I originate from Liverpool. I came down here to London because you can escape here, your free. With life on the streets you’ve got a certain camaraderie . It’s not great but it’s OK.

I can’t handle hostels or anywhere like that. It’s too much of a mixture, with the lads that are around there being all drinkers. On the streets I don’t think there are many psychotics,lunatics or drug addicts but if you walk into a hostel there is about eighty of them.

I have always had a drink problem,since the age of 16. It’s one of them things,I have never smoked or anything like that. Your either addicted to one thing or your addicted to another. I drink as much as I can get a day.

On the streets years ago you used to have people who are about my age, who’ve done their working life. I’m 63 years old. These days you’ve got people who are about 18 or 19 with drug problems and they need money. They don’t care how they get it. When I hit the streets I was basically coming to the end of my working life. The human being is only given so much,our Lord gave us three square and ten. So these kids of eighteen there’re running around with knives and guns. That’s how life is changing on the streets.

When I started off on the streets the people you met were usually about 50 years old. Some of them would have been injured in work or something,but most of them were working people. I met one man on the streets,he was a barred lawyer from NewYork. He said to me, “If you go to America you’ll find your on the streets with disbarred lawyers, disbarred doctors but in England ninety-nine and a half percent of the people on the streets are working class”. Over there they don’t have much of a class system.

Life can be physically hard because you get cold in the winter etc, but it’s not mentally hard because you are free. I don’t like responsibilities. I’m not content but I am near enough. I was talking to this man and he asked me how do you get by. I said by going to the convents, I have a lot of friends in London.I can walk down the street during the day and say hello to hundred and fifty people. If I disappear for two or three days when I come back they all want to know where I have been.When I go to see my little boy they all ask how he was. I would like to get out of this situation.But how? I need begging and soup kitchens. I remember him saying that he was on two thousand pounds a week over the year, now that’s responsibility. When I got out of his car he said “Listen,I’m a rich man”,and he gave me a few bob. When he drove away he turned round and looked at me , he envied me. He has buried himself in his life and he can’t get out. I feel free.

You get a lot of hassle off the police, you get a few kicks but you don’t hear about that. That’s the way life is. My worst experience was seeing a man axed to death. It wasn’t amongst the street people, it was amongst the drug people. It was in a hostel. They just steamed in and killed him. It frightened me, it frightened me to flippin’ death