By late afternoon, I’d accumulated enough cash to keep us going for a day or two, I reckoned. The main thing was that I had enough to keep the gas and electricity topped up until, hopefully, the weather improved.
‘Now, all we’ve got to do is get home,’ I said to Bob as we once more bent ourselves into the icy winds and headed back to the bus stop.
There have to be easier ways of earning a crust than this, I told myself in the warmth of the bus.
Making money was so hard, especially because the gap between those that had it and those that didn’t was growing ever greater. Working on the streets of London really was a tale of two cities, as I was reminded again a few days later.
I was standing just outside the concourse of Angel tube station with Bob on my shoulders around lunchtime, when I noticed a bit of a commotion going on inside at the ticket gate where passengers emerged from the trains below. A group of people were having an animated conversation with the attendants. When it was over they were let through seemingly without paying and started heading in our direction.
I recognised the large, slightly scruffy, blond-haired figure at the centre of the group immediately. It was the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. He was with a young boy, his son I assumed, and a small group of smartly-dressed assistants. They were marching straight towards my exit.
I didn’t really have time to think so I just reacted instinctively as he approached me.
‘How about a Big Issue, Boris?’ I said, waving a magazine in the air.
‘I’m in a bit of a rush,’ he said, looking flustered. ‘Hold on.’
To his credit he started digging around in his pockets and produced a pile of coins which he then proceeded to drop into my hands.
‘There you go. More valuable than British pounds,’ he said.
I didn’t understand what he meant but was grateful nevertheless.
‘Thanks very much indeed for supporting Bob and me,’ I said, handing him a magazine.
As he took it, he smiled and tilted his head slightly at Bob.
‘That’s a nice cat you’ve got there,’ he said.
‘Oh yes, he’s a star, he’s even got his own travelcard so he can travel around,’ I said.
‘Amazing. Really,’ he said, before heading off in the direction of Islington Green with his entourage.
‘Good luck, Boris,’ I said as he disappeared from view.
I hadn’t wanted to be rude and check what he’d given me a moment or two earlier, but, judging by the weight and number of the coins, it felt way more than the cover price of the magazine.
‘That was generous of him wasn’t it, Bob?’ I said, fishing around for the coins which I’d hurriedly stuffed in my jacket pocket.
As I looked at the small pile of cash, however, my heart sank. The coins all bore the mark Confoederatio Helvetica.
‘Oh no, Bob,’ I said. ‘He gave me bloody Swiss Francs.’
It was only then that the penny dropped, as it were.
‘That’s what he meant when he said more valuable than British pounds,’ I muttered to myself.
Except, of course, they weren’t more valuable.
It obviously hadn’t occurred to him that, while foreign bank notes can be exchanged at most banks and bureaux de change, coins cannot. They were, effectively, worthless. To me, at least.
One of our friends at the tube station, Davika, passed by a moment or two later.
‘Saw you with Boris, James,’ she smiled. ‘Did he see you all right?’
‘No he didn’t as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘ He gave me a pile of Swiss Francs.’
She shook her head.
‘That’s the rich for you,’ she said. ‘They live on a different planet from the rest of us.’
I just nodded quietly in agreement. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to me.
A few years earlier, I’d been busking in Covent Garden. It had been approaching 7.30pm, curtain-up time at most of the theatres and opera houses in the area, and a lot of people were breaking into a panicky trot as they emerged from the tube station. Unsurprisingly, few of them had any time to notice me strumming away with Bob at my feet, but one particularly flustered looking character in a bow tie did acknowledge me.
He saw me from a few yards away and instantly dug into his pocket. He was a very grand looking character with a mane of grey hair. I could have sworn I recognised him from the television, but couldn’t place him. When I saw him reach into his trouser pocket and pull out a scrunched up note, I thought my luck was in. It was red and looked all the world like a big denomination, possibly a £50 note. That was the only note I knew that had red in it.
‘There you go, my man,’ he said, thrusting it into my hand as he slowed down for a brief moment.
‘Cheers. Thanks very much indeed,’ I said.
‘Have a good evening,’ he said, laughing as he picked up speed again and ran towards the Piazza.
I had no idea why he was laughing. I assumed he was in a good mood.
I waited a few minutes until the crowds had died down a little before recovering the scrunched up note out of my pocket.
It didn’t take me long to work out that it wasn’t a £50 note. As I’d thought, it was red, but it had a picture of a bearded bloke I’d never seen before on it. It had the number 100 written on it. The writing was in some kind of Eastern European language. The only word that looked familiar was Srbije. I had no idea what it was or what it might be worth. It might have been more than £50 for all I knew. So I packed up my stuff and headed for a Bureau de Change the other side of the Piazza which I knew was open late for tourists.
‘Hi, can you tell me what this is worth, please?’ I said to the girl who was behind the window.
She looked at it and gave me a puzzled look.
‘Don’t recognise it, hold on, let me check with someone else,’ she said.
She went into a back office where I could see an older bloke sitting.
After a short confab she came back.
‘Apparently it’s Serbian, it’s 100 Serbian dinar,’ she said.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Can I exchange it?’
‘Let’s see what it’s worth,’ she said tapping away at a computer and then a calculator.
‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘That comes out at just over 70p. So we wouldn’t be able to exchange it.’
I felt disappointed. I’d secretly hoped that it might be enough money to get me and Bob through the weekend. Fat chance. There were times when I got really depressed by the predicament I found myself in. I had turned 30. The majority of guys of my age had a job or a car, a home and a pension plan, maybe even a wife and a few children. I had none of those things. Part of me didn’t actually want them, truth be told. But I did yearn for the security that some of those things brought. I was fed up with living off my wits on the streets. And I was fed up with being humiliated by those who had absolutely no concept of – nor sometimes any sympathy for – the life I was having to lead. There were times when I felt like I was close to breaking point. A few days after that incident with the Mayor, I felt like I had reached it.
Bob and I finished work early and headed down to the tube, jumping on a Northern line train to Euston then switching on to the Victoria line to Victoria Station. As we weaved our way through the tunnels, Bob walked ahead of me on his lead part of the way. He knew where we were heading.
We were meeting my father, something I’d begun to do more regularly in recent months. Relations between us had been pretty fraught in the past. When my parents had separated, my mother had won custody and taken me to live on the other side of the world, in Australia, so he’d barely known me when I was growing up as a little boy. By the time I’d come to London as a teenager, I was a real handful. Within a year of getting here, I had disappeared off the face of the earth and started sleeping rough. When I’d resurfaced, he’d tried to help me get back on track, but, to be honest, I had been almost beyond salvation.
We’d become a b
it closer when I’d started cleaning up my act a little and had got into the habit of meeting for a few drinks at a pub at Victoria Station. The staff there were pretty friendly and would let me slip Bob in provided I kept him hidden from the other punters. I’d learned to keep him under a table where he was happy snoozing. It was a cheap and cheerful place and we’d usually have a meal as well. It was always my dad’s treat. Well, I was never going to have the money to treat him, was I?
As usual, he was waiting there for me.
‘So what’s your news?’
‘Not a lot,’ I said. ‘I’m getting cheesed off with selling The Big Issue. It’s too dangerous. And London is full of people who don’t give a sh*t about you.’
I then told him the story about Boris Johnson. He gave me a sympathetic look but his reply was predictable.
‘You need to get yourself cleaned up and you need to get yourself a proper job, Jamie,’ he said. (He was the only person who called me that.)
I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes.
‘That’s easier said than done, Dad,’ I said.
My dad had always been a grafter, a hard worker. He was blue collar to the core. He’d graduated from being an antique dealer to having a washing machine and domestic appliance repair service to a mobility vehicle business. He’d always been his own boss. I don’t think he quite grasped why I hadn’t been able to do the same thing. To his credit, he had never washed his hands of me. He’d tried to help. At one point I had been keen on getting into music production and he’d wanted to give me a helping hand to get on a course but it hadn’t panned out. The thought was there but the motion behind it wasn’t. He had remarried since splitting with my mum and had two children, my half siblings Caroline and Anthony, to look after. It got complicated.
I’d never really considered working for his business and he’d never really offered. Quite rightly, he felt that business and family didn’t mix. Besides, deep down he knew that I wasn’t reliable – or presentable – enough to interact with the public.
‘What about training in computing or something like that. There are loads of courses around,’ he said.
This was true enough but I didn’t have the qualifications to get on most courses. That was partly my own fault.
A few years back I’d had a mentor, a great guy called Nick Ransom who worked for a charity called Family Mosaic. He had been a really good friend. He’d either come to my flat or I’d go into his office in Dalston where he’d help me with everything from paying the bills to applying for jobs. He had tried to get me involved in a variety of courses, from bike building to computing. But the struggle to kick my addiction had been all consuming and I’d never knuckled down to it. Busking had always been an easier option for me and when Nick moved on to pastures new the chance slipped through my fingers. It wasn’t the first opportunity I’d messed up, nor would it be the last.
My dad said he’d ask around to see if there was anything going. ‘But things are pretty rough everywhere at the moment,’ he said, holding up a copy of the evening paper. ‘Every time I look at the paper it’s all doom and gloom. Jobs going everywhere.’
I wasn’t that disconnected from reality. I knew there were millions of people in the same situation as me, every single one of them with better qualifications. I was so far down the pecking order in the jobs market I felt that it wasn’t even worth applying for jobs.
My dad wasn’t a man to bare his emotions with me. I knew he was frustrated by the way I lived my life. Deep down I knew he felt I wasn’t trying. I understood why he felt that way, but the truth was that I was trying. Just in my own way.
To lighten things up a little we talked a little bit about his family. I wasn’t particularly close to Anthony and Caroline; we met very infrequently. He asked me what I was doing for Christmas – I’d spent a couple of Christmases with him but it hadn’t really been a barrel of laughs for either of us.
‘I’m just going to spend it with Bob,’ I said. ‘We enjoy being together.’
My dad didn’t really get my relationship with Bob. Tonight, as usual, he stroked him occasionally and kept an eye on him when I popped to the toilet. He even got the waitress to bring him a saucer of milk and gave him a couple of snacks. But he wasn’t a natural cat lover. And on the one or two occasions when I had talked about how much Bob helped me in sorting myself out he just looked baffled. I suppose I couldn’t blame him for that.
As usual, my Dad asked after ‘my health’ which I always took to be code for ‘are you still off the drugs?’
‘I’m doing all right,’ I said. ‘I saw a guy drop dead from an overdose on the landing of my flats a while back. That freaked me out quite a lot.’
He looked horrified. He had no understanding of drug culture or the way it worked and, like a lot of men of his generation, was a little bit scared of it truth be told. For that reason, I don’t think he’d ever really grasped how bad my situation had been when I’d been at my lowest ebb on heroin.
He’d seen me during that period, but, like all addicts, I had learned to keep that side of my life hidden when necessary. I’d met him a couple of times when I was off my face on gear. I’d just told him I had a bout of the flu and assumed he wouldn’t know any different. He wasn’t stupid though, he probably sensed something was wrong but wouldn’t have been able to put his finger on what it was specifically. He had no concept of what it was like to do drugs. I quite envied him that.
We spent an hour and a half together, but then he had to catch a train back to south London. He gave me a few quid to tide me over and we agreed to see each other again in a few weeks’ time.
‘Look after yourself, Jamie,’ he said.
The station was still busy. It was the back end of the rush hour. I had a few magazines left in my satchel so decided to try and shift them before heading home. I found an empty pitch outside the railway station and was soon doing pretty well.
Bob had a full stomach and was on good form. People were stopping and making a fuss. I was just weighing up whether to spend the money I was making on a takeaway curry when trouble reared its head again.
I knew the pair were trouble the moment I set eyes on them heading across the road towards the main entrance to Victoria Station. I recognised one of them from my days selling The Big Issue in Covent Garden. He was a wiry, grey-haired guy in his mid-forties. He was wearing the distinctive, red tabard but I knew he wasn’t a legitimate seller. He had been ‘de-badged’ a long time ago for various misdemeanours. His mate wasn’t familiar, but I didn’t need to know him to be able to tell he was a rough character. He was a big brute and was built like a sack of potatoes.
I immediately worked out what they were doing. The smaller one was waving a single copy of The Big Issue around, stopping people, collecting money but never handing over the magazine. They were running a scam called One Booking, in which vendors used a single, out-of-date magazine to generate a string of sales. Each time someone handed over some money, the seller would come out with some sob story about it being their last copy and being in particularly dire straits. It was begging, basically. There was no other word for it.
I was always amazed that anyone fell for it. But there were always a few gullible – or maybe generous – souls around.
I was worried that they were heading in our direction. Sure enough, they were soon outside the tube station entrance, with the smaller of the pair approaching travellers on the edge of the steps. It was blindingly obvious he wasn’t an official seller. The tabard was ripped to shreds and looked like it had been pulled out of a dustbin. It was also missing the official badge that legitimate vendors wore on the left hand side of their vests.
As his mate went about his business, the bigger of the two made a bee-line for me. He was every bit as aggressive as he looked.
‘Oi, you, get lost, or I’ll kill that cat of yours,’ he said, sticking his big red face close to mine. There was a trace of Irish in his accent and his breath stank of booze.
Bob, as always, had spotted the danger and was hissing at him already. I knelt down and got him to climb on my shoulders before there was any trouble.
I wasn’t going to be intimidated and stuck my ground.
‘I’ve got a right to sell here and I’ve just got these few magazines to sell,’ I said. ‘You know what you are doing is wrong. You are nothing but a leech, you are forcing him to beg for you.’
He didn’t like this and warned me again.
‘You’ve got two minutes to pack your stuff up and f*** off,’ he said, temporarily distracted by his mate who was waving to him for some reason. He then pushed his way into the crowds.
People were flooding in and out of the station, so I lost them for a few minutes. I knew the score. They were both drug addicts and were only running this scam until they had enough money to head off and fix themselves up. I was hoping that his mate’s signal indicated that they’d hit their target and were going to disappear. No such luck.
In hardly any time, the big guy reappeared, looking even angrier than before. He was literally frothing at the mouth and spitting out expletives. ‘Didn’t you hear what I told you?’ he snarled.
The next thing I knew he had hit me. He just walked up to me and punched me on the nose. It happened so fast, I didn’t even see him pull back his arm. He just jabbed a giant fist into my face. I didn’t have a hope of deflecting the blow.
‘What the hell?’ I said, back-pedalling, Bob hanging on for dear life.
When I drew my hand away from my face I could see that it was covered in blood. It was gushing out and my nose felt like it had some broken cartilage in there.
I decided it wasn’t a fight I could win. There was no sign of the Police so I was on my own against a pretty nasty pair of individuals.
Working on the streets was risky, I knew that. But there were times when it was downright dangerous. I’d heard stories of Big Issue sellers being killed. There had been a case up in Norwich where two or three guys set about a vendor there and kicked him to death. I really didn’t want to add to the statistics.
‘Come on, Bob, let’s get out of here,’ I said, grabbing my stuff and heading off.