The World According to Bob

by James Bowen

  Gillian was generous to me as well. On one occasion she brought me a coffee, a sandwich and a cookie from one of the smart local sandwich bars. We chatted for a little while, both of us skirting around what had happened at the station a few weeks earlier. A part of me was curious to find out who had made this allegation against me, but I knew she couldn’t go into too much detail. It would have been too risky for her.

  I explained to her what was happening to us with the book and how it seemed to have generated more animosity than anything else.

  ‘Ah don’t worry about that. People are always jealous of other’s success. It sounds great,’ she said. ‘Your friends and family must be so proud of you.’

  ‘Yeah, they are,’ I said, giving her a sheepish smile and lighting up a cigarette.

  Of course, the truth was that I didn’t have too many friends. Aside from Belle, there was no one to whom I could turn – in the good times or the bad times. I had Bob and that was about it.

  It was, in part, the life that I’d made for myself. I was a product of the environment in which I’d spent the past decade.

  When I’d been on drugs I’d withdrawn from the world.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.

  ‘No I’m not, Holly. I stopped to ask that guy for a light. Ask him if you like,’ I said.

  ‘You were floating, James. I saw you,’ she said, adamant. ‘I’m going to have to report you.’

  I was gobsmacked.

  ‘What? Oh, come on, Holly. You are going to report me for trying to get a light?’ I protested, grabbing hold of the bag in which I now had only a couple of magazines left unsold. ‘I’m done for the day. I didn’t even have my magazines out.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she said, in a really sarcastic tone before sliding off into the crowd.

  I wasn’t sure whether to take her threat seriously or not. Every outreach worker was different. Some carried through on their threats, others made them purely to make a point. I decided that she wasn’t going to spoil my day and carried on enjoying the party atmosphere.

  I took the Sunday off and went back to work on Monday, as normal. By then I’d forgotten completely about Holly. It was on Wednesday that the trouble began.

  Arriving in Islington just before midday, I went to see Rita, the co-ordinator on Islington Green to buy new supplies of magazines.

  ‘Sorry, James, I can’t sell you any. You are on the “To Be Seen” list,’ she said.

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Apparently someone saw you floating in the West End. You know the drill. You’ve got to go over to Head Office in Vauxhall.’

  ‘Bloody Holly,’ I said to myself.

  It was infuriating for all sorts of reasons. First and foremost, of course, it was a complete nonsense to say I’d been floating. I’d had this problem before, mainly because so many people approached me and Bob when we were walking around London.

  I knew I wasn’t supposed to sell magazines when on the move. I could only do so from a fixed pitch. I’d always tried to explain this to people and, whilst some were confused and even offended, they usually moved along without giving me anything. Unfortunately, all it needed was for another Big Issue seller or an outreach worker to see me having any kind of exchange with a member of the public and they’d put two and two together to make five.

  It was a real bore having to travel over to Vauxhall, but I knew I had to keep my pitch at Angel go
ing. The book was just a passing phase, I knew I couldn’t turn my back on what was still my bread and butter.

  At The Big Issue office, I had to sit around for half an hour before I could see a supervisor. When I eventually got called in, this guy told me that I had been mentioned at the weekly outreach worker meeting where they discuss pitch disputes, misbehaving vendors and other issues.

  ‘I’m afraid you are going to have to serve a one month suspension because an outreach worker saw you table-top floating,’ he said.

  I tried to defend myself. But it was a waste of breath. With The Big Issue you were guilty unless you formally appealed. I’d been through that process before, when I’d been based in Covent Garden. Again, I’d been unfairly accused of floating and it had come down to my word against theirs. My word apparently wasn’t worth much and I’d lost.

  I knew it was pointless appealing this time so I decided to take it on the chin and accept the suspension. I signed the relevant paperwork, handed in my tabard and ID card and headed home, upset but resigned to the fact that this was the way the cookie crumbled.

  ‘What’s that saying? No good deed goes unpunished,’ I said to Bob as we sat on the tube heading back home.

  I figured that, with the book still to be written, I would spend the month working on that, doing a little busking and return to Angel tube station in a month’s time. If only it had been that simple.

  At the end of the month, I went back to The Big Issue office. I wasn’t certain that I’d get my tabard and ID back that day so took my guitar with me, in case I needed to carry on busking. I needn’t have worried. I was told I had served my ‘sentence’ and got my stuff back. I also bought a supply of magazines to take back to Angel.

  ‘Back to business, Bob,’ I said as we caught a bus and headed back across the Thames.

  Arriving back at Angel, I emerged from the station and saw my pitch was empty. It was still registered to me, so no one else should technically have been there although I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had chanced it. So I set up as normal and got back to work.

  I’d been there for about half an hour when another vendor arrived. He was a guy I’d seen around occasionally. He was relatively new to The Big Issue and had a rather scruffy and bad-tempered old dog.

  ‘What are you doing? This is my pitch’ he said.

  ‘No it’s not,’ I said, looking bemused. ‘This has been my pitch for more than a year now.’

  ‘It might have been your pitch a year ago, but it’s mine now. I’m registered with head office.’

  ‘What? I really don’t know what you’re on about, mate. Bob and I are part of the furniture here. They’ve even written about us in the newspapers,’ I said, trying to remain reasonable.

  He just shrugged his shoulders and blew out his cheeks.

  ‘What can I say?’ he muttered. ‘Go and talk to Rita. She’ll fill you in.’

  ‘I will, mate, don’t you worry about that,’ I said, marching straight across the High Street towards the co-ordinator’s spot on Islington Green.

  It was obvious immediately that something was wrong because Rita’s face crumpled when she saw me.

  ‘Oh, hi, James,’ she said, refusing to make eye contact.

  ‘Look. It wasn’t my decision. I told him it was your pitch and that you were on a month’s suspension. He stayed away for a fortnight but then he went down to Vauxhall and someone there went over my head. They told him he could have it full time. There was nothing I could do.’

  I was stunned. For a moment I was lost for words.

  It may sound boastful, but I had turned that pitch into a money-spinner for The Big Issue, and myself, obviously. Until I had arrived there, no one had wanted to work there. The conventional wisdom had always been that people were in too much of a hurry to slow down at that spot. They didn’t have time to engage with a vendor. But, largely thanks to Bob, of course, I had established myself there. Even the outreach workers had said that the number of people who came to see us was amazing. As were sales of the magazine.

  ‘I can’t believe they’ve done this to me,’ I said to Rita, scrambling to work out why this had happened. ‘Is it because I’ve got this book deal and they assume I don’t need to sell any more?’ I said. ‘Because if it is they’ve got it all wrong. That’s only a flash in the pan. I need to keep working long term.’

  But Rita wasn’t responding. She just kept shaking her head and saying ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I’m sorry’.

  In the end I just stormed off, with Bob on my shoulders.

  Looking back, I am not proud of what I did next, but I felt so cheated and badly treated that I decided to take matters into my own hands.

  I headed back to the tube station and confronted the guy again.

  ‘Look mate, here’s £20 for the pitch. How’s that?’ I said.

  He pondered it for a moment then grabbed the note, picked up his magazines and headed off with his dog in tow. I had barely been there ten minutes when he arrived back, this time with Holly in tow.

  ‘James, this isn’t your pitch any more,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it is. I just paid the guy £20 to get it back,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t work that way and you know it, James,’ she said.

  My head was spinning now. I couldn’t understand why they were doing this to me. Had I behaved so badly? Was I that unpopular amongst The Big Issue fraternity? I must have been. They all seemed to have it in for me.

  ‘So can I have my £20 back?’ I said to the guy.

  ‘No. I haven’t earned anything yet,’ he said.

  I could see that he hadn’t bought any magazines, so he couldn’t have spent the £20. I lost it this time and started busking about twenty feet away from my usual pitch.

  ‘James, what are you doing?’ Holly said. I just ignored her and played on.

  She slipped away briefly but reappeared with a police officer and another outreach worker, John, in tow.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to move on, Sir. Otherwise I will have no option but to caution you,’ the PC said.

  ‘James you are also going to have to hand in your tabard and your ID,’ Holly said. ‘You are going to get another suspension for this.’

  I’d only got them back a couple of hours earlier. But I handed them over.

  This time I knew The Big Issue were going to be even harsher in their punishment, and I’d be given a six month suspension. I decided that enough was enough. I decided that I would end my association with them. I didn’t feel great about it. Selling the magazine had done wonders for me. But I just felt a deep sense of injustice.

  I wasn’t an angel. To be honest, I don’t think anyone who sells The Big Issue really is. We’ve all got our faults. We wouldn’t be working on the streets if we didn’t, would we? I also realised that I had probably over-reacted and lost my temper when I’d discovered my pitch had been given away. I just felt betrayed, especially because Bob and I had become unofficial ambassadors for the magazine. After we’d gone on the first Night Walk, we’d effectively been the public faces of the event and had featured in a lot of the publicity for a second one that had taken place. By this point I’d also been in the Islington Tribune a couple of times and the Camden Journal. The Independent had even published a piece. Each and every one of them mentioned that I was selling The Big Issue. It was the kind of feel-good coverage they wanted. We embodied the ethos of the charity: they had helped us to help ourselves. Or at least, so I thought.

  I began to wonder whether they saw it differently. Maybe they thought I was getting too big for my boots. I actually dug out my original contract with them to see if I’d perhaps broken any rules by agreeing to write a book. But, perhaps surprisingly, there was nothing. The Big Issue sellers obviously didn’t generally get contracts with big publishers to write their stories.

  It was really confusing. I really didn’t know what to think. Once again, I began to wonder whether the high profile Bob and I were winning was
a double-edged sword. But I knew what I had to do.

  I didn’t go to Vauxhall to sign my six month suspension. As far as I was concerned, I’d sold my last copy of the magazine. I was sick of all the politics and the back-stabbing. It was bringing out the worst in people – but more worryingly, it was bringing out the worst in me. From now on I needed to concentrate on Bob, the book and all the things that brought out the best in me.

  Chapter 15

  The One That Saves Me

  The drama at Angel left me feeling depressed and lost for a little while. Deep down I knew I’d done the right thing, but I still had my moments when I worried that I’d made a bad move. I fretted that I’d made an enemy of The Big Issue and that it might come back to bite me somehow.

  It took me a week or so to snap out of it. I gave myself a talking-to. I told myself that I couldn’t dwell on it forever. I had to move on and, in particular, I had to focus on the positives, especially the book.

  It had been delivered to the publishers who seemed pleased with it. A part of me had wondered whether they’d read it and get cold feet. My story wasn’t the most romantic or glamorous of tales. The life on the streets I’d described was grim and, at times, deeply unpleasant. For a week or two after Garry and I handed in the manuscript, I half expected a phone call saying ‘sorry, we’ve made a terrible mistake’. But that didn’t happen. Instead they told me they were going to publish it in the following spring, in March.

  I now had a target to aim for, but in the meantime I had to keep earning money, so I headed back to busking – and to Covent Garden.

  I had mixed feelings. On the negative side, after a couple of years selling The Big Issue, it felt like a little bit of a backward step. Busking is, in some ways, only one rung up from begging. I thought I’d put those days behind me.

  The other problem was that my voice had deteriorated. Shouting out ‘Big Issue, Big Issue’ hundreds and hundreds of times a day was more demanding on the larynx than singing a tuneful song every now and again. So when I picked up my guitar and started singing again I felt that I was well below par, certainly from the previous time I’d been performing. Playing the guitar for long periods took some getting used to as well. I didn’t have callouses on my fingers for a start.