The World According to Bob

appearances and our occasional days busking. We raised almost £5,000 in the first week. It felt fantastic to be able to give something back. They were so kind to me during my early days with Bob and continued to help us when we popped into their weekly clinics on Islington Green. I remembered how I’d often felt that Bob was my reward for some act of kindness that I’d bestowed on someone earlier in my life. I’d felt like it was karma. By adopting the Blue Cross, I felt like I was now reciprocating their generosity, performing another act of karma. I aim to do the same thing for homeless charities at some point in the future.
    Of course people also asked me if the book had made me rich. The answer to that was yes and no. Compared to where I’d been financially, I was, by any stretch of the imagination, comfortable. But I didn’t become an overnight millionaire. The important thing was that, for the foreseeable future, at least, I knew I wasn’t going to be reduced to scouring the shelves of supermarkets for 10p tins of past-the-sell-by-date baked beans. For years I had to rely on my wits and a few state hand-outs. Now, for the first time in many years, I had a bank account and even an accountant to help me manage my affairs, including my taxes. I hadn’t earned enough money to be eligible to pay tax in the past decade. The fact that I now began doing so was important to me.
    When you are homeless or selling The Big Issue you know you aren’t contributing to society – and you know that society resents you for that. A lot of people take great pleasure in telling you so. To your face. ‘Get a job, you scrounging git,’ had been a common refrain for me for a decade. The result of this is that you become gradually more marginalised by that society. People don’t understand that the lack of self-esteem and general hopelessness you feel when you are homeless, busking or even selling The Big Issue is partly down to this. You want to be part of society, but that society is, effectively, driving you away. It becomes a vicious circle.
    Paying my way was the most tangible sign that I was once more ‘a member’ of society. And it felt good.
    There were so many other positives to the book’s success.
    It improved my relationship with my parents. Among the throng at Waterstones on that March evening was my father, who I’d persuaded to come partly out of curiosity and partly for moral support. The bewildered but delighted look on his face when he witnessed the queues will live in my memory for a very, very long time. After all the disappointments, I felt like I’d given him something to be proud about. At last.
    He was touched when he was shown the note I’d written thanking him and my mum in the acknowledgements. Apparently he shed a tear when he read the book back at home. He called me up to say well done, and said the same thing again on other occasions. He still told me to get a haircut and a shave, of course, but at least he stopped nagging me to ‘get a proper job’.
    We didn’t talk about our feelings about the past in huge detail. That was not his style. He’s not the kind of person to have a big heart to heart. I suspect I knew what he was thinking but I also knew that he couldn’t express it. He couldn’t formulate the words, but that was fine. Knowing was enough for me.
    I also travelled to Australia again to spend time with my mother. She’d read the book and wept as well. She told me she felt guilty about many of the things that had happened but was honest enough to say that, as a teenager, I was a nightmare who would have challenged even the most sainted mother. I accepted that.
    We were open and honest with each other and realised that we’d be friends from now onwards.
    Another satisfying aspect of the book’s success was the impact it seemed to have on people’s attitude to The Big Issue sellers and the homeless in general. Schools and charities wrote, telling me how the story of Bob and I had helped them to better understand the plight of the homeless.
    Bob and I were on Facebook and Twitter. Every day it seemed we got a message from someone explaining how they no longer walked past The Big Issue vendors. Many told me they now made a point of always engaging them in conversation. I knew I’d had my difficulties with the magazine, but I felt a huge sense of pride in that. It is a fine institution that deserves everyone’s support, especially in these dark economic times.
    On a more