Fifth visit by the police

On Friday night we had our fifth visit by the police. Imagine the scenario: a policeman goes up the two steps of the porch we sleep in; he wakes Declan, who is sleeping on the inside with our bags, by kicking the end of his sleeping bag; checks that the porch door is closed; and then asks Declan: “Are you OK, mate?”

I think it was just to wind us up because of what happened to me a few hours later in the Whitechapel Mission. When I enter the washroom, this middle-aged homeless woman who is always running into difficulties with other homeless – once, a guy threw two packets of rice over her – is also there. She always splashes water all over the floor, although her bags are nicely aligned against the wall at the other side of wherever she is and protected above and below with newspaper.

Anyway, this time she is splashing water in style: she is having a shower with the door fully open and the floor resembles a baby’s swimming pool, even the floor of the toilet cubicle I go into has been covered in water. So I soak up the water with toilet paper and I change my clothes; and then I go to a sink and soak up the water around my spot; and as soon as I have soaked up the water from the floor underneath the sink (where I put my rucksack and toiletry bag), from behind me she comes out of the shower, naked and dripping water, and passes straight by my dry spot.

Declan had some troubles of his own next door: he had to tell – quite aggressively and three times – a homeless not to use his sink, that he was at it.

The day before, Friday, was more of the same. When I arrived at my pitch outside Liverpool Street Station around 7.30am to sell The Big Issue, I found mushy food had been smeared all around it. After last Friday, when a guy with a placard and fliers tried to put me out of business, I was kind of expecting it and this time had my hair washed in the Whitechapel Mission at 6.05am (oops, I will not get a sink next Friday morning) just in case I would have to miss my shower and breakfast in the Dellow Centre in order to type my blog in the City of London Camomile Street Library – like I had to do the previous Friday. (The two only computers that accept a USB Flash Drive in this library are now back working again but because they only give a meagre free one hour a day, Declan and I have to go to the Bishopsgate Institute Library (£1.00 an hour) to finish the job and upload it. Problem is that since last Monday the eight computers in the library have been either occupied or out of order during our mid-afternoon break. Which means we have to take a bus to the nearest internet café … it just never finishes.)

The reason why there are plays on my pitch on Fridays in particular is because Friday is the working day of the week that vendors make the most money selling The Big Issue – fancy holding down a permanent job!

Anyway, my pitch has now become like the Whitechapel Mission: there is always something happening. I have three (motivated) beggars passing by me all the time: one of them sells The Big Issue – he is not a vendor, so I don’t know why he is so keen to pass by me when I could report him to my co-ordinators across the road; the other two are friends and pass by me like the police are chasing after them and they are desperate to get lost.

These two beggars, they are in their twenties, are quite something else. Every Friday evening, as we eat our dinner outside The Hamilton Hall in Liverpool Street Station, these two are going around stealing glasses of beer from people drinking outside the pub, drinking beer left over by others, and hassling passers-by for money, cigarettes, whatever.

I have other homeless passing by me too, some of whom I recognise from the Whitechapel Mission and the Dellow Centre – what they are doing in the heart of London’s business district, I don’t know. The thing is, I don’t smile at them, as I do at everybody else, in case they think they can start a conversation with me.

There are two events though that stand out in particular: the first involves the police and a nun; and the second, a Big Issue vendor. Ok, the first event. On Monday afternoon – I am at my pitch – a police van pulls up in front of me. And just in case I don’t suspect that it is on my case, this policewoman comes out and gives me a long look. At that very moment who is turning the corner to walk past my pitch but a nun in full dress, which I have never seen, not in the business district, not at a rush hour.

Five minutes later, a Polish guy on a bicycle stops to ask me how many magazines The Big Issue sells, that he is selling them as from the next day ... when he is gone the police van drives off. So what is it? Do I have to be nice to nuns? Or befriend homeless Poles? Or both? Resourceful perhaps, but the police are no slaves to logic.

The next morning at 6.00am in the Methodist-run Whitechapel Mission things become more apparent. There are notes all about informing the homeless that at 9.30am that very morning there is a prayer meeting and also some meditation and we are all invited – a first since we started visiting the mission on 3 November. Who are they kidding? I think at this stage we all know our differences are irreconcilable.

Declan says that the police are getting more desperate because though we have not greatly advanced since coming to London, a Lord Justice can’t just ignore Declan’s amended appellant’s notice of 17 January to seek permission to appeal Judge Walker’s decision of 11 December to dismiss our claim for judicial review against the Department for Work and Pensions (which Declan initially filed on 24 August).

The second event. Thursday morning at 8.30am, in the heart of the morning rush hour, a Big Issue vendor approaches me. He wants to buy some magazines and asks me if I know of anybody around who is selling them. No, sorry, I say and go back to selling my magazines to the passing crowd. He doesn’t go away though and asks me again: who is selling in the area. I tell him that I don’t know and ask him if I can get back to my job, to which he retorts in a loud voice that there is no need to be “rude”. He must have repeated that word at least three times before he eventually took off.

Declan had a similar experience on Thursday also: he went to our pitch in Covent Garden only to have the vendor we share it with (and who Declan had to threaten with a complaint the last time he encountered him) going on to a former vendor about how unfriendly Declan was.

Yesterday morning while selling The Big Issue in a pitch in Covent Garden (well, Strand to be specific), I see this guy in the coffee shop I am facing surfing the internet on his laptop; and it got me wondering about my own laptop, which I had to sell when we knew for certain the DWP was making us homeless after terminating our unemployment benefit on 27 September because Declan, as stated in his Grounds of Appeal, did not “sign on” two days before he was due to do so on 29 September.