The World According to Bob

flyers out to anyone who showed an interest, in the hope that I’d at least avoid the embarrassment of sitting in an empty bookshop the following week. I felt sure if I fished around in the bins of Covent Garden I’d find most of them there.
    Inside my head a little voice was saying oh, go on, give him one .
    ‘Erm, I’ve written a book about me and Bob,’ motioning to my ginger companion sitting at my feet. ‘I’m having a signing next week if you want to come along,’ I said, handing him the flyer.
    To my amazement he took it.
    ‘I’ll take a look,’ he said.
    By now a sizable crowd had begun to form around us and his minders were getting a bit twitchy. People were flashing away with their cameras. For once it wasn’t Bob they were snapping.
    ‘We’d better move along kids,’ the lady with him said. By now I’d worked out who she was. It was Sir Paul’s new wife, Nancy Shevell, who he’d married the previous autumn. She seemed really cool.
    ‘Take care man and keep it going,’ Sir Paul said as he hooked his arm into hers and rushed off with his entourage.
    I was slightly dizzy afterwards. Starstruck I suppose would have been a more accurate description. I stayed in Neal Street for another hour or so but headed home on Cloud Nine.
    There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of Sir Paul McCartney coming along to the signing. Why would he come? No one else was going to show up, I said to myself. All that really didn’t matter now. If it achieved nothing else and sold only five copies, the book had already allowed me to achieve the impossible. I’d chatted to a member of The Beatles.

    Bob attracted so much attention these days that small crowds would often gather around us. Late on the afternoon of the Monday after I’d met the McCartneys, a dozen or so Spanish-speaking students were clustered on the pavement, each of them snapping away with their cameras and phones. It was always great to meet people, it was part of the attraction of what I did. But it could be distracting and, given the nature of street life, getting distracted was never a great idea.
    As the crowd broke up and headed off in the direction of Covent Garden, I sat down on the pavement to give Bob a couple of treats. With the light already beginning to fade, the chill was really setting in again. Tomorrow was the day of the book signing in Islington. I wanted to get a reasonably early night, although I knew I wouldn’t sleep much. I also didn’t want to keep Bob out for much longer. As I stroked him, I noticed immediately that his body language was very defensive. His back was arched and his body was stiff. He wasn’t much interested in the food either which was always a sign something was wrong. Instead, his eyes were fixed on something in the near distance. Something – or someone – was clearly bothering him.
    I looked across the street and saw a rough-looking character who was sitting, staring at us.
    Living your life on the streets, you develop an instant radar when it comes to people. I could spot a bad apple instantly. This guy looked rotten to the core. He was a little bit older than me, in his late thirties probably. He was wearing battered jeans and had a denim jacket. He was sitting on the pavement, legs crossed, rolling up a cigarette and sipping on a can of cheap lager. It was obvious what he was looking at – and what his intentions were. He was working out how to relieve me of my money.
    In the space of the last few minutes, most of the Spanish students and several others had dropped coins into my guitar case. One rather cool-looking black guy had given me £5. We’d probably collected £20 in the space of half an hour. I knew better than to leave too much money on display to the world and had scooped up most of it, slipping it in my rucksack. He’d obviously registered this.
    I wasn’t going to confront him, however. As long as he kept his distance, there was no need. I’d been in his shoes myself. I knew how desperate people could get. I sensed he was trouble, but unless he proved that I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Let him cast the first stone and all that, I said to myself.
    Just to make sure, however, I looked across at him and nodded, as if to say: ‘I’ve spotted you, and I know what you’re thinking. So just forget about it.’
    Street people speak the same language. We can convey a hundred words with a simple look or expression, so he understood me immediately. He just