Stuart: A Life Backwards

Fat Frank, finally within the T-shirt, his freckled stomach pushed out above his belt like a great ginger egg, hoists up a box of leaflets and strides across the road to the tube station opening.

Stuart said he wanted this protest to do two things. First – the obvious – bring publicity. Second, the bit that interested him the most: to teach me and any other person who’d had life ‘so fucking easy’ what sleeping rough was really about. ‘You fucking want to campaign about it? You get on the fucking streets and learn about it.’

And it is strange: a few moments after the cars that brought us down drive off, I become aware that already I have discovered something new. Because we do not have a place of our own, nor will have for the next three days, we must invent one. I catch myself, and the eyes of one or two of the others, searching for a section of the pavement with which we might want to become familiar. We are looking among the concrete slabs for the outline of a home.

Eight thirty in the morning – the show begins. The Independent, Channel 4, East Anglia News, Radio 5 Live, LBC – they’ve all shown up for our press conference. Me and Linda Outreach and Fat Frank get in our sleeping bags for the photographers and pretend (though, of course, Frank is only pretending to pretend) to be outcast homeless people.

HELP THE HOMELESS:

LOCK UP A

CHARITY WORKER

reads my placard. Linda’s has

WHO’S NEXT?

‘What’s that mean, then?’ smirks the Press Association cameraman as he takes the shot. ‘Who’s next in ’er sleeping bag?’ The Home Office staff start drizzling towards work: some take leaflets, a few join in with us for a couple of minutes before stepping back into the flow again; others march past as if they were defying a picket and appear to be absorbed in a newspaper until their nose bumps into the front door. One or two stop to argue. Dull, stupid arguments: I’ve heard them a thousand times before.