Help the Homeless

TunnelThere’s a tunnel I walk through every day on the way to work. It leads from Blackfriars underground station to the pedestrian walkway that runs west along the Embankment from Saint Paul’s to just after Blackfriars Bridge. It’s a great tunnel, low and gently curving as it slopes uphill, with a black and yellow tiled floor and long rows of recessed fluorescent lights along both edges of the ceiling. It often has a strong breeze blowing down it, smelling of the river and when you reach the end you have a great view along the Thames towards Waterloo bridge and the Houses of Parliament. I love the drama of that end of the tunnel; you never know whether the tide’s going to be high or low and the weather often seems different to how it was on the railway station.

Homeless people often hang out in the tunnel. That famous knitted-doll making woman is sometimes there and the man with the pointy face and the little dog. For the last week there’s only been the quiet man. He sits on the mandatory piece of flattened cardboard box with his head bowed down and a small cup in front of him. He never asks for spare change, he has no little sign, he never looks up.

On Wednesday I was looking at him from the side as I approached and I saw that he was smiling very slightly, in a bitter sort of way. I never give money to homeless people, for no reason really, but I really felt the contrast between my happiness at the approach of the beautiful view and his static stare at the floor. In my pocket I happened to have an Alprax (don’t ask). As I passed him I dropped it into his cup. I looked back and saw him take it out, pop it out of its blister without looking at it and stick it straight into his mouth.

So, the next day I gave him a microdot that’s been hanging around. He did the same thing. The day after that I wasn’t working but he was still there yesterday and I gave him two Largactyl. Today I only had Co-dydramol. I’m not working again until Friday but I’m a bit worried – I’ve got quite a few Alprax and Largactyl left but I don’t want to repeat myself and anyway, I might need them! I can’t give them all to him. There is half a bottle of Kemadrin at the back of the cupboard but I’ve never even tried those, they don’t sound like fun.

4 thoughts on “Help the Homeless

  1. Maybe I should have made it a bit clearer that this blog entry came about more through speculation than actual experience. I did try to signpost a change of something or other with a more descriptive style than usual and there was the deliberate Coupland reference with the brand names but it obviously didn’t help.

    It reminds me a bit of when I was taking a self-portrait for my passport photo. I had the camera on a tripod with a remote in my hand. I did pictures with me smiling, looking serious, aggressive, a bit quizzical, more friendly and so on. When I went to look at them they were all virtually identical.

    Anyway, it’s not meant to be a hoax, sorry if it seems like it is.

  2. It does look lioke a nice tunnel. Although whether I’d find it quite so nice whilst unexpectedly tripping is a moot point. Although, come to think of it…(drifts off into nostalgic reverie)

  3. “lioke”? I mean like, of course. What’s that ‘o’ doing there? It’s almost as if someone dropped it…I wonder if…

  4. I did pick up on the Coupland style, and about half way through I began to think ‘gosh, that’s a lot of pills!’; but it didn’t actually click until you said :).

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