The World According to Bob: The further adventures of one man and his street-wise cat (16 page)

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.

I felt a mix of anger and despair. I was desperate for a change in my fortunes. I didn’t think I could take much more of this life. But, try as I might, I couldn’t see how on earth I was going to break free. Suddenly all that talk with my father of jobs and training seemed ridiculous, a complete pipe dream. Who was going to pay a recovering junkie a decent salary? Who was going to hire someone with a curriculum vitae as barren as the Australian outback where I spent part of my childhood? On that day, feeling as low as I did, the answer was as plain and bloody obvious as the nose on my face: no one.

Chapter 11

Two Cool Cats

One lunchtime in September 2010, I arrived at Angel tube to be greeted by Davika. She was a ticket attendant and had been one of our most loyal friends since Bob and I had started working in Islington. She often brought Bob a little treat or something to drink, especially during hot weather. Today, however, she simply wanted to deliver a message.

‘Hi James, there was someone here looking for you and Bob,’ she said. ‘He was a reporter from one of the local papers. He asked me to call him back if you were willing to talk to him.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I guess I don’t mind. Tell him he can come and see us during our regular hours.’

It wasn’t the first time someone had paid us attention. There were a couple of films on the internet about Bob and I that had been viewed by a few thousand people and a couple of London bloggers had written nice things about us, but no one from the newspapers had shown any interest. To be honest, I took it with a pinch of salt. I’d had all sorts of weird and wonderful approaches over the years, 99 per cent of which came to nought.

A couple of days later, however, I arrived at Angel to find this guy outside the tube station waiting for us.

‘Hi James, my name is Peter,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if I could do an interview with you for the
Islington Tribune
?’

‘Sure, why not?’

He proceeded to take a picture of Bob perched on my shoulder with the Angel tube station sign behind us. I felt a bit self-conscious. I hadn’t exactly dressed up for the occasion and was wearing a thick, early winter’s beard, but he seemed happy enough with the results.

We then had a bit of a chat about my past and how we’d met. It wasn’t quite the Spanish inquisition, but it clearly gave him enough ammunition for his piece which he said would appear in the next edition of the
Tribune
. Again, I didn’t really take it too seriously. I worked on the principle that I’d believe it when I saw it. It was easier that way.