Old Aquaintances.

Everyone knows someone like them.

You went to school with him or her.

However badly you did, they did worse…

I have a guy like that. In my year at Primary School, never spoke to him, lost touch when we moved on.

Over the years I have seen him around, first looking scruffy; eventually looking down and out.

The appearance of string around his waist and five or six different coats applied on top of each other was the clincher. This guy had well and truly dropped out, down and out of reach.

A month or so ago I got a tax rebate. Quite a respectable one. Not life changing, but pleasant. Enough for small acts of random kindness.

I was walking home after work, darkness leaking along Seven Sisters Road, when I saw him. String Round his (many) trousers, unshaven, wild hair. He was rooting through a bin like a hungry fox.

I decided there and then to just march up and give him a fiver. I thought, as you always do, “Will he just waste it on drugs or booze?”

I thought “so what, I’m giving it to him, it’s his anyway. We never spoke. So what. I will feel better, and he can do what he likes.”

We were on opposite sides of the road. It’s a wide road. Lots of traffic, plenty of people escaping Holloway for the Labrador-infested forests of Walthamstow or the Pit Bulls of Tottenham.

I waited for the traffic to clear as he worried his way through the next rubbish bin along… He looked around, he looked at me. For a second I thought he had recognised me…

He stood, face on to me, reached into his many trousers, produced his cock, and began to give the oncoming traffic a urinal benediction that a Pope would have been proud of. Splash it all over!!

I decided not to shake his hand. I gave the money to charity.