1I could sense there was something wrong the moment I arrived at the Covent Garden coordinators’ stand one damp, cold Monday morning. A few other vendors were hanging around, stamping their feet to keep warm and sipping at Styrofoam cups of tea. When they noticed me and Bob, a couple of them muttered to each other and threw me dirty looks, as if I was an unwelcome guest.

2When Sam, the coordinator appeared from the other side of the distribution trolley where she’d been collecting a new batch of papers, she immediately jabbed a finger at me.

3‘James, I need to have a word with you,’ she said, looking stern.

4‘Sure, what’s the problem? ’ I said, approaching her with Bob on my shoulder.

5She almost always said hello to him and gave him a stroke, but not today.

6‘I’ve had a complaint. In fact, I’ve had a couple of complaints. ’ ‘What about?’ I said.

7‘A couple of vendors are saying that you are floating. You’ve been spotted doing it a few times around Covent Garden. You know floating is against the rules. ’ ‘It’s not true,’ I said, but she just put her palm up in classic ‘talk to the hand’ fashion.

8‘There’s no point arguing about it. The office wants you to go in for a talk. ’ I assumed that was that and headed towards the stacks of papers that had just arrived.

9‘Sorry, no, you can’t buy any more magazines until you go into Vauxhall and sort it out. ’

10‘What? I can’t get any more magazines today? ’ I protested. ‘How am I going to make any money for Bob and me?’

11‘Sorry, but you are suspended until you sort it out with head office. ’ I was upset, but not entirely surprised. Things had been building up to this for a while.

12One of the many rules that you have to follow as a Big Issue seller is that you stick to selling your papers at your designated spot. You aren’t supposed to sell at someone else’s pitch. And you aren’t supposed to ‘float’, that is, to sell while you are walking around the streets. I was 100 per cent in agreement with the rule. I wouldn’t have liked it if someone started walking around next to my pitch waving Big Issues around. It was the fairest and simplest way of policing London’s army of vendors.

13But during the past month or two I’d had a couple of vendors come up to me to complain that I was ‘floating’. They reckoned they’d seen me selling papers while I was walking around with Bob. It wasn’t true, but I could see why they might have thought it.

14Walking around with Bob had always been a stop-start process. Wherever we went around London, we were stopped every few yards by people wanting to stroke him and talk to him or have a photograph taken.

15The only difference now was that people would sometimes ask to buy a copy of the Big Issue as well.

16As I explained to the other vendors, it put me in a really tricky spot. What I should technically say was, ‘Sorry, you’ll have to come to my pitch or buy one from the nearest vendor.’ But I knew what the end result of that would be: no sale, which wouldn’t benefit anyone.

17A few of the vendors I’d spoken to had sympathised and understood. Quite a few others didn’t, however.

18I guessed immediately who had reported me. It didn’t take a genius to work it out.

19A month or so before Sam had issued the suspension, I’d been walking down Long Acre, past the Body Shop where a guy called Geoff had a Big Issue pitch.

20Gordon Roddick, whose wife Anita had founded the Body Shop, had strong links with the Big Issue so there were always vendors outside their stores. I knew him a little bit and I’d acknowledged him as I walked past. But then, a few moments later, an elderly American couple had stopped me and Bob in the street.

21They were incredibly polite, your classic stereotype Midwestern husband and wife.

22‘Excuse me, sir,’ the husband said, ‘but could I just take a picture of you and your companion? Our daughter loves cats and it would make her day to see this.’ I’d been more than happy to oblige. No one had called me ‘sir’ for years—if ever!

23I’d got so used to posing for tourists that I’d perfected a couple of poses for Bob that seemed to work best for photographs. I would get him on my right shoulder and turn him to face forward with his face right next to mine. I did this again this morning.

24The American couple was delighted with this. ‘Oh, gee, I can’t thank you enough. She will be thrilled to pieces with that,’ the wife said.

25They couldn’t stop saying thank you and offered to buy a copy of the magazine.

26I said no and pointed to Geoff a few yards away.

27‘He is the official Big Issue vendor in this area so you should go and buy it from him,’ I said.

28They’d decided not to and moved on. But then just as they’d been walking off, the wife had leant towards me and squeezed a fiver into my hand.

29‘Here you go,’ she said. ‘Give yourself and your lovely cat a treat.’ It was one of those classic situations where perception and reality were the complete opposite of each other. Anyone who had been there would have seen I hadn’t solicited money and had actively tried to push them towards Geoff. To Geoff, on the other hand, it looked like I’d not just taken money without handing over a magazine, something else which was forbidden, but I’d compounded the crime by telling them to ignore him.

30I knew immediately that it would look bad so I headed towards him to try and explain. But I was already too late. He was shouting obscenities at me and Bob before I got within ten yards. I knew Geoff had a fiery temper and had a reputation for being punchy with it. I decided not to risk it. He was in such a rage, I didn’t even try to reason with him and headed off to leave him in peace.

31It was soon pretty obvious that the incident must have become, well, a big issue among the Big Issue vendors. After that there must have been some kind of whispering campaign against me.

32It started with snide remarks.

33‘Floating around again today,’ one vendor said to me sarcastically as I passed his pitch one morning. At least he was vaguely civil about it.

34Another vendor, around St Martin’s Lane, had been much more direct.

35‘Whose sales are you and that mangy moggie going to steal today? ’ he had snarled at me.

36Again, I tried to explain the situation but I might as well have been talking to the wall. It was clear that vendors were gossiping to each other, putting two and two together and coming up with five.

37I hadn’t worried about it that much at first, but it had then escalated a little.

38Not long after the incident with Geoff, I started getting threats from the drunk vendors. Big Issue vendors aren’t supposed to drink on the job. That is one of the most fundamental rules. But the truth is that a lot of vendors are alcoholics and carry a can of extra-strength lager with them in their pockets. Others keep a flask of something stronger and take a little nip from it every now and again to keep them going. I have to hold my hands up: I’d done it myself once, on a particularly cold day. But these guys were different. They were blind drunk.

39One day Bob and I were walking through the piazza when one of them lurched at us, slurring his words and waving his arms.

40‘You f***ing bastard, we’ll f***ing get you,’ he said. I wish I could say that this only happened once, but it became almost a weekly event.

41The final clue that all was not well had come one afternoon when I’d been hanging around the coordinator’s pitch in Covent Garden. Sam’s colleague Steve would often do her afternoon shift for her.

42He was always good to Bob. I don’t think Steve liked me much, but he would always make a fuss of Bob. On this particular day, however, he had been in a foul mood towards us both.

43I was sitting on a bench minding my own business when Steve came over to me.

44‘If it was up to me you wouldn’t be selling,’ he said, real venom in his voice. ‘As far as I’m concerned you’re a beggar. That’s what you and that cat are doing.’ I was really upset by this. I’d come such a long way. I’d made such a huge effort to fit into the Big Issue family in Covent Garden. I’d explained time and again what was happening with Bob, but it made no difference. It would go in one ear and straight back out the other.

45So, as I say, I wasn’t entirely surprised when Sam broke the news about my having to go to head office. But it still left me reeling.

46I walked away from Covent Garden dazed and not a little confused. I really didn’t know what to do now that I was on the ‘Naughty List’.

47That night me and Bob ate our dinners then went to bed early. It was getting cold and, with the financial situation looking bleak, I didn’t want to waste too much electricity. So while Bob curled up at the foot of the bed, I huddled under the covers trying desperately to work out what to do next.

48I had no idea what the suspension meant. Could it mean that I would be banned for good? Or was it simply a slap on the wrists? I had no idea.

49As I lay there, memories came flooding back of how my busking had been unfairly brought to an end. I couldn’t bear the thought of being denied a livelihood by other people’s lies a second time.

50It seemed even more unfair this time. I hadn’t got into any trouble until now, unlike a lot of the Big Issue vendors I’d seen around Covent Garden who were often breaking rules and getting told off by Sam and the other coordinators.

51I knew about one guy who was notorious with all the sellers. He was this big, brash cockney geezer, a very intimidating character; he would growl at people in a really threatening voice. He’d frighten women, in particular, by going up to them and saying: ‘Come on, darling, buy a magazine.’ It was almost as if he was threatening them. ‘Buy one, or else…’

52Apparently he used to roll the magazine up and then slip it into people’s bags as they were walking past. I’d also heard that he would then stop them and say: ‘That will be two pounds, please’ and then follow them until they gave him money to go away. That kind of thing doesn’t help anyone. Most of the time the victims would simply toss the papers into the nearest bin. It wasn’t even as if the money was going to a good cause. This brute of a man was said to be a gambling addict and other sellers said that all he did was pump it straight back into fruit machines.

53He had obviously broken so many of the basic rules it was ridiculous, yet as far as I knew, he’d never been disciplined.

54Whatever misdemeanours I had supposedly committed, it didn’t compare to that. And it was the first time I’d been accused of anything. Surely that would count in my favour? Surely it wasn’t a question of one strike and you’re out? I simply didn’t know. Which was why I was beginning to panic.

55The more I thought about it, the more confused and helpless I felt. But I knew I couldn’t just do nothing. So the following morning I decided to head out as normal and simply try another coordinator in a different part of London. It was a risk, I knew that, but I figured it was one that was worth taking.

56As a Big Issue seller you learn that there are coordinators all over town, around Oxford Street, King’s Cross and Liverpool Street, in particular. You get to know the whole network. So I decided to chance my arm over at Oxford Street where I’d met a couple of people in the past.

57I arrived at the stall mid-morning and tried to make the situation as low-key as possible. I flashed my badge and bought a pile of twenty papers. The guy there was wrapped up in other things so barely registered me. I didn’t hang around long enough to give him the chance. I simply headed for a spot where there was no sign of anyone else selling and took my chances.

58I felt sorry for Bob in all this. He was quite nervous and seemed disoriented, and understandably so. He liked routine, he thrived on stability and predictability. He didn’t take kindly to chaos once more re-entering his life. Nor did I, to be honest.

59He must have been wondering why our normal routine had been so suddenly and inexplicably changed.

60I managed to sell a decent number of magazines that day - and did the same the following day. I moved locations all the time, imagining that the Big Issue outreach team was on the lookout for me. I knew it was illogical and slightly mad, but I was paranoid, terrified that I was going to lose my job.

61I had images of me being hauled in front of some committee and being stripped of my badge and cast out. ‘Why is this happening to us?’ I said to Bob as we headed back on the bus one evening. ‘We didn’t do anything wrong. Why can’t we get a break?’ I resigned myself to having to spend the next few weeks taking my chances in other parts of London, hoping that the coordinators didn’t know I was persona non grata.

62I was sitting under a battered old umbrella on a street somewhere near Victoria Station late on a Saturday afternoon when I finally told myself that I had made a mistake. Well, to be honest, it was Bob who told me.

63It had been hammering down with rain for about four hours and barely a person had slowed down to stop and buy a magazine. I couldn’t blame them. They just wanted to get out of the deluge.

64Since we’d started selling early in the afternoon, the only people who had shown an interest in me and Bob had been the security staff of the various buildings where we’d stopped to try and take shelter.

65‘Sorry, mate, you can’t stay here,’ they’d said to me with monotonous regularity.

66I’d found the umbrella discarded in a bin and had decided to use it in one last attempt to avert another mini-disaster of a day. It wasn’t working.

67I had been managing to get hold of papers from various vendors around London for about a month now. I had been careful about who I approached and wherever I could I got other vendors to buy papers for me. A lot of people knew who I was.

68But there were enough who didn’t know I was on the suspended list who picked up batches of ten or twenty papers for me, to get me by. I didn’t want to get them into trouble, but if they didn’t know I was banned then no one could criticise them. I figured it was safe and after everything I had been through over the past few months, I just wanted to make a living and take care of myself and Bob.

69It hadn’t been going well though. Finding the right pitch was a real problem, mainly because most of the places I’d set up shop weren’t actually licensed. Bob and I had been moved on from various street corners around Oxford Street, Paddington, King’s Cross, Euston and other stations. One day, after being asked to move on three times by the same policeman, I got a semi-official warning that next time I’d be arrested. I didn’t want to go through that again.

70It was a real catch-22 situation. I’d made sure to steer clear of the main pitches and tried to pick places that were a bit off the beaten track. But as a result I’d found it really hard to sell the magazine, even with Bob. The Big Issue hadn’t designated its prime sales spots by accident. They knew exactly where papers would sell—and where they wouldn’t. These were the spots I’d found myself occupying.

71People were still drawn to Bob, of course, but the locations just weren’t right.

72Inevitably, this had hit me in the pocket, and it had become much harder for me to manage the business side of the Big Issue. Tonight I was going to hit rock bottom in that respect. I had about fifteen papers left. I knew I wasn’t going to sell them and by Monday they would be out of date when a new edition came out. I was in trouble.

73As the light faded and the rain continued to fall, I told myself that I’d try a couple more pitches in the hope of shifting these papers. I hadn’t figured on Bob, though.

74Until now he’d been as good as gold, a real stoic even on the most desperately grim day. He’d even put up with the regular splashings he got from passing cars and people, even though I knew he hated getting soaked in the cold. But when I tried to stop and sit down at the first street corner I’d spotted, he refused to stop walking. It was extremely rare that he pulled on the lead like a dog, but that’s exactly what he was doing now.

75‘OK, Bob, I get the message, you don’t want to stop there,’ I said, simply thinking that he didn’t fancy that particular location. But when he did exactly the same thing at the next spot and then again at the next spot after that, the penny finally dropped.

76‘You want to go home, don’t you, Bob? ’ I said. He was still walking along on the lead, but on hearing this he slowed down and tilted his head almost imperceptibly in my direction, giving me what for all the world looked like a raised eyebrow. He then stopped and gave me the familiar look that said he wanted to be picked up.

77In that instant I made the decision. Until now, Bob had been a rock, sticking loyally by my side despite the fact that business hadn’t been so good and his bowl had consequently been a little less full of food. It just underlined to me how loyal he was. Now I had to be loyal to him and get us back on track with the Big Issue management.

78I knew it was the right thing to do. The Big Issue had been a great step forward for me. It had given me the biggest boost I’d had for a long time, well, since Bob had come into my life, in fact. I just needed to clear up the situation with them. I couldn’t avoid facing the music any longer. For Bob’s sake as much as mine. I couldn’t keep doing this to him.

79And so it was that the following Monday morning I had a good wash and put on a decent shirt and set off for Vauxhall. I took Bob with me, to help explain the case.

80I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I got there. The worst-case scenario, obviously, would be that I’d be stripped of my badge and banned from selling the magazine. That would have been grossly unfair. But I knew there would have to be some kind of punishment if they found me guilty of ‘floating’. My best hope was to convince them that I hadn’t been doing that.

81Arriving at the Big Issue office I explained the situation and was told to wait.

82Bob and I sat there for about twenty minutes before we got to see someone. A youngish guy and an older woman led me into a non-descript office and asked me to shut the door behind me. I held my breath and waited for the worst.

83They gave me a real dressing down. They claimed I’d broken a couple of the cardinal rules.

84‘We’ve had complaints that you’ve been floating and begging,’ they said.

85I knew who had made the complaints but didn’t let on. I knew I mustn’t turn it into a personality clash. Big Issue vendors were supposed to get on with each other and if I sat there slagging off a list of other vendors it wasn’t going to do me any good. Instead I tried to explain to them how difficult it was to walk around Covent Garden with Bob without being offered money for the magazine.

86I gave them a couple of examples, one involving some blokes outside a pub who had stopped to admire Bob and offered me a fiver for three copies. There was an interview in there with an actress they all fancied, they told me.

87‘Things like that happen all the time,’ I told them. ‘If someone stops me outside a pub, to refuse to sell them a paper would just be rude.’ They listened sympathetically and nodded at some of the points I made.

88‘We can see that Bob attracts attention. We’ve spoken to a few vendors who have confirmed that he’s a bit of a crowd puller,’ the young guy said, with more than a hint of sympathy in his voice.

89But when I’d finished defending myself, he leaned forward and broke the bad(ish) news. ‘Well, we’re still going to have to give you a verbal warning.’ ‘Oh, OK. A verbal warning, what does that mean?’ I asked, genuinely surprised.

90He explained that it wouldn’t prevent me from selling, but that the situation might change if I was found guilty of floating again.

91I felt a bit silly afterwards. A verbal warning was neither here nor there. I realised that I’d panicked completely and, typically, jumped to the worst possible conclusion. I hadn’t understood what was going to happen. I had been terrified that I was going to lose my job. The images I had of me being hauled in front of some committee and being stripped of my badge and cast out were just a figment of my imagination. I didn’t realise it was not that serious.

92I headed back to Covent Garden to see Sam, feeling slightly sheepish about what had been happening.

93When she saw me and Bob, she smiled at us knowingly.

94‘Wasn’t sure whether we’d see you two again,’ she said. ‘Been into the office to sort it out?’

95I explained what had happened. I then gave her the piece of paper that I’d been given at the end of the meeting.

96‘Looks like you are back on probation for a bit,’ she said. ‘You can only work after 4.30p.m. and on Sundays for a few weeks. Then we can put you back on a normal shift. Just make sure to keep yourself clean. If someone comes up to you and Bob and offers to buy a magazine, say you haven’t got one, or if it’s obvious you have, say they are promised for regular customers. And don’t get involved.’ It was all good advice, of course. The problem was that other people might want to ‘get involved’. And so they did.

97One Sunday afternoon Bob and I had headed to Covent Garden to do a couple of hours’ work. Given the restrictions on us, we had to take whatever chances we could get.

98We were sitting near the coordinators’ spot on James Street when I was suddenly aware of a large and rather threatening presence. It was a guy called Stan.

99Stan was a well-known figure in Big Issue circles. He’d worked for the company for years. The problem was that he was a bit unpredictable. When he was in the right frame of mind he could be the nicest guy you’d ever met. He would do anything for you, and frequently did.

100He’d bailed me out and given me a couple of free papers on a couple of occasions.

101However, when Stan was in a bad mood or, even worse, drunk, he could be the most objectionable, argumentative and aggressive pain in the arse in the world.

102I quickly spotted that it was the latter Stan who was now standing in front of me.

103Stan was a big guy, all of six feet four. He leaned down over me and bellowed: ‘You aren’t supposed to be here, you are banned from the area.’ I could smell his breath; it was like a distillery.

104I had to stand my ground.

105‘No, Sam said I could come over here on Sunday or after 4.30p.m. ,’ I said.

106Fortunately another guy who worked with Sam, Peter, was there as well and he backed me up, much to Stan’s annoyance.

107He lurched back for a moment then move backed in, breathing whisky fumes all over me once more. He was looking at Bob now, and not in a friendly way.

108‘If it was up to me I’d strangle your cat right now,’ he said.

109His words really freaked me out.

110If he’d made a move towards Bob I would have attacked him. I would have defended him like a mother defending her child. It’s the same thing. He was my baby. But I knew that would be fatal, from the Big Issue’s point of view. It would be the end.

111So I made two decisions there and then. I picked up Bob and headed elsewhere for the afternoon. I wasn’t going to work anywhere near Stan when he was in this mood. But I also made the decision to move away from Covent Garden.

112It would be a wrench. Bob and I had a loyal customer base there and, besides anything else, it was a fun place to work. The inescapable truth, however, was that it was becoming an unpleasant and even a dangerous place to work. Bob and I needed to move to a less competitive part of London, somewhere where I wasn’t so well known. There was one obvious candidate.

113I used to busk around the Angel tube station in Islington before I went to Covent Garden. It was a good area, less lucrative than Covent Garden but still worthwhile. So I decided the next day to take a visit to the coordinator there, a great guy called Lee, who I knew a little bit.

114‘What are the chances of me getting a good pitch here? ’ I asked him.

115‘Well, Camden Passage is pretty busy, as is the Green, but you could do outside the tube station if you like,’ he said. ‘No one fancies it much.’ I had a feeling of déjà vu. It was Covent Garden all over again. For other Big Issue sellers in London, tube stations were reckoned to be a complete nightmare, the worst possible places to try and sell the paper. The way the theory went was that people in London are simply moving too fast, they don’t have time to slow down, make the decision to buy one and dip into their pockets. They’ve got to be somewhere else, they are always in a hurry.

116As I’d discovered at Covent Garden, however, Bob had the magical ability to slow them down. People would see him and suddenly they weren’t in quite such a rush. It was as if he was providing them with a little bit of light relief, a little bit of warmth and friendliness in their otherwise frantic, impersonal lives. I’m sure a lot of people bought a Big Issue as a thank you for me giving them that little moment.

117So I was more than happy to take what was supposed to be a ‘difficult’ pitch right outside Angel tube.

118We started that same week. I left the Covent Garden vendors to it.

119Almost immediately we began to get people slowing down to say hello to Bob. We had soon picked up where we had left off in Covent Garden.

120One or two people recognised us.

121One evening, a well-dressed lady in a business suit stopped and did a sort of double take.

122‘Don’t you two work in Covent Garden? ’ she said.

123‘Not any more, madam,’ I said with a smile, ‘not any more.’ Chapter 16

124Angel Hearts.

125The move to Angel had definitely met with Bob’s seal of approval; I only had to look at his body language each day as we headed to work.

126When we got off the bus at Islington Green, he wouldn’t ask to climb on my shoulders in the way he tended to do when we’d been in central London. Instead, most mornings he would take the lead and march purposefully ahead of me, down Camden Passage, past all the antique stores, cafés, pubs and restaurants, and along towards the end of Islington High Street and the large paved area around the tube station entrance.

127Sometimes we’d need to head to the Big Issue coordinator on the north side of the Green, so we’d take a different route. If that was the case, he’d always make a beeline for the enclosed garden area at the heart of the Green. I’d wait and watch while he rummaged around in the overgrowth, sniffing for rodents, birds or any other poor unsuspecting creature upon which he could test his scavenging skills.

128So far, he’d drawn a blank, but it didn’t seem to dampen his enthusiasm for sticking his head into every nook and cranny in the area.

129When we eventually arrived at his favourite spot, facing the flower stall and the newspaper stand near one of the benches by the entrance to the Angel tube station, he would stand there and watch me go through the arrival ritual, placing my bag down on the pavement and putting a copy of the Big Issue in front of it.

130Once all this was done, he would sit himself down, lick himself clean from the journey and get ready for the day.

131I felt the same way about our new stamping ground. After all the trouble I’d had at Covent Garden over the years, Islington seemed like another fresh start for us both. I felt like we were starting a new era, and that this time it was going to last.

132The Angel was different from Covent Garden and the streets around the West End in lots of subtle ways. In central London, the streets were mostly crammed with tourists and, in the evenings, West End revellers and theatregoers. The Angel wasn’t quite as busy, but the tube station still saw a mass of humanity pouring in and out each day.

133It was a distinctively different type of person, though. There were still a lot of tourists, of course, many of them drawn to the restaurants and arty venues like Sadler’s Wells and the Islington Business Design Centre.

134But it was also a more professional and, for want of a better word, more ‘upmarket’ place. Each evening I’d notice hordes of people in business suits heading in and out of the tube station. The bad news was that most of them barely even registered the fact that there was a ginger cat sitting outside the station. The good news was that a large proportion of those who did slow down and spot him took an instant shine to Bob. They were also really generous. I noticed immediately that the average purchase and tip at Islington was just that little bit bigger than in Covent Garden.

135The Angel locals were also generous in a different kind of way to those in Covent Garden. Almost as soon as we began selling the Big Issue there, people began giving Bob bits of food.

136The first time it happened was on our second or third day. A very smartly dressed lady stopped for a chat. She asked me whether we were going to be there every day from now on, which struck me as a bit suspicious. Was she going to make some sort of complaint? I was completely off the mark, however. The following day she appeared with a small Sainsbury’s bag containing some cat milk and a pouch of Sheba.

137‘There you go, Bob,’ she said happily, placing them on the pavement in front of Bob.

138‘He’ll probably have that at home tonight if that’s OK,’ I said, thanking her.

139‘Of course,’ she said. ‘As long as he enjoys it that’s the main thing.’ After that, more and more locals started donating titbits for him.

140Our pitch was down the road from a large Sainsbury’s supermarket. It soon became obvious that people were going in there to do their normal shopping and were picking up a little treat for Bob on their way round. They would then drop their presents off on their way back home.

141One day, just a few weeks after we began at Angel, about half a dozen different people did this. By the end of the day, I couldn’t fit all the tins of cat milk, pouches of food and tins of tuna and other fish that had been piling up all day into my rucksack. I had to keep it all in a large Sainsbury’s bag. When I got back to the flat, it filled up an entire shelf in one of the kitchen cupboards. It kept us going for almost a week.

142The other thing that was a world apart from Covent Garden was the attitude of the staff at the tube station. At Covent Garden I was the Antichrist, a hate figure almost. I could count the number of people with whom I’d forged a good friendship in the years I’d been busking or selling the Big Issue there on the fingers of one hand. In fact I didn’t even need that. I could think of two at most.

143By contrast, the staff at Angel were really warm and generous towards Bob from the very beginning. One day, for instance, the sun had been blazingly hot. The mercury must have been up in the 90s at one point. Everyone was walking around in shirt sleeves even though, technically, it was autumn. I was sweating like crazy in my black jeans and black T-shirt.

144I deliberately placed Bob in the shade of the building behind us so that he didn’t get too hot. I knew that heat was bad for cats. An hour or so after we’d set up our pitch, it became clear to me that I’d soon need to get some water for Bob. But before I was able to do something, a figure appeared from inside the tube station with a nice clean, steel bowl brimming with clear water. I recognised the lady immediately. Her name was Davika, one of the ticket attendants, she’d stopped to talk to Bob on numerous occasions already.

145‘Here you go, Bob,’ she said, stroking him on the back of the neck as she placed the bowl in front of him. ‘Don’t want you getting dehydrated now, do we?’ she said.

146He wasted no time in diving in and lapped it up in no time whatsoever.

147Bob had always had this ability to endear himself to people, but it never ceased to amaze me just how many seemed to become devoted to him. He had won the Islington crowd over in a matter of weeks. It was amazing really.

148Of course, it wasn’t perfect at the Angel. This was London after all. It could never have been all sweetness and light. The biggest problem was the concentration of people working the area around the tube station.

149Unlike Covent Garden where all the surrounding streets were alive with activity, at the Angel things tended to be concentrated around the tube. So as a result there were a lot of other people operating on the streets, from people dishing out free magazines to charity workers—or ‘chuggers’, as they were known.

150This was one of the biggest changes that I’d noticed since I’d started working on the streets a decade earlier. The streets were very much more competitive than they used to be. The ‘chuggers’ were mostly hyper-enthusiastic young people working for charities. Their job was to collar well-heeled commuters and tourists and get them to listen to a spiel about their charity. They would then try to persuade them to sign up for direct debits to be taken from their bank accounts. It was like being mugged by a charity—hence their nickname: chuggers.

151Some were third world charities others were health related, to do with cancer or other illnesses like cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s. I didn’t have a problem with them being there but it was the way they hassled people that annoyed me. I had my own sales spiel for the Big Issue, of course. But I wasn’t as intrusive or as nagging as some of these. They would follow people down the road engaging them in conversations they didn’t want to have.

152As a result of this, I would see people emerge from the tube station, see a wall of these enthusiastic canvassers, usually in their loud coloured T-shirts, and make a run for it. A lot of them were potential Big Issue buyers so it was very annoying.

153If someone was really driving people away I would have a word. Some of the canvassers were fine about it. They respected me and gave me my space. But others didn’t.

154One day I got into a heated argument with a young student with a mop of Marc Bolan-like curls. He’d been really irritating people by bouncing around and walking alongside them as they tried to get away. I decided to have a word.

155‘Hey, mate, you’re making life difficult for the rest of us who are working here,’ I said, trying to be civil about it. ‘Can you just move along the road a few yards and give us some space?’

156He’d got really antsy about it. ‘I’ve got every right to be here,’ he said. ‘You can’t tell me what to do and I will do what I want.’ If you want to get someone’s back up, you just need to say something like that.

157So I put him straight on the fact that while he was trying to make pocket money to fund his ‘gap year’, I was trying to make money to pay for my electricity and gas and to keep a roof over my and Bob’s head.

158His face kind of sank when I put it in those terms.

159The other people who were a real irritant for me were the people who sold the assorted free magazines that were being published now. Some of them—like StyleList and ShortList—were actually good-quality magazines, so they caused me no end of problems, the simplest of which boiled down to a question: why were people going to pay for my magazine when they could get a free one from these people?

160So whenever one strayed into my area I’d try to explain it to them. I’d say to them straight up: ‘We all need to work, so you need to give me some space to do my job, you need to be at least twenty feet away.’ It didn’t always work, however, often because a lot of the vendors who sold these magazines didn’t speak English.

161I would try to explain the situation to them but they didn’t understand what I was trying to say to them. Others simply didn’t want to listen to my complaints.

162By far the most annoying people to work the streets around me, however, were the bucket rattlers: the charity workers who would turn up with large plastic buckets collecting for the latest cause.

163Again, I sympathised with a lot of the things for which they were trying to raise money: Africa, environmental issues, animal rights. They were all great, worthwhile charities. But if the stories I had heard about how much of the money disappeared into the pockets of some of these bucket shakers were true, I didn’t have much sympathy. A lot of them didn’t have licences or any kind of meaningful accreditation. If you looked at the laminated badges around their necks, they could have been something from a kid’s birthday party. They looked amateurish.

164Yet, despite this, they were allowed inside the tube stations, a place that was an absolute no-go zone for a Big Issue seller. It would really nark me when I saw a bucket rattler inside the concourse hassling people. Sometimes they would be standing right up against the turnstiles. By the time they emerged out of the station the commuters and visitors were usually in no mood to be persuaded to buy the Big Issue.

165It was, I suppose, a bit of a reversal of roles. In Covent Garden I had been the maverick who hadn’t stuck to the designated areas and bent the laws a bit. Now I was on the receiving end of that.