Endgame

Last night in the porch we sleep in at night, we were treated to one of the most prolonged sleep deprivations yet – its pinnacle being some guy that decided to lie down on the top end of my sleeping bag at 4.00am, fifty minutes before we get up.

We knew something was up when we found over a dozen large bags of rubbish and a broken office chair inside the porch (last Friday it was eight bags of rubbish – a first) which Declan had to move to the pavement for collection. When at 9.30pm the bin lorry collected the rubbish from across the street – and ignored ours – I was totally resigned to the fact that the contents of one of the bags might end up on top of me during the night (last Saturday an open rubbish bag was left beside my head while I was asleep).

Luckily, at about 10.00pm the bin men came back and collected all the rubbish – leaving of course the broken chair, which Declan, always prudent, brought back into the porch. Then it was the usual procession of people (of late) going in and coming out of the office building through the porch door between 10.30pm and 11.15pm. (Declan now sleeps wearing runners inside his sleeping bag because on Tuesday night, well, somebody coming out of the building at 11.00pm narrowly missed stamping on his feet.)

Things got more bizarre at 4.00am when some guy decided to have a nap in the porch – without the slightest concern that he was going down on his back on top of the end of my sleeping bag and with his legs stretched out on the sidewalk. A few minutes later he is touched by a policeman: he doesn’t tell him the obvious, which is that it may be a bit unsafe for him to be sleeping in a porch which is already occupied by two rough sleepers, but informs him that he is “totally entitled” to remain where he is. When did this feisty character leave? At 4.40am, when two friends came around – one of them walked across our ground sheet while the other took some memento photos of his sleepy friend with his mobile phone.

Declan’s selling of The Big Issue on his pitch in Liverpool Street is becoming increasingly more difficult: on Thursday he actually had to walk off the pitch again, this time after a distributor of City AM (a free London daily business paper) moved from where she was handing papers to passers-by into Declan’s pitch. After Declan told the girl that two people can’t work the pitch at the same time, she just said “ok” and continued passing papers in front of him – meaning: you leave. (In the evenings, the distributor of London Lite has been permanently encroached on Declan’s pitch to his own detriment – I should add – because by moving in on Declan’s pitch, he has been missing most people coming out of the train station and many going into it, approximately 30% of his business.)

So because we are trying to avoid becoming (illegal) beggars, Declan sent that very same morning another email to the Big Issue outreach manager Paul Joseph, which he also sent by registered post to the founder of the magazine, Dr John Bird. It reads:

Subject: City AM

Dear Paul

I refer to the telephone message I left for you this morning, wherein I graphically describe the unprecedented takeover of my McDonalds pitch on Liverpool Street (pitch no. 1408) by the above free daily business newspaper.

Having had to walk off the pitch to abide by the rule that a vendor shall not "argue or fight over pitches with … street traders", please advise how you can help me to maximise sales on this pitch, which I have had protected by pitch authorisation slip and pitch listings since the beginning of December 2006.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey
Badge no. 1163

cc Dr John Bird, Editor-In-Chief, The Big Issue (by registered post)

Things are so hot now that as well as washing in the street and in toilets – Declan and I were barred from the Methodist-run Whitechapel Mission on 18 June by the wife of the minister due to concerns about our safety after I was assaulted there that morning by a homeless woman – we are also doing our laundry in the launderette. We used to arrive every Monday at 7.00am at the gates of the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre so that when they would open at 9.15am we would be the first in the queue and therefore get a washing machine. Well, last Monday when we arrived at 6.55am there were already homeless queuing, which meant in all probability that we wouldn’t get a washing machine … so we kept walking.

Speaking of the Dellow Centre, last Friday I had to wash in one of their toilet cubicles with a wet towel and some shower gel after a homeless woman (the same homeless that two Thursdays ago stepped into the shower just seconds before I was going to step in myself) stormed past me into the women’s washroom as I was taking a couple of towels from the laundry room – it looked as well as if she had been waiting for me despite that this time I purposefully arrived at the place twenty-five minutes later than usual (they close at 11.30am and don't open during the weekend).

In an article in this week’s New Statesman titled “Am I a dwarf or a horseman?” Christopher Hitchens says that “he [Tony Blair] has been important to all of us who believe that peaceful coexistence with totalitarian and aggressive regimes (and ideologies) is neither possible nor desirable. It is this point of principle that ought to eclipse all others.”

Alas, he has also been important to the Christian church in Britain. Commenting on the departure of Blair – widely regarded as one of the most religious Prime Ministers since Gladstone – Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society said: “Tony Blair has done more to undermine the secular nature of British society than anyone in recent history.” For example, in 2003 he set up the Faith Communities Liaison Group to encourage partnership between government and religious communities – thus undermining the entrenched secularism of modern British politics, as religious communities have been encouraged to play an increasingly active role in civic and political life.

Wood goes on: “By consulting religious leaders about policy-making he has emboldened them. They now regularly use their new-found power to seek to thwart socially progressive legislation and make self-serving demands, including for the suppression of freedom of expression and the restriction of the human rights of others.” I would like to add here that Declan and I being homeless in the street is just a perfect example of the influence of religion on government.

So I found rather amusing Tony Blair's audience with Pope Benedict XVI on 23 June and the speculation that the former British leader will convert to Catholicism – Blair's wife Cherie is a Catholic, the couple's children have attended Catholic schools, and Blair habitually attends Catholic rather than Anglican services. The Act of Settlement of 1700 requires the monarch to be a member of the Church of England and to not marry a Catholic. However although it has been possible for a Catholic to head the government since 1829, when the Catholic Emancipation Act allowed members of the faith to be elected to Parliament, Britain has not had a Catholic prime minister.

Tony Blair – a Catholic? Well, I never.