PEOPLE I MEET
By SIMON LAWRENCE
NO ROOF TO MY WORLD
FIRST PUBLISHED T.TIMES
He looked forlorn, just sitting beside an unused doorway of a large hotel on a side road. It was quiet except for the office workers passing in abundance at lunchtime. I stood across the street and watched him; for nearly twenty minutes, he'd had his head cradled between his raised knees while his arms and hands hugged his shins, almost foetal-like. Every minute or so, he would take a cigarette from his lips, flick ash onto the pavement, then disappear momentarily beneath a haze of smoke, eventually discarding the short butt and lighting another.
I threw a £10.00 note onto the jumper he had spread carelessly on the pavement, but he didn't flinch. I may as well have been invisible. "Do you mind if I join you?" "It's a free world, mate," he croaked without looking up. I sat beside him – "But today, this is my patch!"
I stayed! Passers-by stepped in and out of the shadows; occasionally, there was a chink as a few coins landed in front of us. Somehow, I had to gain his trust; perhaps I should tell him I was a journalist, although that rarely worked! What if I said I've always wondered what it's like living out here – you know, on the street, though that might sound a trite condescending. In the end, I just said hi, holding out a welcoming hand, "Name's Simon." "Told you this is my patch, so fxxk off," he said without moving.
This was going to be a little more complicated than I thought!
The pavement was beginning to feel hard already, and in the gloom of the doorway, I could feel the cold seeping through my trousers and jockey shorts.
"Look, I can see you're busy; what time do you stop for lunch?" That did it – slowly, he raised his head, his eyes tried focusing on mine, but they appeared glazed, probably breakfast still swilling around his arteries. His lips became a shallow smile. "You don't look like one of them office arseholes, what do ya want?" "A chat; a few minutes of your time, that's all."
We took the last table outside 'Archer's sandwich shop'. He told me his name was Greg, and he'd been living on the streets since he was twenty-seven, now he was thirty-three. "I came home one day and found my wife sleeping with one of my mates. I went mad, walked out on her, and I've been here since. I had nowhere to go." He bit hungrily into his BLT sandwich. Behind the grime, he still looked young and in good shape. "Do you sit on those cold steps all day?" "Naw, if I need a few quid, III beg for a while, anyway some sucker might want to come talk to me, buy me lunch," he said with a smile. I think we were beginning to do that male bonding thing, but I wanted to know more about what life was like without a home address.
"My day consists of seeing other people in the same situation as me, you know – you get close to those around you, we look after each other; that's how it is on the street. It's not like everybody else who brushes you aside, and thinks you're nothing – there's a close-knit family out there. And I'm free – that's the main reason. So many people who look down their noses at me are buried in their lives. They can't get out of it. They're not free. I feel free. There's no roof to my world, no restrictions." He reached beneath the table and held up his canvas sack, "This is all I have. This and all this around me is my home." I looked at the tall modern office blocks surrounding us, with their mysteriously obscured glass and bright stainless steel. "I like your interior design," I said.
"I bet you have a car; I've never had the desire to drive; I bet you have a wife and kids," he said, looking down at the timeworn gold ring on my finger. "I bet it's a struggle every month just to make ends meet".
He was right; he was free; for a start, I had to go back to my keyboard and write this up – and keep doing that to run my Volkswagen, my household budget with the never-ending stream of bills cascading through my letterbox with annoying regularity. I have school fees and my wife's wardrobe to support; this guy was on to something I had never considered; if I had, it would have been to look down my nose and deride him.
His shirt collar, what was left of it, may have been filthy, and his denim jacket frayed in places, but his wisdom was intact and, on the face of it, superior to many of us living in what we irksomely call the real world.
While we headed back to the hotel doorway, I caught a reflection of us in a shop window; both of us ambling along, I could just as easily have been mistaken for one of the street people, my jeans covered with a careless coffee stain, my hair wild in the wind. I was almost a vagrant because all I had on me was £5.16; I knew he had more, I'd seen him earn it, plus the £10.00 he had screwed up in his pocket. London folk rushed past us like they knew some natural disaster was about to ensue, many with bills to pay and backyards to tend. How easy it would be to step from my life into his shoes.
He looked forlorn, just sitting beside an unused doorway of a large hotel on a side road. It was quiet except for the office workers passing in abundance at lunchtime. I stood across the street and watched him; for nearly twenty minutes, he'd had his head cradled between his raised knees while his arms and hands hugged his shins, almost foetal-like. Every minute or so, he would take a cigarette from his lips, flick ash onto the pavement, then disappear momentarily beneath a haze of smoke, eventually discarding the short butt and lighting another.
I threw a £10.00 note onto the jumper he had spread carelessly on the pavement, but he didn't flinch. I may as well have been invisible. "Do you mind if I join you?" "It's a free world, mate," he croaked without looking up. I sat beside him – "But today, this is my patch!"
I stayed! Passers-by stepped in and out of the shadows; occasionally, there was a chink as a few coins landed in front of us. Somehow, I had to gain his trust; perhaps I should tell him I was a journalist, although that rarely worked! What if I said I've always wondered what it's like living out here – you know, on the street, though that might sound a trite condescending. In the end, I just said hi, holding out a welcoming hand, "Name's Simon." "Told you this is my patch, so fxxk off," he said without moving.
This was going to be a little more complicated than I thought!
The pavement was beginning to feel hard already, and in the gloom of the doorway, I could feel the cold seeping through my trousers and jockey shorts.
"Look, I can see you're busy; what time do you stop for lunch?" That did it – slowly, he raised his head, his eyes tried focusing on mine, but they appeared glazed, probably breakfast still swilling around his arteries. His lips became a shallow smile. "You don't look like one of them office arseholes, what do ya want?" "A chat; a few minutes of your time, that's all."
We took the last table outside 'Archer's sandwich shop'. He told me his name was Greg, and he'd been living on the streets since he was twenty-seven, now he was thirty-three. "I came home one day and found my wife sleeping with one of my mates. I went mad, walked out on her, and I've been here since. I had nowhere to go." He bit hungrily into his BLT sandwich. Behind the grime, he still looked young and in good shape. "Do you sit on those cold steps all day?" "Naw, if I need a few quid, III beg for a while, anyway some sucker might want to come talk to me, buy me lunch," he said with a smile. I think we were beginning to do that male bonding thing, but I wanted to know more about what life was like without a home address.
"My day consists of seeing other people in the same situation as me, you know – you get close to those around you, we look after each other; that's how it is on the street. It's not like everybody else who brushes you aside, and thinks you're nothing – there's a close-knit family out there. And I'm free – that's the main reason. So many people who look down their noses at me are buried in their lives. They can't get out of it. They're not free. I feel free. There's no roof to my world, no restrictions." He reached beneath the table and held up his canvas sack, "This is all I have. This and all this around me is my home." I looked at the tall modern office blocks surrounding us, with their mysteriously obscured glass and bright stainless steel. "I like your interior design," I said.
"I bet you have a car; I've never had the desire to drive; I bet you have a wife and kids," he said, looking down at the timeworn gold ring on my finger. "I bet it's a struggle every month just to make ends meet".
He was right; he was free; for a start, I had to go back to my keyboard and write this up – and keep doing that to run my Volkswagen, my household budget with the never-ending stream of bills cascading through my letterbox with annoying regularity. I have school fees and my wife's wardrobe to support; this guy was on to something I had never considered; if I had, it would have been to look down my nose and deride him.
His shirt collar, what was left of it, may have been filthy, and his denim jacket frayed in places, but his wisdom was intact and, on the face of it, superior to many of us living in what we irksomely call the real world.
While we headed back to the hotel doorway, I caught a reflection of us in a shop window; both of us ambling along, I could just as easily have been mistaken for one of the street people, my jeans covered with a careless coffee stain, my hair wild in the wind. I was almost a vagrant because all I had on me was £5.16; I knew he had more, I'd seen him earn it, plus the £10.00 he had screwed up in his pocket. London folk rushed past us like they knew some natural disaster was about to ensue, many with bills to pay and backyards to tend. How easy it would be to step from my life into his shoes.
