Welcome To Brighton & Homeless (From The Argus)

Welcome To Brighton & Homeless

1:41pm Monday 10th August 2009

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By Quentin Delahunty – Liberal. Creative. Brightonian »

On a stroll through Brighton’s quaint streets or a saunter down Hove’s grand avenues, you are sure to encounter a celebrity or two, from cast-iron A-listers (my mate Ludo is convinced he spotted Prince tucking into fish and chips in Harry Ramsden’s the other day) to those lesser “names” who inhabit the cheaper end of the celebrity alphabet (David van what’s-his-face).

However, sometimes it’s not the number of Hello covers you’ve been on or the size of your bank balance that makes you a star, sometimes it’s the depth of your character and the breath of your soul (and maybe the width of your decency).

I found this out for myself recently, as I was strolling back through the cobbled lanes of this dear town, having just had a script meeting/ working lunch at Terre Á Terre with my friend Jemima (we are re-working Battleship Potemkin for the Twitter generation). Stuffed to the brim with a potent mix of vegan tapas and creative inspiration, I stumbled upon a homeless man, one of the many lost souls who pepper Brighton and Hove like human-sized elephants in the proverbial room. This random encounter with, let’s call him “Archie”, was to both enlighten and warm my cynical soul, and make me think twice about that two-week holiday in Tuscany I’d planned for next month.

“Can you spare some change?”, said Archie as I walked past. “I don’t have any Big Issues left”. His voice was a mixture of Richard Burton’s solemn tomes and Richard Stilgoe’s playful musicality. He was sitting on a soiled blanket, propped up by the wall of some faceless disco-bar, his legs stretched out in front of him. Dressed in a ragged black coat and smelling of beer, his weather-beaten face look ravaged both by disappointment and acute acne.

As I pondered what to do, a straw-hat wearing twenty-something hipster nonchalantly tossed Archie a 20 pence piece, barely looking ‘round to acknowledge the recipient of his small donation. Archie doffed his imaginary cap. “Have a good day, sir”.

Archie looked at me, looking at him. And at that moment, when our eyes locked, I knew that Archie wanted more than a heptagonal coin thrown by a faceless passer-by, he wanted my time.

I sat down beside Archie, not caring a damn if my new Reiss chinos got dirty on the well-worn cobbles. And you know what, I spoke to Archie. I asked HIM how HE was. How HIS day was going. Questions we would ask our friends, our relatives, or maybe old people at a bus stop, but rarely a bedraggled down-on-his-luck stranger.

“I said, can you spare some change?” was his reply. But I could tell that behind his automatic and admittedly irritated enquiry he was pleading with me to stay with him for longer. And I did.

While Archie’s responses to my conversational probings mainly flitted between “I really need some money to eat”, “look, I don’t do dirty things for money, if that’s what you’re after” and “just leave me alone”, I carried on, telling him about my life, my hopes, my dreams, my reworking of Battleship Potemkin for the Twitter generation.

Time passed. Maybe five minutes. Maybe nine. Until, spiritually sated by our connection, he stood up and stumbled off up the street (having threatened, at different points, to both “knock my block off” and “call the police on me”).

But I knew that I had given him what he needed. And he had given me more than I deserved - he too had given me his precious time. And even, on returning home and discovering that he had stolen my wallet, I was still grateful to him.

So the next time you walk past a street urchin or a road beggar, spare a minute or three of your day. You both deserve it.