On winter

"I woke up and I was covered in snow," Tony told me with startling cheer last night.

We chatted about his attempt to get his foundation for lifting people out of poverty and exclusion, The Outcast Foundation, up and running, about the farce of how he almost had free office space courtesy of Landsec until he was deemed too homeless. 

Tony is the guy who sells me The Big Issue at Victoria Station each week. Like Big Issue Bill, from whom I used to buy the magazine, atoning for my hungover sins on many a blindingly sunny Sydney morning, I've started chatting with Tony. The stories of vendors are frequently moving and inspiring and Tony's story is no exception.

So it's an absolute travesty that he should have woken up on Sunday morning covered in snow. 

Meanwhile, barely half an hour after I bid Tony good night, I was on the bus from the tube station to my house fruitlessly poking away at my phone screen in a state of irritation. I was trying to turn on the heating via an app. I couldn't connect to the internet and had to endure the hell of coming home and then turning on the heating via a switch on the wall just inside the front door.

I had to remind myself that I have never woken up covered in snow.

And for the too-many people who have woken up covered in snow this week, the reasons, the chain of events which lead to people not waking up in warm beds, underneath roofs, surrounded by solid walls, with the central heating set to switch on before the alarm goes off, are complex.

For some people, such as Tony, the attempts at assistance from well-meaning charities can be more of a hindrance than a help.

For some people, they know there is a door somewhere out there that will always open for them but there are other issues at play, such as mental illness, which lead to sleeping rough. And this is the situation for a dear friend of mine as I write this, safely indoors, with the heating turned on.

To understand life in the mind of someone with a mental illness is a challenge for those who are not in this uniquely pernicious pain. To voluntarily be homeless, as my friend currently is, to leave a warm home where loved ones await can seem like an almost offensive rebellion, an act of profound ingratitude. And on a purely academic level, maybe it is. But mental illness is not rational. It produces irrational responses and behaviours that don't always make sense and can be genuinely terrifying to the patient and to the people they love and who love them, even when their situation is bleak.

And that is my fear for my friend who has again abandoned a roof over his head, who has been known to sleep in the gardens and garages of friends and family, who has taken up residence in woodlands and in the parks and shop doorways of London.

Too many times I have spoken to him or had an online chat with him and feared that it would be the last time I would ever see him or hear his voice or see his words pop up on my phone or computer screen. He is a brilliant writer, a wonderful raconteur, when he is at his best, he is the funniest, most entertaining person in the room.

He wrote a piece for me only a few weeks ago and it was excellent - it was insightful, there was not a cliche to be found, it was everything I wanted for that particular commission. I barely changed a thing, just a couple of typos. If only every writer whom I edit could consistently file such sparkling copy. It was a joy to edit his work, it was a joy to process the invoice.

Richard, once again, I ask you to come home, to follow the treatment that is on offer, to sleep in a warm, clean bed and not cause your family sleepless nights.

I have given three eulogies in my time - my paternal grandparents and a godmother all died within two years of each other and Dad and I somehow found ourselves appointed the family funeral orators. As far as I can tell, my eulogies were well-received. But they were written about people who died aged 89, 91 and 86. They were long lives well lived.

Richard, I have had horrific dreams about giving your eulogy. As much as I like the sound of my own voice, I don't want to give your eulogy any time soon. We are doing our best to understand why you are currently at the mercy of what is already a biting British winter. And we are all hoping for that day when nobody wakes up covered in snow.

This is Richard. Please keep an eye out for him in central London and Hertfordshire

Photography by Karim Corban/Flickr

And a second World Of Stupid for the week. Just because...

Hot on the heels of yesterday's World Of Stupid, which led to someone deeming me a worthy contender for Moron of the Year for daring to say women in developed countries probably aren't menstrually oppressed, I figured I'd wade back in for some more fun...

Here are a few more examples of idiocy that need to be exposed.

1. Cyclists versus motorists versus pedestrians...
I work near the dangerous Vauxhall gyratory. And the reason it is dangerous is because every day, I see multiple examples of stupidity. Three weeks ago, I walked past the tent that covered the body of the latest cycling fatality on my way to the office. There are people who blame cyclists, people who blame motorists and people who blame pedestrians. Frankly, after three years of crossing the road at the Vauxhall gyratory en route from the tube station to work, I have decided that the stupidity is evenly spread across all three groups. For every sensible cyclist/motorist/pedestrian there is inevitably a dickhead cyclist/motorist/pedestrian.

Since 2011, I have witnessed the following: Drivers who are incapable of working out how to get out of the way so ambulances can get past, a cyclist who called me a "fuckwit" for crossing the the road when the pedestrian light was green, cyclists running red lights, drivers who think the gyratory is Le Mans, drivers who almost mow down pedestrians by accidentally driving into the bit for buses, pedestrians who don't realise that the brief lull in traffic at the South Lambeth Street lights is always followed by a rush of cars driven at warp speed, an old woman nearly getting knocked over when crossing against the lights, a woman who stuck her pram-with-baby out into the traffic as some sort of test run to see if it was safe to cross (Hint: It wasn't) and today at lunchtime, a bloke walked into me while crossing the road because his face was buried in his phone.

Basically, if people are going to stop dying here or at any other London accident blackspot, everyone needs to use their brains.

2. Hand-wringing over homeless spikes
The spikes outside expensive blocks of flats and a Tesco, aimed at deterring the homeless from sleeping there, caused much outrage a few weeks ago. And fair enough - treating homeless people like pesky pigeons merely moves them elsewhere. But this is not new. Narrow seats in bus shelters that are really only comfortable if you have a Kate Moss bum, park benches divided into individual seats with hard, metal armrests, reduced access to public toilets... There are all manner of surreptitious ways that the government and private companies have tried to deter rough sleeping and it has been going on for years. But all this really tells us is that (a) we are no closer to finding any real solutions for homelessness and (b) while the spikes outside a Southwark block of flats and a Tesco have now been removed, it won't stop them popping up elsewhere. And then they will probably only be removed if a resident of an apartment building drunkenly trips up on them, lest a lawsuit be filed by someone who can actually afford a lawyer.

3. Labour's lurch to the right
Instead of offering a genuine alternative to Conservative policy, Labour seems intent on mimicking it with a pinch of pandering to UKIP thrown in for good measure. Seriously, how is today's announcement about cutting Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) for people aged 18-21 (because suddenly 18-year-olds don't seem to count as adults...) any better than the Coalition policy of cutting housing benefit for people under 25? And like any populist policy aimed at appeasing the Daily Mail while cynically hoping that young people won't bother to vote, it doesn't actually do a damn thing to create any more new jobs.

Frankly, the owls-for-everyone accidental tweet by Labour today makes more sense.

4. Forced marriage made illegal! Except it already is...
With much fanfare, it was announced this week that forced marriage is illegal in Britain. Hurrah! Yay, human rights! Er, except that it is already against the law to force someone to get married. It is already the case that both parties to a marriage must do so freely and give their consent. And there is a glaring loophole in the law that makes it fairly easy for forced marriage to be hidden in a veil of legitimacy. People aged 16 or 17 can get married with their parents' consent. It doesn't take Einstein to work out how this archaic law could be easily abused. It would make more sense for the legal age for marriage to be 18 across the board. (Even though you're not really an adult at 18 under Labour's JSA policy...).

The only real change is that parents who force their children to get married can now be jailed for up to seven years, which seems like a reasonable punishment for a terrible crime against one's own offspring. But will this, as the Home Office claims, make people more confident about coming forward to report such crimes? Will children report their own parents or aunts or uncles more readily if they know they will face jail? Hell, will this law even be properly policed or enforced? Such laws are notorious for a low rate of prosecutions. You've only got to look at the rates of prosecution for female genital mutilation in the UK (no prosecutions in almost 30 years despite more than 140 referrals with the first prosecutions only happening in March this year) to realise that all the laws in the world are fine and dandy but they need to be accompanied by education, awareness, safe places for people to go if they come forward to report such crimes and then fear for their safety, and wholesale, fearless cultural change.



Photography by Peter Griffin