The World According to Bob

‘Hello, James,’ a female voice said behind me. I recognised it straight away.

‘Hello, Billie,’ I said.

Back around the year 2000, when my life was at its lowest ebb, Billie and I had become friendly, helping each other out and keeping each other company. We hadn’t met until after the demise of Cardboard City and had huddled up against the cold together at the cold-weather shelters that charities like Centrepoint and St Mungo’s used to put up during the winter months.

It turned out that Billie had turned her life around too. She’d had an epiphany one night when she was sleeping rough in central London and was disturbed from her sleep by a Big Issue seller. At first she’d been annoyed at being woken up by him. She hadn’t even known what the magazine was. But she’d looked at it then and grasped the idea. She had then rebuilt her life and, a decade later, was now a ‘poster child’ for The Big Issue Foundation.

We reminisced about the bad old days over a cup of tea.

‘Remember that pop-up at Admiralty Arch during that really snowy winter?’ she said.

‘Yeah, what year was that? 1999 or 2000 or 2001?’ I said.

‘Can’t remember. Those days are all a blur aren’t they?’ she said with a resigned shrug.

‘Yep. Still, we are here, which is more than can be said for some of the poor sods we were with then.’

Goodness knows how many of the people who had been on the streets with us had perished in the cold or from drugs or violence.

Billie was very committed to this walk.

‘It will give people an idea what we had to go through,’ she said. ‘They won’t be able to slip off home into a warm bed, they’ll have to stay out there with us.’

I wasn’t quite so sure. No one, no matter how well meaning, could really understand what it was like to live on the streets.

Billie, like me, had a companion these days. Hers was a lively Border Collie called Solo. She and Bob weighed each other up for a few minutes but then decided there was nothing to worry about.

Just before 10.30pm John Bird, the founder of The Big Issue arrived. I’d encountered him a few times and found him a charismatic character. As usual, he was good value, and fired everyone up with an inspiring little speech about the difference the magazine had made during its 18 years. By now 100 or more people had gathered there along with a couple of dozen vendors, co-ordinators and staff. We all filed out into the night, ready for John Bird to do the countdown.

‘Three, two, one,’ he shouted and then we were off.

‘Here we go, Bob,’ I said, making sure he was positioned comfortably on my shoulders.

For me it was a real journey into the unknown. On the one hand, I was really worried about whether my leg would stand up to 18 miles of wear and tear, but on the other I was just delighted to be off my crutches and walking normally again. It was such a relief not to be going ‘clonk, clonk, clonk’ down the road all the time, having to swing my legs in front of me every step of the way. So, as we set off on the first leg around the South Bank and across the Millennium Bridge, I told myself to simply enjoy it.

As usual, Bob was soon attracting a lot of attention. There was a real party atmosphere and a lot of the charity fundraisers began taking snaps of him as we walked. He wasn’t in the friendliest of moods, which was understandable. It was way past his bed time and he could feel the cold coming off the Thames. But I had a generous supply of snacks as well as some water and a bowl for him. I’d also been assured there would be a bowl of milk at the stop-off points. We will give it our best shot, I said to myself.

Bob and I settled into a group in the middle of the procession as it worked its way along the riverside. They were a mix of students and charity workers, as well as a couple of middle-aged women. They were obviously genuine people who wanted to help in some way. One of the ladies started asking me questions, the usual things: ‘where do you come from?’, ‘how did you end up on the streets?’

I’d told the story a hundred times before during the past decade. I explained how I’d come to London from Australia when I was 18. I’d been born in the UK but my parents had separated and my mum had taken me with her when she’d moved down under. We’d moved around a lot in the following years and I’d become a bit of a troublemaker. When I came to London I had hopes of making it as a musician, but it didn’t really work out. I’d been staying with my stepsister but had fallen out with her husband. I’d started sleeping on friends’ sofas but had eventually run out of places to crash the night. I’d ended up on the streets and it had been downhill from there. I’d experimented with drugs before but when I became homeless it became a way of life. It was the only way to block out the fact that I was lonely and that my life was screwed up. It anaesthetised the pain.