Today I was waiting outside Liverpool street station for a friend. She was running a little late so I got comfy leaning on a pillar by the bishops gate entrance. It was bloody freezing.
I couldn’t have been there long, only a few minutes at best, before a woman approached asking if I could help her. I said maybe.
“I’m homeless, you see.” She said. “I can get into the shelter if I can get two fifty.”
“Sorry, I don’t carry cash.” I replied. Staring at me like I was a heartless liar, she turned on nearly-new
Addidas sneaker heels and made a B-line for the next lingering Londoner.
Her look really pissed me off, I wasn’t a liar, I don’t carry cash and, although I’m sure she gets palmed off with that line all the time by people who actually do have shrapnel in their pockets, I didn’t appreciate being the receiver of a disappointed, disbelieving frown from someone clearly faining homelessness.
I was now waiting in the cold and a mood. Where the hell was my friend?!
Again, only moments later, another person approached, politely and humbly asking for ‘just a bit of money for a coffee”. If anyone reading this has spent more and an hour in or around Spitalfields on the weekend, you will have encountered this man; long brown hair, stubble, relatively gaunt with a crutch that is only needed in the presence of others.
I’ve lived here for years and know this guy only too well, a prolific beggar who has a bit of a habit of taking it way too far. He once came all the way into a restaurant to ask my friends for money, when they said that they weren’t willing to and didn’t like being disturbed whilst they’re eating, he told them they were as bad as Nazis!
I wasn’t having any of it from him and told him to leave me alone.
This was beginning to really suck and I was just about ready to ditch my friend and head off for hassle free pastures elsewhere.
About to leave, a girl came up to me. She was about my age and had an absolutely massive rucksack on her back, she didn’t look homeless but considering the first two didn’t either, I wasn’t prepared to presume otherwise.
“Excuse me?” She said.
“No.” I replied.
“What?”
“You’re going to ask me for money, and I don’t have any. I never have any money.” I said, really quite sharply. I already felt like a bit of a dick.
“No I wasn’t actually. I was going to ask you if you knew which way Shoreditch High Street was.” Now I definitely felt like a complete prick. How unbelievably obnoxious of me!!!!
“Sorry.” I meekly replied. “It is up the road, this road literally becomes the High Street. I am, really sorry.”
She didn’t say anything in return, she just walked off and who could possibly blame her! What a terrible thing to have done…
Now at home, in the warmth I’m no longer annoyed by the two people asking for cash but I do still feel bad for the poor girl I presumed was one of them and obviously wasn’t. If, in the odd-chance she should ever read this, I am very, very sorry!
In the entire time I have been doing Losing Face, I have only ever once wished I had cash to give to someone, it was months ago when London began to get really cold and wet. I was on a date with a girl that at the time I barely knew, but is now my girlfriend.
We were walking along the Southbank, getting to know each other and doing a very bad job of flirting with each other. A man sat on a park bench in wet, dirty, torn clothes was almost motionless. As we passed him he murmured a request for some money, his voice was broken and rasp and every sound was desperate – I really felt genuinely sorry for not being able to give the man anything at all as all the shops nearby were shut and I obviously didn’t have any money.
Then I noticed something heartbreaking; he wasn’t wearing any shoes! His feet were swollen and pink, in fact they were almost unrecognisable – I couldn’t have imagined walking 20 metres without shoes on in that weather, let alone spending even one night outside in the cold. My heart really went out to him.
Thankfully Netta had some change that she could give him and he seemed so humbly grateful toward her, I was happy that at least one of us could do something, however small. If I had been down their on my own and had been able to help in any way I would have felt unearthly terrible.
In the instance of aid and benevolence, there are clearly times when not carrying cash can be a blessing and a curse on one’s conscience.
Losing Face 