by James Bowen
They were the negatives, but there were some positives too. I tried to focus on them.
Most significantly, it was a step into independence. The Big Issue had, without question, been a force for good in my life. Its guiding mantra had always been that it offered a helping hand rather than hand-outs. That had certainly been true in my case. It had helped me bring a little stability to my life. Without them I would probably never have been asked to write a book.
Yes, I’d found it hard to abide by the rules of an organisation. Some of it was bad luck, some of it was down to personality clashes, but some of it – I had to hold my hands up – was down to me. I wasn’t very good at dealing with authority. I never had been.
So being my own person again, felt good. I felt I’d got my freedom back.
Of course, the other really positive thing was that Bob and I were better known now. Thanks to the various pieces in newspapers and on the internet, we were minor local celebrities.
From the first day busking, it was clear to me that we were now drawing bigger crowds than previously. There would be times when little semi-circles of tourists and shoppers would surround us, snapping away with their cameras and kneeling down to stroke Bob. I was shocked at how many people speaking foreign languages that I didn’t even recognise would smile, point and say: ‘Aaaah, Bob.’
Bob seemed to relish it. One of the most requested songs I played was ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis. It was an easy song to play. I just put a capo on the second fret of my guitar and started strumming away. I’d played it a hundred times, but now, each time I played those familiar chords, the lyrics hit home much harder, in particular that line in the chorus that goes: ‘Maybe you’re gonna be the one that saves me’. As I looked down at Bob, I realised it could have been written for him. There was no maybe about it. He had saved me.
Another positive about being in Covent Garden, of course, was that life was never, ever dull there. I soon remembered that the place had a rhythm and life all of its own. The busiest time of the day was the evening rush, around 7pm, when hordes of people headed home from work and an even bigger horde flooded in to visit the bars, restaurants, theatres and opera houses.
Watching the world go by from our position on Neal Street, it was never difficult to spot who was headed where. You could spot the kids who were out for a night’s clubbing a mile away. They were all mini-skirts and towering heels, leather jackets and hair gel. The opera lovers were generally the best dressed, often with the men in black tie and the women in grand evening dresses with a generous helping of bling thrown in for good measure. You could hear some of them rattling down the road in the direction of the Piazza and the Royal Opera House. The area was full of characters. As we settled back into the routine, we seemed to attract more than our fair share of them once more.
One afternoon, a couple of weeks into summer, I noticed an unfamiliar face on the pavement a few yards away from us.
It wasn’t uncommon for other people to set up in the area, trying to earn a few quid. I didn’t have any problem with that, as long as they didn’t interfere with our livelihood. The only rivals who really annoyed me were ‘chuggers’, the freelance charity workers who would swarm around an area from time to time, pestering people.
I wasn’t being hypocritical. We all had a living to earn, and I had been a bit pushy myself when I was selling The Big Issue. But the chuggers took things too far and their behaviour could be so downright rude and intrusive it was bordering on harassment.
This guy was definitely not one of them, however. He was dark skinned and dressed quite smartly, in a suit. He had an odd-looking basket, which he placed on the floor. I guessed he was some kind of street entertainer, but I had no idea what to expect.
I was intrigued and sat there watching him for a few moments, hoping he might ease the boredom of another day. I wasn’t disappointed. He had soon dipped into his basket and produced a yellowish snake which he then proceeded to drape around his neck. I was no expert on snakes, but I’d have described it as an albino python. It was quite thick and about three feet long. He then started playing around with it, asking for donations from passers-by.
‘Look Bob, we’ve got a snake charmer,’ I smiled as I watched the impressive-looking creature coiling its way around the guy.
Bob was weighing up the situation carefully, but it was obvious he didn’t really understand what was happening. We were a good thirty feet away so he couldn’t really see properly, so he settled back into his favourite position in the shade and started his afternoon snooze.
The guy had been there for about forty minutes or so when he came over to say hello. He still had the snake draped on his neck as if it was a rather large piece of jewellery.
‘OK, guys, how are you today?’ he said, in a strong accent that I guessed was Portuguese or possibly Brazilian.
Bob had been dozing away in the afternoon sun but perked up and took a good look at the curious visitor. I could tell his mind was hard at work, trying to work out what this creature was – and whether it was a welcome presence in his world? It didn’t take him long to reach his conclusion.
As Bob tilted his head forward to take a better look, the snake decided to stick out its long, forked tongue and deliver a rather scary hiss. It was like something out of The Jungle Book.
Bob completely freaked. He made this really loud, yowling sound and jumped up at me imploring me to stick him on my shoulders. I was pretty sure that if I hadn’t had his harness connected to me he would have bolted and run off, as he’d done once over in Angel, when an aggressive dog had lunged at him.
‘Sorry, dude, didn’t mean to scare your cat,’ the guy said, realising what he’d done and sliding the snake off his shoulders. ‘I’m going to move away from here and see how I get on further down the road.’
Bob spent the rest of the afternoon on edge. He was so paranoid about meeting another snake that he kept attacking the straps on my rucksack. He’d been sitting on this rucksack for years and had never had a problem. But suddenly anything that reminded him of the yellow python was to be treated with extreme suspicion. He kept grabbing the straps in his teeth and flicking them in the air, as if to test whether they were alive or not.
It took Bob a few days to get over the snake. He was a little nervous whenever anyone came up to us in the street or elsewhere and kept checking out their shoulders as if he was worried there was someone lurking there. It must have been confusing for him. For all these years, he’d been the only creature that rode around the streets, draped across a man’s neck. I think it completely threw him to see another creature there, especially such an alien and scary-looking one.
Of course it was all part of being back in the wacky world of Covent Garden.
Not everyone on the streets was so understanding. It remained a competitive and sometimes aggressive place, full of people only looking after No 1.
Bob and I were happily whiling away an afternoon on Neal Street when a young guy pitched up with an amplifier and a microphone. He was dressed in skater boy clothes and was wearing a baseball cap and Nike trainers. I spotted him setting up and waited for an instrument to appear, but there wasn’t one. All he had was a microphone.
I ignored him and got back to playing my own music.
I wasn’t able to shut him out of my mind for long though. Within minutes I heard an ear-splitting, repetitive noise booming out. The young guy was strutting around with his mic against his lips, ‘beat boxing’. I’m a fan of most forms of music but this really wasn’t my cup of tea. As far as I was concerned it wasn’t remotely musical, it was just noise.
Bob shared my opinion, it was obvious. Maybe because he’d spent so long listening to me play acoustic guitar, he seemed to like that kind of music. He had also got used to slightly heavier rock. He made his opinion of this ‘music’ plain immediately. I looked down at him and saw him casting his eyes down the street with what I can only describe as complete disdain spread across his face.
There were
times when I was led by Bob and this was one of them.
He stood up, tilted his head at me and let me know in no uncertain terms that we should move. I gathered my stuff and moved about 70 yards down the street where I began playing again. I could still hear the din from the young kid down the street, but at least I could hear myself think.
It was a false dawn.
The noise this kid was making was so loud that others must have complained because within half an hour or so a police van arrived. I watched from a distance as a couple of officers got out and approached him. I saw the boy waving his arms around in protest, but it didn’t get him anywhere. A couple of minutes after the police’s arrival I saw him disconnect his mike and start to pack up.
You could almost hear the sighs of relief that must have been breathed in the offices, cafés and restaurants.
‘Thank goodness that’s over, eh Bob?’ I said.
My joy was short-lived. The police officers saw Bob and me sitting on the pavement and came over to talk to us.
‘You’re not licensed to play here, mate,’ one of them said.
I could have argued the toss and said we had a right to be there, which we kind of did. But I decided not to push it. Easing myself back into life in Covent Garden was difficult enough without aggravating the police. Choose your battles, James, I told myself, rather wisely, as it turned out.
It was just after midday on Neal Street and the crowds of tourists and shoppers were beginning to thicken. Bob and I had come out a little earlier today, partly because it was the first decent weather in a week but partly because we needed to get away by late afternoon so that I could get back home for a doctor’s appointment.
I had developed a really bad chest problem and I’d had a week or so of sleepless nights coughing and wheezing. I had to get something done about it. I was getting really strung out by the lack of sleep.
I’d barely got myself set up and started playing when I saw a lady in a ribbed blue jumper and trousers walking purposefully towards me. I could tell she was not a tourist. As she drew close, I saw that her jumper had epaulettes and badges and had a familiar logo on it. She was from the RSPCA.
In ordinary circumstances, I was a big fan and supporter of the RSPCA. They do a great job in preventing animal cruelty and promoting animal welfare in general and had been a huge help to me in the past. When I’d first found Bob injured in the hallway of my block of flats I’d taken him to a nearby drop-in clinic. As well as giving me a prescription for the medicine Bob would need to heal his wounds, the vet there had passed on lots of sound and sensible advice on how to treat and care for him.
That now seemed like a very distant memory. Today, I got the distinct impression that their presence wasn’t going to be good news.
‘Hello, James, how are you today?’ the lady said, producing a card with her ID on it. It showed that she was an Inspector.
I was a bit thrown by the fact that she knew my name.
‘Fine, thanks. What’s the problem?’
‘I’ve been asked to come and see you because I’m afraid we have had complaints that you are mistreating your cat, Bob isn’t it?’ she said.
‘What?! Mistreating him? How?’
I was horrified. My head was spinning. Who had complained? And what had they said I was doing to Bob? I felt physically sick for a moment, but knew I had to keep my wits about me in case this got serious.
‘I’m sure they are unfounded allegations. I was actually watching you for a little while before I came over and I can see that you treat Bob well,’ she said, giving him a little tickle under the chin. ‘But I do need to have a chat with you and then examine him to make sure there’s nothing wrong if that’s OK.’
‘Be my guest,’ I said, knowing that I didn’t really have a choice.
She dropped her rucksack to the floor, got out a notebook and a couple of instruments and kneeled down to start examining Bob.
He didn’t always take kindly to people poking and prodding him. He had reacted to a couple of vets over the years and had snarled and scratched at one nurse who had handled him a bit roughly once. So I was a bit concerned about how he’d react to this latest stranger, especially if he picked up on my nervousness. That was all I needed, I thought to myself.
It wasn’t the first time people had accused me of mistreating him, of course. I’d heard all sorts of accusations levelled against me. The complaints generally fell into three categories. The first was that I was exploiting and ‘using’ him for my own benefit. My answer to that argument was always the same. As someone once said, a cat will be your friend, but it will never be your slave. A cat is never, ever going to do something it doesn’t want to do. And it is never going to be with someone it doesn’t want to be with, no matter what that person does to it. Bob was a very strong character, with a free will of his own. He wouldn’t have hung around if he didn’t trust and like me. And it was his choice whether he wanted to come out with me each day.
There were still days when he didn’t fancy taking to the streets. They were rare, to be honest. He genuinely enjoyed being out and about, meeting people and being fussed over. But when he hid away or refused to follow me out the door I always respected his decision. There would always be those who wouldn’t believe that, of course, but it was the truth.
The second common accusation was that I was mistreating him by having him on a lead. If I’d had a pound for every time I’d heard someone say ‘oh, you shouldn’t have him on a leash, he’s a cat not a dog’ I’d have been a very rich man. I’d explained the reasoning so many times I was bored at hearing myself say the words. On both occasions he’d run off, at Piccadilly Circus and in Islington, he’d been really relieved and clingy when I’d found him. I’d sworn never to let it happen again. But, again, I could keep saying it until I was blue in the face as far as some people were concerned. For them it was an open and shut case: I was some kind of animal abusing monster.
The third, and most upsetting allegation that had been made against me was that I was drugging Bob. I’d only heard that a couple of times, thankfully. But it cut me to the quick both times. Given what I’d been through in the past ten years and the battle I’d fought to kick my heroin habit, I found that the most hurtful insult of all. I found it really, really offensive.
As I watched the Inspector checking Bob I felt pretty certain that someone had raised one, two or even all three of these issues with the RSPCA. But I knew she wasn’t going to tell me, not until she’d completed her examination and written some kind of report, at least.
She took out a microchip reading device to check that he was micro-chipped, which he was, of course. The device showed up my name and address as Bob’s legal owner.
‘That’s a good start,’ she smiled. ‘You’d be surprised how many cat owners don’t chip their pets, even these days.’
She then checked his fur for fleas, took a look at his teeth and checked his breath, I assumed to see if there was anything wrong with his liver or maybe his kidneys. She also checked his eyes to see if they were cloudy. That made me wonder whether someone had tried to accuse me of drugging him. It made my blood boil to think someone would say that to the RSPCA.
I didn’t bother busking while all this was going on. Instead I reassured the small scrum of people who had stopped that everything was OK. I just hoped it was.
As I paced around I tried to put all those thoughts to the back of my head. I had to be positive, I told myself. I hadn’t done anything wrong.
After a few minutes she’d finished the inspection and started asking me questions.
‘Any health problems that you are aware of, James?’ she asked me, her pen poised over her notebook.
‘No,’ I said. I made sure to tell her that I regularly took him to the weekly drop-in Blue Cross clinic in Islington. They had always praised me for the way I looked after him and always gave him a clean bill of health. ‘They’ve not spotted anything so I think he’s pretty healthy,’ I told her.
&n
bsp; ‘That’s good to know, James,’ she said. ‘So tell me, how did you two get together in the first place?’
I told her the story and she nodded and smiled throughout.
‘Sounds like you two were meant to be together,’ she laughed.
She seemed pretty happy with everything, in fact she looked up and gave me a smile.
‘He’s a fine fellow, isn’t he? Don’t suppose you have a phone number that I can reach you on,’ she asked.
My battered old Nokia was still working – just – so I gave her the number.
‘OK, well I’m happy for now but I may need to follow up with another visit. Are you here every day?’
‘Yeah, pretty much most days at the moment,’ I said, already feeling uneasy.
‘OK, I will give you a call or drop in to see you soon.’
She then gave Bob a final ruffle and headed off into the crowds.
On the one hand I was pleased that she had left without any major drama. All sorts of scenarios had been going through my head. What if she’d found something that I didn’t know about, health wise? What if she’d said she needed to take him away? That was the worst conceivable outcome as far as I was concerned. I would have been sick with worry.
But my relief was tempered by other worries.
I knew the RSPCA had significant powers when it came to pet owners, from being able to confiscate a pet, to starting legal proceedings against anyone deemed to be guilty of abusing an animal. Why was she doing a follow-up visit? What was she going to tell her superiors? What sort of report was she going to write? What if I was prosecuted and, heaven forbid, Bob was taken away from me? I couldn’t help all these things going through my head, however little control I had over the situation.