Here we go again, I’m sorry. I have loads of stuff I could have been writing about over the past few months, but I never got round to it. There may be infill, but I wanted to write this while the events were still fresh in my mind.
Today I went busking in Huntingdon. You may know, or even remember, that I pick up my bOat milk from the farm at King’s Ripton where the oats are grown and turned into Pure Oaty and generally combine it with a trip into the town centre to provide a little street entertainment. My favourite spot was always in the High Street. For the past few visits, though, I’ve favoured a spot near Holland & Barrett, because the High Street spot was often taken already. There always seemed to be a lot of footfall as people made their way between the High Street and Sainsbury, but I rarely seemed to attract much in the way of tips. Last time I earned less than £5. Today I thought I’d try and get to my old spot on the High Street. Fortunately today it was clear. The sun was shining, the first tip was dropped in the hat during the first line of the first song. I had a good feeling about this spot. I was right. There was a steady flow of smiling people and tips. One woman dropped a couple of pounds in the hat telling me the combination of sunshine and live music had made her day. Definitely comments like that make busking so worthwhile. There were children and animals in plentiful supply and I turned at one point to find a boy out with his family flapping two £10 notes at me. Wow!
Eventually I’d gone through most of my usual repertoire and stopped to begin packing up. Wheeling my trolley back towards the car I saw the man of North African appearance (he later claimed to be Algerian) I’d seen on my way to my spot. He was in position pretty much as he had been before. Sitting on the ground on a blue sleeping bag and leaning against the wall. Now I had some money I was happy to share some of my day’s earnings. In front of him was a sign declaring, “I am very hungry. God bless you”. As I was about to drop a coin into his hat I was interrupted by a young man and his girlfriend, who had completely swallowed the Tory Party’s primer on migration. The young man was an out of work plasterer whose diabetes and recovery from addiction had led to his homelessness and joblessness. He railed at the Algerian man sitting passively in the teeth of a verbal onslaught of cliché’s including “he’s not homeless, he turned up in a van with others this morning”; “they’ve all got iPhones”; “he can sit there with his sign and people give him money, if I sit out with a sign I get done for begging” and the tirade continued. His girlfriend explained she had cancer and was losing her hair. They were both clearly upset that they got nothing from the state and this foreigner was getting everything. He pulled boxes of prescription drugs out of an orange carrier bag. He challenged the Algerian to tell him what time it was when it rained last night. He knew because he was soaked through in the rain … It was horrible and at times very threatening. I thought he might attack the man. I felt sorry for them all. None of them had asked to be dealt these particular hands. He demanded to see the iPhone, which the Algerian denied having. He asked how much money the Algerian had begged yesterday. While this was going on people came up to give food, which clearly heightened the irritation of the plasterer and his girlfriend. “I’m hungry,” he said, “but you don’t see anyone giving me food!” I pointed out that most people probably wouldn’t know he was hungry, homeless and penniless if he didn’t tell anyone. The couple were joined by someone else they knew who suggested the man should sell his iPhone and use the money for food. This got pretty heated and I felt I couldn’t just walk away from this situation. I asked how he knew the Algerian had an iPhone. It seems a woman told him so yesterday … “Ah, I see, and how did she know?”
“I’m not racist, but poverty (did he mean ‘charity’?) begins at home innit!”
I started to point out that he was playing right into the hands of the government and its disgusting migrant rhetoric. I wanted to tell him he was attacking the wrong target and that he only needed to think through some of the stuff he was saying to realise how illogical it was. If the man arrived in a van, who was driving? If he lived in a house who owned it and how many others lived there too? As a migrant he couldn’t work legally if he did not have the correct papers. If he acquired money through begging where did the money go? Quite likely in “rent” for his shared accommodation. I’m inclined to believe he did not have a mobile phone. Why would he if he were enslaved?
At my suggestion the plasterer and his girlfriend moved on, but I passed them still railing against the injustices of his situation to some of the other members of the Huntingdon underclass. I feared the situation was going to escalate and the Algerian was at risk. I continued back to my van and loaded up my instruments. Then I went back to see if the Algerian was okay. He spoke passable English, French too and asked me if I spoke Italian, which it seemed he knew. I assumed he spoke Arabic and who knows what else. He gave all the appearances of a well-educated man who had somehow ended up in this terrible situation. It seems he has had issues with local homeless people already.
Government policy is pitting the have-nots against each other. If only they could see it. The plasterer should have been hammering on the door of his MP and demanding fairer treatment. Somehow I doubt that’s going to be seen as an option. I walked around the town looking for a “Town Ranger” to warn her of a possible confrontation in escalation. Naturally neither of the TRs were to be seen. I went to the town council office to see if they had contact details. No one answered the entry phone in the town hall lobby though I buzzed several times. I went to a nearby charity shop assuming they would have a number, which they did. “We call them the ‘powerless rangers’ said a man in the shop. They can’t do anything.” Nevertheless I was given a mobile phone number, which went straight to voicemail. I called 101, the non-emergency police number. The Cambridgeshire call centre tried to put me through to a more local contact, but it rang for fifteen minutes with no reply. I got back to my van and set off for home having used up my three hours of parking. What a mess!
