The World According to Bob: The Further Adventures of One Man and His Street-wise Cat

Chapter 9 Bob’s Big Night Out

As we walked south across the Thames at Waterloo Bridge, the lights of the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye were blazing bright in the late November night sky and the pavement was busy with people. Most were heading in the same direction, away from the West End and the City towards the commuter trains of Waterloo station. Some were weary looking office workers, shuffling home from a late night at work, others were in a jollier mood after a night out in the West End.

It was approaching 10.30pm, the end of their day. For me and Bob, on the other hand, it was the beginning of what promised to be a very, very long night.

I’d been persuaded by The Big Issue to take part in a new event that they were staging. I had first read about it in the magazine a few months earlier. It was called the ‘The Big Night Out’ and had been planned to coincide with the 18th birthday of the magazine. With that in mind, some bright spark had decided it would be a good idea to organise an 18 mile walk through the streets of London in the middle of the night.

The idea was that ordinary people could walk through the deserted city between 10pm and 7am with a group of The Big Issue vendors so that they could learn a little about the reality of living rough and sleeping on the streets. The adverts in the magazine called it ‘a fantastic opportunity to join other like-minded people who have a sense of adventure and a desire to help empower homeless and vulnerable people across the UK’. We hadn’t even finished the walk to the start of the event, but I was already beginning to wonder whether it was an adventure too far for me and Bob, especially given the problems I’d had with my leg. It was a bitterly cold night – and getting colder by the minute.

I’d made the decision to take part for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it was a chance to earn a few extra pounds. Every vendor that took part in the walk was eligible for 25 to 30 free copies of The Big Issue. That meant that I could earn about £60 potentially. Beyond that, however, I saw it as an opportunity to talk to people about the magazine and the lives of the people who sold it.

Despite the ups and downs I’d had with the company, I was still a believer in its mission. It was, without question, the salvation for many people who lived on the streets. It had certainly helped give me direction and purpose – not to mention enough money to keep the wolf from the door – along the way.

We were meeting at the IMAX cinema at the Bullring roundabout on the south side of Waterloo Bridge. It was a fitting location. Not so long ago, the roundabout – well, more specifically the labyrinth of concrete, subterranean walkways underneath it – had been home to the shanty town that Londoners knew as Cardboard City. During the 1980s and early 1990s, it had become a home for more than 200 ‘rough sleepers’ as the social workers called us. A lot of those who hung out there were transient junkies and alcoholics but many created homes for themselves from wooden pallets and cardboard boxes. Some even had living rooms and bedrooms with mattresses. It had been a haven, but not necessarily a safe one, for 15 years. I’d stayed there briefly during its final days, at the end of 1997 and early 1998, when everyone was evicted to make way for the IMAX cinema.

My memories of the place were sketchy, but when I walked into the IMAX I saw the organisers of the walk had created a little picture exhibition on the history of Cardboard City. With Bob on my shoulder, I scanned the grainy black and white images for faces that I recognised. As it turned out, I was looking in the wrong place.

‘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.

While we were talking we passed a building near Waterloo Bridge where I remembered sleeping a few times. ‘I didn’t use it often,’ I told the lady, pointing it out. ‘One night while I was crashing out there another guy got robbed and had his throat slashed while he slept.’

She looked at me ashen-faced.

‘Did he die?’ she said.

‘I don’t know. I just ran away,’ I said. ‘To be honest, you just worry about making it through the night yourself. It’s every man for himself. That’s what life on the streets reduces you to.’

The woman stood there just looking at the doorway for a moment, as if she was saying a brief, silent prayer.

After about an hour and a half, we made it to the first stopping off point – the Hispaniola floating restaurant on the Embankment on the north side of the Thames.

I helped myself to some of the soup on offer while Bob lapped up some milk that someone had kindly sorted out for him. I was feeling pretty positive about the whole thing and was already totting up the miles that I’d done – and how many more were to come.

But then, as we were heading off the ship, we had a bit of a setback. Perhaps because he’d been refuelled or perhaps because he knew that my leg still wasn’t 100 per cent, Bob had decided to walk off the boat. As he padded his way down the ramp, right to the end of his lead, he walked straight into another The Big Issue seller who was coming up the walkway with a dog, a Staffie. It instantly went for Bob and I had to jump in front of it with my arms and legs out to stop him lunging at Bob. To be fair to the other guy, he gave his dog a real dressing down and even gave him a slap on the nose. Staffies do get a bad reputation for being violent, but I don’t think this one was. He was just being curious, not evil. Unfortunately, however, it freaked Bob out a bit. As we resumed our walk he wrapped himself around me tightly, partly through nervousness but mostly because it was his way of insulating himself against the cold. There was a bone-chilling mist rising off the Thames.

Part of me wanted to call it a night and take Bob home. But I spoke to a couple of the organisers and was persuaded to carry on. Fortunately, as we headed away from the river, the temperatures lifted a little bit. We wound our way through the West End and headed north.

I got talking to another couple, a pretty young blonde girl and her French boyfriend. They were more interested in the story of how Bob and I had got together. That suited me fine. Walking around London like this brought back so many memories, many of them too dark and distressing for words. As a heroin addict living on the streets, I was reduced to doing some hideous things just to survive. I wasn’t in the mood to share those details with anyone.

For the first six miles or so, my leg had been fine. I’d been too distracted by what was going on around me to think about it. But as the night wore on, I began to feel a throbbing pain in my thigh, where the DVT had been. It was inevitable. But it was still annoying.

For the next hour or so I ignored it. But whenever we stopped for a cup of tea I could feel an acute shooting pain. Early on I had been in the middle of the procession, walking along with the largest numbers of fundraisers. But I had been falling further and further behind, eventually reaching the back of the line. A couple of fundraisers and a guy from The Big Issue office were bringing up the rear and I tagged along with them for a mile or so. But I’d had to take a couple of breaks to let Bob do his business and have a cigarette. Suddenly I realised that we were now cut loose from the rest.

The next official stop was up in Camden, at the Roundhouse pub, a few miles away. I really didn’t think I could make it that far. So when we passed a bus stop with a night bus that headed in our direction, I made a decision.

‘What do you think, Bob, shall we call it quits?’

He didn’t say anything, but I could tell that he was ready for his bed. When a bus loomed into view and opened its doors, he bounded on board and on to a seat, bristling with pleasure at being in the warm.

The bus was surprisingly busy given it was well after 3am. Sitting towards the back of the bus, Bob and I were surrounded by a cluster of clubbers, still high from their night out in the West End or wherever it was they’d been. There were also a couple of lonely looking guys sitting there as if they were on the road to nowhere. I’d been there and done that, of course. I not only had the t-shirt, I had a wardrobe full of them.

But that was the past. Tonight it felt very different. Tonight I felt rather pleased with myself. I know walking a dozen or so miles might not have seemed much of an achievement to some people, but to have made it that far given the state my leg had been in weeks earlier, was – for me, at least – the equivalent of running the London Marathon.

I’d also been reunited with some familiar faces, in particular, Billie. It had been a joy to see her again and to see how well she was doing. All in all, I just felt like I’d done something positive, that I’d given something back. I’d spent so many years taking from people, mainly because I had nothing to give. Or at least, I didn’t think I had anything to give. Tonight had shown me that wasn’t necessarily true. Everyone has something to contribute, no matter how small. Sharing my experiences tonight, for instance, I’d felt like I’d connected with a few people and, maybe, I’d opened their eyes to the reality of life on the streets. That wasn’t to be dismissed. It was worth something. And so, I began to quietly tell myself, was I.