heading up the street.

       My eyes turned to the Italian section to see what the jakey had swiped. It was a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino! My mind promptly conjured up an image of him sitting on a bench in a dodgy park, or perhaps just sprawled out on the grass, swigging that excellent wine straight from the bottle. Talk about a waste.

       Readers would be wrong to assume that the jakey profession is restricted to men. There were a number of lasses with inglorious reputations in that part of the city. I recall another incident – again, on a fine summer’s day – when a female jakey zig-zagged through the open door. My alert level shot up like that of a twitchy cat. I told her I wouldn’t be able to sell her a drink as she was clearly intoxicated. Perhaps I approached the matter the wrong way, but I was trying to follow our legal obligations.

       She ignored me, took a bottle of rose, and held it out as if daring me to grab it. Twice I played her daft game, failing on both occasions to reach it. She backed out of the shop, opened the bottle, poured it all onto the pavement, then legged it.

  

       Alas, dealing with jakeys not only causes you to lose your faith in humanity, it also may result in you doubting the effectiveness of the boys in blue. One weekend, I noticed a couple of jakeys had crashed out side by side on a pallet next to the shop. Across the street was a restaurant, where families would sit outside. Remembering that drunk nuisances used to be dealt with swiftly, I reported them to the police. The officers who visited simply looked annoyed with me, and told me that there was no law against being drunk. A fine example for the children across the street then.

       So, that’s the meaning of Jakey Season. I’d think long and hard before leaving your door open.