Beggars can't be choosers

"'Ere, 'scuse me mate, can you do me a favour..?"

These were the first words I heard upon alighting the coach when I arrived in Bristol two months ago, fresh from India. They were uttered by a young man with pimples sporting a tracksuit and a baseball cap tipped at a jaunty angle - although there was nothing jaunty in his pale face with it's pockmarked skin and bloodshot eyes.

"I aint like a street beggar or nothin'..."

No, I thought, you're like a bus station beggar. I sighed as I stooped to pick up my bag.

"I lost me wallet and I needs fifty pee for me bus to Knowle..."

Disconcerted and embarrassed by my immediate confrontation with begging in Bristol, I mumbled some excuse about not having any change and walked away. I lied through my teeth actually - of course I had fifty pence - I just didn't want to give it to him. Funny how you always mutter, "Sorry, I haven't got any change," when you're confronted by a beggar, rather than, "Sorry, I'm not going to give you any of my change."

I made a conscious decision years ago to try not to ignore dodgy-looking characters in situations like this because there are plenty of people who do, who look at beggars as though they're not human or look through them as though they're simply not there... I can't help but think how awful it would feel to be treated like that, every day of your life, as though you're no longer a part of society, to feel as though you're not even worth a second glance or a second thought.

I've come across people on the street who look like they're poor and desperate but aren't actually begging for money - they just want to know what time it is or need a light for their cigarette - because they have a certain look, a certain vibe, they are disregarded by passers by. I met a guy the other day who thanked me profusely for stopping to give him a light because, as he explained, he'd asked about ten people and been completely ignored by most of them. It's almost as though many people resent being reminded that there are others in the world who are struggling to keep their heads above the water, who need a bit of help, or at the very least some compassion.

I'm not trying to paint myself as some kind of social hero here. I just think it's polite to listen and reply if someone asks you a question - it's the old-fashioned English gentleman in me rather than the new-age, politically correct hippy traveller! I mean, it's rude to ignore someone isn't it, even if they do have questionable hygiene or a drug problem?!

Equally, I'm not exaggerating my social conscience. It does take a bit of courage to stop and talk to beggars rather than brush past them, but not much. And rest assured there are plenty of dodgy-looking characters I keep plenty of distance from and don't talk to unless I'm compelled to - and even then I make sure I don't stop moving! I'm not so naive - there are criminals and crazies everywhere, I just think there's a big difference between fucked up people like that and those who are decent but have been unfortunate enough to end up on the streets, addicted to alcohol or drugs or involved in prostitution.

This reminds me of something that happened to me last week. I was on the street in Stokes Croft late on Saturday night when I was approached by a scruffy-looking couple who engaged me in conversation. As on numerous previous occasions I stopped and listened to what the couple had to say even though I knew it would involve a discussion about money at some point - specifically, their requirement for it. They got straight to the point.

"'Ere mate, you 'aven't got a poun' coin 'ave you to swap fer these coppers?"
The man extended a hand toward me, palm open. In it I could see a pile of small change. I studied him and his girlfriend briefly. They didn't appear any more respectable upon closer inspection, both of them pale, skinny and sickly-looking with lank, greasy hair and grimy, unwashed clothes. The girl had a unpleasant-looking sore on her upper lip.
"What for?" I asked bluntly.
"Well, the taxi driver 'ere won't take these coppers see? It's a quid in change 'ere I swear," the man said, proffering the coins for my inspection.
"Actually mate it's eighty-five pee," the girl piped up. The man shot her an annoyed glance.
"Um yeah, it is actually eight-five pee, she's right there..." he admitted.
I looked around. I couldn't see a taxi. Their story was barely plausible, but I was touched and amused by the girl's weird honesty in such circumstances. I quickly came to a decision.
"Alright, there you go," I said, fishing a pound coin out of my pocket and handing it to the girl.
"Aw, cheers mate, thas really good of you like," she said.
"No worries, I've got a tub for small change, I'll stick this lot in there."
"Yeah, good ideal," the man said in his broad west country accent as he emptied the small change into my hand. "Thanks a lot. 'Ave a good night mate!"
"You too. Take care..."

I walked off, counting the money the man had given me. Eighty-five pence exactly. I smiled and wondered what the couple were actually going to do with my golden nugget, given that it blatently wasn't for a taxi. Admittedly, I was feeling a bit slow-witted after five pints of cider, otherwise I would have worked it out sooner. I stopped in my tracks as an image of the couple came to me, wandering the streets begging for money. What happens when they've collected, say, five pounds, I thought? Ten pounds maybe? Why, they go looking for a drug dealer of course! But a drug dealer isn't going to accept a handful of coppers in exchange for a rock of crack or hit of smack is he? No, he's not going to want anything smaller than a pound coin.

My hard-earned money, still warm from my pocket, I daresay, was going to end up in the greedy clutches of an evil drug-dealer, via the grubby hands of a addicted beggar and his girlfriend. It's a lovely image, isn't it?

As I walked home, my pile of change jingling in my pocket where previously a pound coin had snugly sat, I contemplated this strange perspective on the seamier side of life that had been unexpectedly presented to me. I thought about the couple. I tried to imagine their lives. Was she a prostitute? Was he her pimp? Were they homeless? If not, what kind of home did they have? Did they have parents who worried about them? Or big brothers? Sisters? Friends? Were they abused? Did they abuse each other? Were they in love?

How many times must they have been around the viscious circle that I had just glimpsed a tiny edge of?

I confess I had tears in my eyes by the time I got to my front door. Empathy is a difficult thing to bear sometimes. It was at that moment that I had the idea to write this blog.

I suppose my attitude to giving beggars money is still developing, as is so much else about the way I look at the world. It's such a grey area, isn't it? A beggar is not such a worthy cause for charity, at least not when you hand one money on the street. The chances are that they will end up using it to buy booze or drugs. Once that was my excuse for never digging in my pockets for loose change, but so what if beggars ends up spending the money I give them on booze and drugs? Hell - that's what I'm going to spend it on so who am I to judge?!

I don't consider myself to be a particularly charitable person anyway. I'm not proud of the fact that when faced with images of victims of starvation, hurricanes or tsunamis on the television I feel a knife twist in my stomach and I promise myself I will make a donation to one charity or another and then promptly forget. Somehow the immediacy of the plight of the homeless on the streets of Bristol affects me in a different way. They do say that charity begins at home...

After two years away I've come home to see the same haggard faces on the streets in Stokes Croft as well as some new ones and there are some who are noticeably absent. There's one character in particular who I haven't seen since I returned but who was a fairly regular fixture in my life for the nine years I lived here before. Every few weeks I'd see him on the street, small, ragged and pale with a dirty blanket draped over his shoulders, he'd either be begging, wandering aimlessly or drugged out of his head in a gutter.

He was an efficent liar, which is what leads me to believe he was probably a drug addict. That, and the fact that he was often to be seen off his head in gutters. One night he stopped me and asked for some change as I was walking home drunk from a nightclub. I ended up giving him £10 because he convinced me that if he could afford to spend one more night in a hostel then he would be able to obtain the paperwork he needed to get a job he'd applied for. In the end I took a chance on him. I desperately wanted to believe that I could make a difference and he knew that and he preyed on it.

A couple of weeks later he tried to sell me the same story and I just told him he was a liar and carried on walking. Of course he didn't remember me.

I heard it once said that the majority of adults in this country are only two pay cheques away from being on the streets. Of course, it sounds like a blatently contrived statistic if you figure in all the people that most of us can rely on for support if things were to go wrong in our lives - parents, friends, partners - but what if there was no-one there to help you if you lost your job and couldn't find another? How many people must there be in Bristol alone who have nobody to look after them? How many of those lonely, luckless people have ended up on the streets because there was no-one there when they needed someone to protect them?

Some argue that people who find themselves in such desperate circumstances have only got themselves to blame, that it's an individual's choices in life that takes him or her along a particular path and if that path leads to self-destruction then, well, it's too bad - they should have made better choices. But that's the point isn't it? We can't understand their plight exactly because we have the luxury of choice and cannot imagine what it would be like not to have. What kind of choices does the abused child of an abused, drug-addicted single mother have?

No choice at all.

Next time you see a beggar sat huddled beneath a blanket in an underpass looking hopefully up at you as you stride past, don't feel the need to give them money, but at the very least try to look them in the eye and actually see them as you shake your head, remembering all the time that they are someone's son or someone's daughter, somone's brother or someone's sister, or at the very least, a child of God as you are.

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