Spare some change, alright thank you. Spare some change Sir. Yeah right of course you have, completely out, you say that every day! Just speak into this you say? Yes I’m homeless, it wasn’t my fault, I probably didn’t help myself that’s true enough but in a world where it has become…acceptable to look down upon someone lower than yourself for fear of being spat upon as well, for the dread that sits inside you that you might find yourself being pissed upon by a Friday night reveller, the party goer who finds the inside of the entry the perfect place in which to let go of their hard earned cash and curry mixed with vodka, that dread is only ever three pay days away and unless you are lucky, I mean really lucky, then the spiral goes on and on until one day you manage to find a mirror and you wonder what happened to the girl with dreams.
I do like the sound of a city at play though, reminds me of the times when I used to hear music, well not real music, the machine symphony of a hospital intensive care ward. The heart monitors sounding as sweet as any cello played by a groovy red head, the steady clack of a nurse’s shoe as she makes her way round the ward assisting, enabling the patient to get comfortable or even have a pee with dignity and holding their hand when the terror of their situation becomes overwhelming. The sound of Humanity in its probable final gasps! Now the sound I hear on a Friday night is filled with apprehension, of the girlish squeal and tapping of high heeled shoes in which they find impossible to wear, inevitably the squeal turns to a yell as they fall over, their shoes just too big for them to carry, too nice not to be seen on their feet. They feel taller in them but when they squat down on the loo they reach the same height as me.
Spare change? I don’t blame them, they are having fun, they are only three payslips away from being my neighbour, not that there is room in this doorway for a neighbour, not tonight anyway. I would welcome the warmth of a human being next to me but the half bottle of cheap whisky left to me by a soul, neither kind nor malicious; wouldn’t last that long with two nipping at it.
The sound of a Friday night, the shouts of anger, the professes of love from one to the next to the next to the end of the line and the next to back of the queue. The sound of the suited and booted gambling, loving, betting, arguing and pissing are like a crescendo of sturdy resonance. The healthy picture of a life being lived!
Last Friday one of our own died. I don’t know if you ever saw him. He was a quiet cove, never asked for any money, just sat down in an intimate way and stared out into the middle of the weekend throng and smiled. He was found on the Saturday morning by the man who owned the shop. He had died in his sleep. Perhaps it was hunger. I will probably never know but when he was given something, spare chips laced with salt and vinegar, the conscious driven result of meeting someone’s eye unexpectedly and just offering them a smile, well those chips were shared, given out to those he knew hadn’t eaten for a couple of days. They may have been cold by that time but they tasted better than anything I ever had when I worked in the ward.
The ward, I saw a homeless man bought to the ward one night…excuse me…Spare change please…thank you mate, thank you. O.K. so it was fifty pence but another couple of those and I can get a cup of tea…the ward, it was the first time I had seen someone in such a state, I really mean saw for the first time. I had seen them on the streets in the 70s and 80s of course. I was away in Africa for a few years in the 90s so didn’t make the connection but when I came back in 99, the natural progression to nursing at home was too much of a pull. I see it in people’s eyes even now, those that dare to admit they once knew me, even were my friend at one time always thinking, you were so together, you cared and you were fun, now look at you, flea bitten perhaps. Why did you let yourself go…I saw the old man, I cleaned him down and burnt his clothes. I sat there after my shift had finished and watched him breathe. In and out, ever more peaceful and undisturbed, I watched him fade from existence until finally the last breathe had escaped him. I went out and got drunk. My mental state not being able to cope with the idea that we can let some person, any person go like that. I had seen death before…ahh thank you my love, yes you too…I had seen death, shook hands with her, played a type of living game with her. I tried to save one, she would hang around another, playing with the wires and machines. In the end we took turns. I cared for one, she cared for another.
This old man was perhaps the first one I had seen die in such a way. I had cared for children with A.I.D.S, people who were starving, people who were brutalised by both War and Man but who when they died had been at least cared for in some way. This man, he was neglected and ignored. Abandoned by all who perhaps had ever known him and overlooked as piece of humanity! Like my friend who handed out chips as if it was currency, the odd half-finished battered sausage as if it was the most precious piece of Gold, this man had died alone. When you stop taping me I expect to be alone save for the odd shout of abuse from the long line of piss heads, the looking the other way of the suited and booted, for if they don’t see you they cannot expect to have an extra pang of guilt in their busy lives. Being disregarded is not easy, being forgotten for any good you may have achieved in your life, to have someone judge you on the appearance of a two second glance, well that’s the hardest thing.
Why are you even here, this machine stuck into my face, what do you want a bloody medal? No, I understand you say you are trying to capture a voice of the undisclosed Great Depression, I do get that and have thought about that term for a while. I just find it odd that somebody else would ever think the same thing. You look even rougher than me but I’m guessing that is education for you. You are what, going to be in debt till you are fifty say, I’m fifty now and I owe nothing except to my sanity. I keep a grip on that, yes I want to be remembered but I also want to be remembered for once having a brain, for being caring in an uncaring world and yes I want to say that whilst I let myself go after that episode in the hospital at least I didn’t turn people out on the street, I didn’t make it easy for people to look at sections of society and make them scorned. I didn’t make the first question out of anybody’s mouth “So how much do you earn?” and the close second, “How much is your house worth?” The pride of civilisation gone in the questioning of what a person is worth to that ever bloated creature The Economy. I wonder what those people make of the artist, say Van Gogh, yes I have heard of Van Gogh, don’t look at me as if so fucking stupid, I am not stupid, you hear, I am not stupid,…well that’s better, no it’s O.K. don’t worry I know you meant no offence. Van Goch painted all those amazing pictures but was broke, who made money from it? Not the artist, not the person who created the image but the person who was able to buy it at auction for example and then sell it on again for a few thousand hundred more.
I remember once a minister coming to the hospital and telling us just how good a job we were doing and then finding out three months later that the ward was to be closed due to budget constraints. Who lost the job, not the minister, not the person who told us but the few of us that cared. The Great Depression of the 21st Century, nobody ever really coined it as such did they. Why give it that big a name if people were still able to go out drinking every Friday night, if some could sit in the posh seat of theatre whilst the cheaper seats went sometimes empty. No there was no Depression, it was a shift in economics, a temporary alignment in what we were worth to society. Those with encouraged to look down upon those without for fear that they may too join them. The fear feeding the bloated and ever bulbous beast!
Those with encouraged to despise those who find themselves without. What do you mean, you don’t own a car, you walk everywhere? Don’t you realise you are hurting The Economy! You do some voluntary work on the basis it might help somebody? Oh how noble, but do you not think of the money your missing out upon? The money, always the money. I am no different! Neither are you! We live to feed The Economy in which we might spare some time to live in a house that will never truly be ours, we feed, we drink, we socialise and all for what to feed The Economy. I overheard a conversation the other day, I was invisible to them, I was under my blanket and perhaps they thought I was Polish and wouldn’t hear them but these two men were discussing the merits of eating in one establishment over the other. I remember when conversations like that used to be on the scale of, “Well they do a better steak in that place.” “Yes but that one allows you take in your own choice of wine.” Now it was, “Well perhaps such and such a place would benefit from being seen with us in and they would offer a discount. After all I hear they are struggling and letting go a member of staff.”
When did it become like that? When did worth depend on your ability to spend money? Of course I may be an old drunk, I may be homeless but at least I never put shit up my nose and then thought about frequenting somewhere on the basis of my wallet’s superiority.
There is nothing wrong with deserved wealth you know, I am not saying that and I look upon my hat on the floor as a symptom of my own destruction, my own self-imposed destruction, but surely that cannot be right can it? I read once a book by a man who looked like a monkey, big beard, bald head, looked kind of serious and clever who said something about the species and fight for survival. I disremember exactly but if the upshot is that the fittest survive, who then sets the bar for the next ones in line for the chop? I think I shall be glad to have joined my friends by then.
Being homeless wasn’t the worst, being alone was the hardest punishment to bear. Even when somebody nice stops, spares you a minute of their precious time and asks if you are O.K. that is more a blessing. The time between the tick and the tock waits for no one, spend a minute with the perceived lowest and it’s a minute in which you spend away from your job, your chance to suckle on the bloated beast. The runt of the litters deserving to be eaten little by little by the powerful pig. Squeal for me little pig, squeal and run if you can because the big pig will turn on you next as I won’t be there to help you.
You done now love? You going to leave me with a bit of luck and I shall think kindly of you. A fiver and chips? How long you had them there. You’re a good one. Thank you. Hey don’t forget your recording thingy, hey, hey!
Ian D. Hall