The World According to Bob

When I’d been on drugs I’d withdrawn from the world. My most important relationships back then were with my dealers. But even now that I was clean, I found it hard to establish friendships. There were several reasons. Money, for a start. To make friends you had to go out and socialise, which cost money so I very rarely did that. But on a deeper level, I also found it hard to trust people. During the worst period of my drug dependency, I’d stayed in hostels where you knew that anyone could rob you of all your possessions any moment. Even when you were asleep. So I’d become very wary. It was sad, but I still felt that way to a large extent. The events of the past couple of weeks had underlined that. Someone had made a fictitious assault accusation against me. For all I knew it could have been someone I saw every day of the week. It could have been someone I regarded as a ‘friend’.

So as I looked at Bob interacting with Gillian, a part of me wished my life could be as simple and straightforward as his. He had met her in strange circumstances but had immediately sensed he could trust her. He knew in his bones that she was a decent person and so he had embraced her as a friend. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I needed to do that more. I needed to take that same leap of faith. To do that, however, I had to change my life. I had to get off the streets.

Chapter 14. Pride and Prejudice

It was the first Saturday of July and the streets of central London were packed for the annual Gay Pride celebrations. The West End was a sea of colour — well mostly pink — as the hot weather had drawn even more revellers than usual. According to the news, a million people had ventured out on to the streets to watch the huge parade of floats, filled with drag queens, dancers and spectacular costumes snake its way from Oxford Circus, down Regent Street to Trafalgar Square.

I’d decided to kill two birds with one stone, and had spent the day watching the floats and fabulous outfits while also selling a few magazines at a pitch on Oxford Street near Oxford Circus tube station.

It was a lucrative day for all The Big Issue sellers so, as a ‘visitor’ from Islington, I had been careful to make sure I stayed within the rules. Some pitches, like my slot outside Angel tube station, are designated to only one authorised vendor but others, like this one, are free to anyone, provided there is no one else working there. I’d also been careful not to ‘float’, the term used to describe selling whilst walking around the streets. I’d fallen foul of that rule in the past and didn’t want to do so again.

During the decade or so that I had been on the streets, Gay Pride had grown from a small, quite political march into one of the city’s biggest street parties. Only the Notting Hill Carnival was bigger. This year the crowds were packed four or five deep in places, but everyone was in an incredibly good mood, including Bob.

He’d got used to being in big crowds. There had been a time when he had a slight phobia of people in really scary outfits. He’d run off years earlier after seeing a guy in a weird, over-sized suit outside Ripley’s Believe It Or Not in Piccadilly Circus. His years of walking the streets of London and Covent Garden in particular, seemed to have eased his fears, however. He’d seen everything from weird, silver-painted human statues to French fire-eaters to giant dragons during Chinese New Year. Today, there was no shortage of outrageous outfits and people blowing horns and whistles but he took it all in his stride. He sat on my shoulder throughout, soaking the party atmosphere up and loving the attention he was getting from the huge crowds. Quite a few people knew him by name and asked to have their picture taken with the pair of us. One or two even said they were looking forward to reading about us in our book.

‘We need to write it first,’ I half-joked.

As the main parade drew to an end late in the afternoon, Bob and I headed towards Soho Square where there was a music stage and some other events and turned into Old Compton Street, home to many of London’s most popular gay bars. The street was absolutely crammed full of people, many of them members of the procession who were now relaxing over a few drinks. About halfway along the street, I decided to have a cigarette. I didn’t have a lighter on me so stopped at a table outside one of the pubs and asked to borrow one. To my surprise, a gay guy wearing nothing but a pair of pink Y-fronts, a pair of angel wings and a halo, produced one. I didn’t want to think where he’d been keeping it.

‘Here you go, mate. Nice cat by the way,’ he said as he lit my cigarette for me.

I was still chatting to the guy when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned round to see an outreach worker called Holly. Judging by the way she was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, I assumed she was off duty, mistakenly as it turned out.

‘James. You’re floating,’ she said.