1By the spring and summer of 2008, being a busker on the streets of London was becoming more and more difficult, almost impossible at times.

2There were a couple of reasons. I know people assume the economy doesn’t affect people on the streets, but that’s not the case at all. The recession—which at that point was only just gearing up—had hit me and people in my position quite hard. The kind-hearted folk who used to think nothing of dropping me and Bob a pound or two, were now holding on to their money. One or two regulars even told me as much. They said they were worried about losing their jobs. I couldn’t really argue with them. So, as a result, I was having to work much longer hours often to make less money to feed me and Bob and keep us warm.

3I could live with that, the bigger problem was the fact that the authorities had started coming down hard on street performers who didn’t work in the designated spots. I wasn’t sure why they’d decided to do this, especially now, but I did know that it had begun to make my life a real headache.

4Most of the Covent Guardians had always been reasonable. I’d had trouble from the most aggressive of them, but in general they’d never been really heavy with me. But even they had started confiscating stuff if they felt you weren’t taking what they said seriously. I don’t think they had any new powers, they had just been told to get a bit more serious about what they were doing.

5There were also a few, new faces among them. One of the more aggressive of the newcomers had threatened to take away my guitar a couple of times. I’d managed to dissuade him by promising to play in a designated area—or move out of the neighbourhood. I’d then sneaked around the corner for half an hour before returning to James Street.

6It had become a constant game of hide and seek, but I was running out of places to hide. The new Guardians seemed to know where I was going to be. Most days now I’d be moved along or spoken to at some point. It was wearing me down.

7Deep down I knew that my time as a busker was drawing to an end. The straw that broke the camel’s back came one afternoon in May that year.

8Another of the reasons busking had become particularly hard for me was the staff at Covent Garden tube station. The bad vibe I’d been getting from there had become more and more unpleasant. I don’t know why but they didn’t want me busking there. There were now a number of ticket inspectors who would regularly wander across the road from the entrance to the tube station and give me a real mouthful of abuse.

9I could handle that. I was well used to it. But they’d definitely been talking about me together and had come up with some kind of plan to campaign against me. Every now and again they would call up the British Transport Police, who would turn up and give me hassle. As if I needed any more of that. I’d learned to deal with them in the same way as the other authorities: I’d slope off, promising never to darken their doorstep again, then slink back into position when the coast was clear. I saw no harm in what I was doing. No one was getting hurt were they?

10All that changed one afternoon.

11I’d headed into Covent Garden as usual with Bob. I had a friend staying with me at the time, a guy called Dylan, who I’d met way back when I was with the band. He’d been kicked out of his previous accommodation when he’d refused to pay an extortionate new rent by some unscrupulous landlord. He needed a floor to sleep on for a couple of weeks. I’d been there myself, so I couldn’t refuse him. He had begun sleeping on my sofa.

12Bob hadn’t taken too kindly to Dylan’s arrival at first. I think he felt he was going to lose out in my affections. But as soon as he realised that Dylan was, in fact, another animal lover, and discovered that he was going to get more attention, then he was fine. Bob thrived on attention.

13This particular afternoon Dylan decided he was going to come into London with us and hang around Covent Garden. It was a lovely, sunny day and he felt like enjoying it. He was playing with Bob as I set myself up on the corner of James Street. Looking back on it, I can’t believe how fortunate it was that he was there.

14I’d barely put the guitar strap over my shoulder when a British Transport Police van arrived at speed and pulled up alongside the pavement. Three officers jumped out and immediately started walking towards me.

15‘What’s all this about? ’ Dylan said.

16‘Don’t know. More of the usual stuff,’ I said, fully expecting to have to go through the usual tap dance of promising to move away.

17I was wrong.

18‘Right you, you’re coming with us,’ one of the officers said, pointing at me.

19‘What for? ’ I said.

20‘We’re arresting you on suspicion of using threatening behaviour. ’ ‘What? Threatening who? I don’t know what the hell—’ Before I could finish my sentence they had grabbed me. While one of them read me my rights, another one stuck me in handcuffs.

21‘We’ll explain at the station. Let’s get your shit together and get in the van before we make things even worse for you,’ he said.

22‘What about my cat? ’ I said gesturing at Bob.

23‘We’ve got some dog kennels at the station, we’ll stick him in there,’ another of the officers said. ‘Unless you’ve got someone to take him.’ My head was spinning. I had no idea what was happening. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dylan. He was looking sheepish and didn’t want to get involved.

24‘Dylan, will you look after Bob? ’ I said. ‘Take him back to the flat. The keys are in my rucksack.’

25He nodded and started moving towards Bob. I watched him scoop him up and reassure him. I could see the look on Bob’s face; he was terrified by what was happening to me. Through the mesh windows at the back of the van, I watched as the figures of Dylan and Bob standing on the pavement disappeared from view.

26We drove to the British Transport Police station. I still had no idea what was going on.

27Within a few minutes I was standing in front of a desk clerk being asked to empty all my pockets and to answer all sorts of questions. I was then led into a cell where I was told to wait until I was seen by an officer. As I sat there in the barren cell, the walls gouged with graffiti and the floors smelling of stale urine, it brought awful memories flooding back.

28I’d had run-ins with the police before, mostly for petty theft.

29When you are homeless or have a drug habit you try to find easy options to make money. And, to be honest, few things are easier than shoplifting. My main thing was stealing meat. I’d lift legs of lamb and expensive steaks. Jamie Oliver steaks. Lamb shanks. Gammon joints. Never chicken, chicken is too low value.

30What I stole was the stuff with the highest price value. What you get is half the price on the label. If you go to a pub and sell the stuff that’s what you could expect to get. Pubs are very solid ground for selling stolen goods. Everybody knows that.

31The first time I did it to pay for my habit was in 2001 or 2002, something like that. Before that I’d been begging to feed my habit. Before that I’d been on a methadone course. I’d got clean but then I’d started using again because things were bad. I’d been moved into some dodgy accommodation where everyone was using and had spiralled back into bad habits.

32I can still remember the first time I got busted. It was at the Marks and Spencer’s at the Angel, Islington. I used to dress up smartly and tie my hair back, dress like a postman at the end of his daily rounds popping in for a snack or a pint of milk on the way home. It was all about appearance. You had to be clever about it. If I’d walked in with a rucksack or a shopping bag I’d never have stood a chance. I carried a postman’s Royal Mail bag around with me. It’s different today but back then nobody looked twice at you if you had one of those bags slung over your shoulders.

33Anyhow, I got stopped one day. I had about one hundred and twenty pounds’ worth of meat on me.

34I was taken into police custody. At that time they gave me an on-the-spot fine of eight pounds for theft. I was lucky to get that because it was my first time.

35Of course, it didn’t stop me. I had a habit. I had to do what I had to do. I was on heroin and an occasional bit of crack. You take the risk. You have to.

36When you get nicked it sucks. But you have got to bite the bullet. Obviously, you sit there feeling sorry for yourself, but you aren’t going to fight the powers that be.

37You try to get out of it, you make up lies but they don’t believe you. They never really do. It’s a vicious circle when you are down.

38That was why busking had been so good for me. It was legal. It kept me straight.

39But now here I was back in the nick. It felt like a real kick in the stomach.

40I’d been in the cell for about half an hour when the door opened suddenly and a white-shirted officer ushered me out.

41‘Come on,’ he said.

42‘Where are you taking me now? ’ I asked.

43‘You’ll see,’ he said.

44I was taken into a bare room with a few plastic chairs and a single table.

45There were a couple of officers sitting opposite me. They looked disinterested, to be honest. But then one of them started questioning me.

46‘Where were you yesterday evening at around 6.30p.m. ?’ one of them asked.

47‘Um, I was busking in Covent Garden,’ I said.

48‘Where? ’

49‘On the corner of James Street, opposite the entrance to the tube,’ I said, which was true.

50‘Did you go into the tube station at any time that evening? ’ the copper asked.

51‘No, I never go in there,’ I said. ‘I travel by bus.’ ‘Well, how come we’ve got at least two witnesses saying that you were in the station and that you verbally abused and spat at a female ticket attendant?’ ‘I’ve got absolutely no idea,’ I said, bemused.

52‘They saw you come up the escalator from the tube and try to go through the automatic barrier without a ticket. ’

53‘Well, as I say, that can’t have been me,’ I said.

54‘When you were challenged you verbally abused a female member of staff. ’ I just sat there shaking my head. This was surreal.

55‘You were then led to the ticket booth and asked to buy a ticket,’ he went on.

56‘When you did so, against your will, you then spat at the window of the ticket booth. ’

57That was it; I lost my cool.

58‘Look, this is bullshit,’ I said. ‘I told you I wasn’t in the tube station last night.

59I’m never in there. And I never travel by tube. Me and my cat travel everywhere by bus. ’

60They just looked at me as if I was telling the biggest lies in the world.

61They asked me if I wanted to make a statement, so I did, explaining that I’d been busking all night. I knew the CCTV footage would back this up. But at the back of my mind I was having all sorts of paranoid thoughts.

62What if this was all a fit up? What if they had doctored the CCTV footage in the tube station? What if it went to court and it was my word against three or four London Underground officers?

63Worst of all, I found myself anxiously wondering what would happen to Bob.

64Who would look after him? Would he stay with them or head back on to the street? And what would happen to him there? Thinking about it did my head in.

65They kept me in for about another two or three hours. After a while I lost all track of time. There was no natural light in the room so I had no idea whether it was day or night outside. At one point a lady police officer came in, with a surly- looking male officer behind her.

66‘I need to do a DNA test,’ she said as he took a position in the corner where he stood with his arms folded, glaring at me.

67‘OK,’ I said, ignoring him. I figured I had nothing to lose. ‘What do I have to do?’ I asked the female officer.

68‘Just sit there and I’ll take a swab of saliva from your mouth,’ she said.

69She produced a little kit, with loads of swabs and test tubes.

70Suddenly I felt like I was at the dentist.

71‘Open wide,’ she said.

72She then stuck a long, cotton bud into my mouth, gave it a bit of a scrape around the inside of my cheek and that was that.

73‘All done,’ she said, putting the bud in a test tube and packing her stuff away.

74Eventually, I was let out of the cell and taken back to the desk at the front of the station where I signed for my stuff. I had to sign a form saying that I was released on bail and told that I had to return a couple of days later.

75‘When will I know if I am being formally charged? ’ I asked the duty officer, suspecting that he couldn’t really tell me that. To my surprise he said that I’d probably know when I came back in a couple of days’ time.

76‘Really? ’ I said.

77‘More than likely,’ he said.

78That was good and bad, I decided immediately. Good in the sense that I’d not have to wait months to find out if I was going to be charged, bad in the sense that if they were going to charge me I could find myself spending time inside very soon.

79I really didn’t relish that prospect.

80After finally being let free, I emerged into the streets behind Warren Street in pitch darkness. There were already little groups of homeless people hunkering down for the night, hiding themselves away in alleyways.

81It was approaching eleven o’clock. By the time I got back to Seven Sisters tube station it was close to midnight and the streets were full of drunks and people being turfed out of the pubs.

82I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I got inside the flat.

83Dylan was watching television with Bob curled up in his usual spot under the radiator. The minute I walked through the door, he jumped up and padded over to me, tilting his head to one side and looking up at me.

84‘Hello, mate, you all right? ’ I said, dropping to my knees and stroking him.

85He immediately clambered up on to my knee and started rubbing against my face.

86Dylan had headed off into the kitchen but soon reappeared with a cold tin of lager from the fridge.

87‘That’s a life saver, thanks,’ I said, ripping the ring off the tin and taking a slug of cold beer.

88I sat up for a couple of hours with Dylan, trying to make sense of what had happened to me. I knew the ticket collectors at Covent Garden tube didn’t like me—but I didn’t think they’d go so far as to try and frame me for a crime I didn’t commit.

89‘There’s no way they can fix the DNA to match yours, mate,’ Dylan reassured me.

90I wish I could have been so certain.

91I slept fitfully that night. I’d been really shaken by the experience. No matter how much I tried to tell myself it would work out fine, I couldn’t erase the thought that my life could be about to take a terrible turn. I felt powerless, angry—and really scared.

92I decided to give Covent Garden a wide berth the following day. Bob and I played around Neal Street and one or two other places towards Tottenham Court Road. But my heart wasn’t in it. I was too worried about what was going to happen when I turned up at the police station the following day. Again that night I struggled to get much sleep.

93I was due to report at the Transport Police station at midday but set off early to make sure I was on time. I didn’t want to give them any excuses. I left Bob back at home—just in case I was going to be kept there for hours again. He had picked up on my anxiety as I’d paced around the flat eating my toast at breakfast.

94‘Don’t worry, mate, I’ll be back before you know it,’ I reassured him as I left. If only I’d been as confident of that as I sounded.

95It took me a while to find the station, which was hidden away on a backstreet off Tottenham Court Road. I’d arrived there in the back of a van and left after dark, so it wasn’t surprising that I had trouble finding it.

96When I did locate it, I had to sit and hang around for twenty minutes, during which time I found it hard to concentrate on anything. I was eventually called into a room where a couple of officers were waiting for me, one man and a younger woman.

97They had files in front of them, which looked ominous. I wondered what they’d dug up about my past. God only knows what skeletons were hiding in that particular cupboard.

98The male officer was the first to speak. He told me that I wasn’t going to be charged with the offence of using threatening behaviour. I guessed why that was.

99‘The DNA didn’t match the saliva on the ticket collector’s booth did it? ’ I said, feeling suddenly empowered by what he’d told me.

100He just looked at me with a tight-lipped smile. He couldn’t say anything; I knew that. But he didn’t need to. It seemed obvious to me that someone at the tube station had tried to fit me up, but had failed.

101If that was the good news, the bad news wasn’t long in following.

102The lady told me that I was being charged with illegally busking, or ‘touting for reward’, to give it its formal title.

103They shoved a piece of paper towards me and told me I was to report to court in a week’s time.

104I left the station relieved. ‘Touting for reward’ was a relatively minor offence, certainly compared to threatening behaviour. If I was lucky I’d get away with a small fine and a rap across the knuckles, nothing more.

105Threatening behaviour would have been a completely different matter, of course.

106That would have left me open to a heavy punishment, maybe even imprisonment.

107I’d got off lightly.

108Part of me wanted to fight back at the injustice of what had happened to me.

109The description of the person who spat on the window bore no relation to my appearance. I held on to the paperwork and thought I could do them for wrongful arrest.

110But, to be honest, the main thought in my mind as I headed home that afternoon was relief and a sense that I’d turned some sort of corner. I wasn’t sure yet what it was.

111I still had to get past the court hearing. I went to the local Citizens Advice centre and got a bit of legal advice. I should probably have done that earlier, but I’d been too messed up to think of it.

112It turned out that because I was on a drug rehab programme and living in sheltered accommodation, I was eligible for legal aid. But the truth was I didn’t think I needed a solicitor representing me in court, so I simply got some advice about what to say.

113It was pretty straightforward. I needed to front up and admit that I was guilty of busking: plain and simple. I simply had to go along, plead accordingly and hope the magistrate wasn’t some kind of sadist with a hatred for street musicians.

114When the day came I put on a clean shirt (over the top of a T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Extremely Unhappy’) and had a shave before heading to court. The waiting area was full of all sorts of people, from some really scary-looking guys with shaven heads and Eastern European accents to a couple of middle-aged guys in grey suits who were up on driving offences.

115‘James Bowen. The court calls Mr James Bowen,’ a plummy-sounding voice eventually announced. I took a deep breath and headed in.

116The magistrates looked at me like I was a piece of dirt that had been blown in off the street. But under the law there wasn’t too much they could do to me, especially as it was my first offence for busking.

117I got a three-month conditional discharge. I wasn’t fined.

118But they made it clear that if I did reoffend I could face a fine—and even worse.

119Belle and Bob were waiting for me outside the courthouse after the hearing was over. Bob immediately jumped off her lap and walked over to me. He didn’t want to be too melodramatic about it all, but it was clear he was pleased to see me.

120‘How did it go? ’ Belle asked.

121‘Three-month conditional discharge, but if I get caught again I’m for the high jump,’ I said.

122‘So what are you going to do? ’ she said.

123I looked at her, then looked down at Bob. The answer must have been written all over my face.

124I had reached the end of the road. I’d been busking on and off now for almost a decade. Times had changed—and my life had changed, certainly since Bob had come into it. So it was becoming more and more clear to me that I couldn’t carry on busking, it didn’t make any sense on any level. There were times when it didn’t earn me enough money to make ends meet. There were times when it put me—and more importantly, Bob—in dangerous situations. And now there was a real danger that if I was caught busking in the wrong place again, I could get banged up in prison. It just wasn’t worth it.

125‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Belle,’ I said. ‘But the one thing I know I’m not going to do is carry on busking.’