I was on my hands and knees scraping a four-inch dog turd from the entrance to my bivouac in a small public park when the call came: "Oi! Get yer arse out of there you fuckin' tramp." The words came from a pair of angelic-faced young boys standing astride a pile of rubble. The message was clear. I had once again fallen on the road through life, this time to a new low. And, to make it worse, Christmas was just around the corner.
The pursuit of money (read: heroin) had become a Sisyphean task. Each day began and ended on the same note - flat broke, save for the few unspendable coppers left over from the last score. Working hours were spent covering the same 20 to 30 metropolitan miles with bags full of books, in search of purchasers, dragging my stolen wares up and down escalators, boarding trains, eventually making a sale, searching out the dealers, spending the cash, whacking up the gear, then beginning all over again, three, sometimes four times a day - weeks spent circling the capital in a perverse gavotte of relentless replenishment.
It had all been so different in the beginning. At first, in late summer, my homelessness had been tinged with boy scout romanticism. Despite urban regeneration, Clerkenwell retains elements of the picaresque, as I discovered one pleasant July afternoon. My old friend "Gorgeous" George and I slipped unnoticed through the ticket barriers at Farringdon station, on our way to a crack house located along the serpentine back funnels that led from the sink of lower Clerkenwell to the impossibly trendy heights of Exmouth Market.
After a spat with our latest landlady, we were out on our arses. George had decided to return to his long-suffering parents in faraway Bounds Green, leaving me with nowhere to live. We halted on our peregrinations and stood blasting the "golden eye" crack in a deserted piece of parkland hidden between the end of Exmouth Market and what remained of Clerkenwell's famous old house of detention. George was, as usual, unsympathetic to my fate.
"You're always goin' on about what a champion boy scout you was. Don't see why yer can't camp 'ere fer a few nights. Ain't exactly the depths of winter. The fresh air'd do yer good, after all them years inside."
On reflection this didn't seem such a bad idea. He was right. I had once been a first-class patrol leader.
I looked about the shrubs and trees, inhaling the scent of pine and lilac. Underfoot, the topsoil was soft. I reckoned it would be as comfortable as any prison mattress I had slept on. Before returning to the bosom of his family, George introduced me to the usefulness of other people's rubbish. I watched as he rummaged through one of the skips scattered about the area.
"Yer could furnish a five-bedroomed house wiv some of the stuff people throw out."
For the time being, I contented myself with a couple of blankets "borrowed" from an unattached bay at University College Hospital, and a splendidly embroidered velvet cushion which fell conveniently into one of my large "shopping" bags from a sofa in the nearby Holiday Inn. Thus equipped, I was inducted into the dubious pleasure of life "on the street," or rather, in the park.
I had to break into the park when I returned close to midnight. What was a bright, open public space in daytime had, after nightfall, turned into a padlocked fortress. But I was determined to find a secret sleeping place. I felt my way into a deep thicket of undergrowth at the foot of a tall fir tree and bedded down. I lay wrapped in my knitted white blanket, staring up through the filigree layers of leaves and branches into the sky. Gone was "the little tent of blue" which I had gazed at for nearly 20 years in various prison cells. In its place, a midnight canvas stretched out infinitely. It was a warm night and I soon dozed off.
Over the next few weeks my timetable of skulduggery continued much the same as when I'd had a home to return to each night. To meet the necessary drug demand, I had to earn in the region of ?120 a day. After the loss of a fixed address, priorities changed. No house meant no cooking. No cooking meant no hot suppers. The food I acquired had to be consumed cold in the open as I shivered in my bivouac. After the day's work was over, I spent the evening touring supermarkets, putting together the ingredients of my buffet supper - cold meats, mousses and fruit fools, golden syrup cake, apple-filled pancakes, ginger biscuits and most prized of all, giant tubs of H?agen-Dazs strawberry cheesecake ice cream.
One night, I became aware of a rustling in nearby bushes. I suspected I was under the surveillance of another tramp, come to invade my territory and claim it as his own. I had recently stumbled on the embers of a fire in the clearings. Strewn around it were crushed beer cans, empty quarter bottles of whisky and a mildewed blanket. Peering into the darkness, however, I realised that the interloper was, in fact, a quadruped with a protruding snout and bushy tail. The young urban fox circled my camp at a safe distance before rushing in to snatch a heavily-buttered Eccles cake. Night after night he returned. With each visit the cub grew braver - cheekier - until finally he plucked up the courage to take morsels from my hand. I looked forward to his visits until, one night, I returned to find that in my absence, he'd ripped open the larder and eaten everything. After that raid, I never saw my friend again.
As the autumnal leaves began to fall, the outer layers of camouflage began to disappear. But there was still enough greenery to hide me away from prying eyes, which was just as well given the more malevolent nature of the next camp visitors.
"Quick. Throw it over now, Stevie."
Kerrashh.
"An' annuver one."
Kerrashh.
"Sweet. Now, get yer arse over 'ere."
This jolted me out of a drugged and dreamless sleep. After years of sleeping in cells with muggers and murderers, it doesn't take much to wake me. I looked at my watch, which I had managed to hang on to despite many financial emergencies. Twelve minutes past four. At this unearthly hour, whatever was going on was almost certainly illegal. Blinking in the dark, I made out two black-hooded youths lugging a pair of newly uprooted parking meters from the park fence to a clearing only feet from where I lay.
I froze, close enough to the action for the protagonists' shadows to fall across the bottom of my sleeping bag. One of them produced a flimsy saw with which they attempted to cut the meter in half. Cursing its uselessness, they moved on to more rudimentary tools: one of them held the meter against the armrest on a park bench while the other hammered it with a large rock. This stone-age symphony banged on for around 20 eardrum-piercing minutes before the bolts gave way, scattering coins in all directions. The second meter, mercifully, surrendered with less of a fight. The thugs were exultant.
"There must be nearly a 'undred quid 'ere" the bigger one announced after a few moments of gathering in all the coins. "Let's get ourselves out of 'ere..."
"We can't jus' leave the meters. Ol' Bill might pull prints off of 'em."
"Throw 'em in the bushes then..."
Upon which they hurled the evidence in the air and over the bushes under which I was cowering. The heavy metal projectiles missed me by inches as they landed with two great thuds either side of my encampment.
I hated mornings in my bivouac. I would wake empty inside, broken as a shattered ampoule, with the knowledge that if I didn't lay my hands on a tenner within the next hour or so, the sickness would begin. There were caf?s nearby willing to swap me the requested tenner for a couple of large tins of Nescaf?. But that meant going thieving "straight," with the nightmare possibility of arrest before heroin. I loathed having to do it, but needs must. Normally, breakfast consisted of what I could nick from a Pr?t ? Manger in Smithfield market (lemon cheesecake and apple juice) and a few hastily rolled-up dog ends discarded on the pavement by city workers no longer allowed to smoke in their glass and stainless steel palaces.
On Sundays, it became my habit to lie in, if only because the local dog owners slept in as well and the mutts that frequented the park weren't allowed off their leads to piss on the end of my sleeping bag as early as normal. But Remembrance Sunday turned out to be different. From inside my bivouac, I could hear loud, distinctly "luvvy" voices ringing out even before the clock tower of St James's had begun to call early communicants to worship. An inspection revealed lorries, vans, trailers, a double decker bus and a profusion of electrical cables leading to spotlights and tripod-mounted cameras. A battalion of men and women in 19th-century dress paraded up and down with gloved hands clutching paper plates and plastic beakers. A delicious aroma hit my nose, announcing that a full English breakfast was now being served. I hopped over the fence and joined the crew. Best boy, hairdresser to Ms Winslet, deputy assistant lighting technician; I strode over to the catering wagon.
Before me was a feast that wouldn't have shamed Belshazzar. There was every cereal known to man. There were eggs, bacon, sausages, liver, black (and white) puddings, kippers and kedgeree, beans, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, bubble and squeak. On the next table was piled high a selection of exotic pastries and croissants. I scoffed the lot. When I returned that night the street was again deserted. It was as if the whole scenario had been a miraculous mirage.
Living out in the open is all very well in summer, but by December I was becoming colder and lonelier with every storm. By this time I had accumulated enough camping gear to attempt an ascent on Everest. I examined every skip with my now professional eye and always managed to extract some useful artefact. I must have looked like an old rag and bone man as I struggled up the hill late at night under my pile of junk. I now had a tarpaulin groundsheet, a double mattress (wishful thinking, as I never managed more than a solitary wank on the rare occasion when the heroin released its grip on my libido), an eiderdown sleeping bag, sheets, blankets, a harem of pillows and scatter cushions, a large square of genuine Axminster carpet and four enormous golf umbrellas (compliments of sundry five-star hotels in Mayfair and Covent Garden) which sealed me in when the rain got heavy.
I kept a decent set of clothes in an old leather suitcase. My "profession" required me to look as smart as the suavest boulevardier in Jermyn Street. By night, the Aquascutum suit, Turnbull & Asser shirt and John Lobb shoes (unbelievably rescued from a litter bin in St James's Street) were replaced by the bivouac kit - two T-shirts, three shirts, four pullovers (one cashmere), three pairs of thick stockings, a pair of walking boots, a Nike tracksuit, two scarves, a balaclava and a pair of fur-lined leather gloves. I always changed my clothes before I re-entered the park, then again before I went off to "work" each morning. My dual identity went almost unnoticed.
But I could not fool Tyson, the rottweiler who visited my camp for his daily "constitutional." And on one particularly frosty morning I met his owner too.
"Seen anything of the tramp?" the man asked.
"The tramp?"
"Didn't yer know. We've got an old paraffin living in one of the bushes. Right mess he's making an' all."
Not as much as his dog made, I thought. Tyson had recognised me and was sniffing around my legs.
"Poor sod must be freezing," I said self-pityingly.
"Deserves it," the man replied. "I've already been on to the parks department. They said they'd send a squad round." He sniffed the air contemptuously. "I'll be getting a petition up if they don't act before long."
"You can rely on me for a signature," I assured him.
With my daily intake of heroin and crack at record levels, that information sent a wave of paranoia rushing through me. The same night, as I lay trying to read Julie Burchill's book on David Beckham by candlelight (candles donated by the In Memoriam rack, St James's, Piccadilly), recurring visions of screws banging doors in my face flashed before my eyes. Then suddenly, and not just in my imagination, came the sound of helicopter rotor blades hovering directly above me. They'd sent out a whole task force to bring me back to justice! Whomever it was they were looking for - and common sense told me it couldn't have been me - I wasn't prepared to risk the bivouac that night. I curled up in a coal shed in someone's back yard. It was cramped, cold and hard on my aching muscles, but in my crack-deranged state of mind, it allowed me to remain a free, if bewildered, human being.
Christmas was approaching. Having spent only one Christmas out of prison in 15 years, I was like a child in my excitement. After working doubly hard on Christmas Eve, I made a special trip to Electric Avenue, Brixton, where I purchased enough heroin to last me two full days (or so I thought), along with a turkey sandwich, six "luxury" mince pies and a miniature Christmas cake. Then, as I limped the last few hundred yards to base camp, the words of "In the Bleak Midwinter" (as sung by a children's choir on Clerkenwell Green) had me close to tears. I hadn't felt as lonely as this in my entire life.
I brushed back the gnarled branches that guarded the bivouac's entrance. On the end of my bed sat a large square parcel wrapped in Christmas paper and tied in red waxed string. I stood there in shock. Was it a mistake? A practical joke? A trap? I half expected a boxing glove to spring out and hit me as I opened it. Inside the cardboard box was a card that read: "Happy Christmas from a wellwisher who watches from afar." Goodies of all sorts spilled out. I began to understand how recipients of Red Cross parcels must have felt during the war. I unloaded tins of soup, spaghetti hoops, macaroni, baked beans, curried meat balls and pineapple chunks. There was a block of Red Leicester cheese, a tin of boiled ham, a carton of apple juice, two cans of lager, a Victoria sponge cake, a packet of Penguins, some jelly beans and a box of Cointreau liqueur chocolates (which turned out to be already open and half eaten. It didn't matter). At the bottom of the box was a glass jar with a handwritten sign stuck to its side: "Homemade Scotch broth." The fact that I had neither a stove to heat the cans, nor a can opener to open them was immaterial. Somebody - I never found out who they were or why they performed such an act of compassion - had taken the trouble to address me personally, to acknowledge my existence. The warmth that welled up inside me did so, for once, without the fillip of heroin. I write this in the slim hope that my patron might read it and know how much joy he or she brought.
On Christmas morning I shared the turkey sandwich and Victoria sponge with a wild ginger tomcat who occasionally visited my camp; with a pair of song thrushes who nested (and sometimes shat down from) above me; and with a robin redbreast who might have hopped straight off a Christmas card. Together we celebrated - a bizarre parody of a traditional English Christmas.
But it was the quiet before the storm. I had forgotten my exchange with Tyson's master. They chose dawn on the rainy morning of 5th January to attack my island kingdom. I opened my eyes to find four black-clad men, looming down on me like angel bedposts. The leader spoke in a black country accent so thick I could barely make out his words.
"You've got foive minutes to get yer stoof and yerself out of 'ere. Otherwise."
I tried closing my eyes in the hope that this was a bad dream. It wasn't, as a boot to my ankle attested.
"Coom on. An't got toime fer woiste."
"It's only half past seven. Can't you come back later? At least when the rain lets up a bit?" I pleaded.
"No we can't." The leader was adamant. "Thur's bin comploints an' we've our instrooctions."
"So where am I supposed to go at this time of day? How am I supposed to carry this lot?"
"Not my business. Look at the fuckin' soit of it. Public park this, not a public convenience."
He gestured at my meagre possessions; my world, such as it had been, for the last few months. These few soggy boxes, black sacks, cardboard carriers and the battered suitcase - these were all I amounted to after 45 chaotic years. It was strange really, feeling such a personal attachment to a public park. Yet now I was about to lose even that, and be expelled from paradise. I grabbed a handful of dog ends and stuffed them in my pocket. I rolled up my sleeping bag, slipped it under one arm and picked up the leather suitcase with the other. I walked slowly away. I didn't know where the hell I was going to go.
